I'm totally agreeing with the general sentiments of the comments here: I see no particular issue with public comments being publicly searchable.
I can even kind of understand facebook's drive to make as much information as possible public and hence changing the defaults while still providing a bit of warning to the user.
Sure - nobody reads that, but that's ultimately the problem of the people not reading the warnings.
However, In light of this, the ethical thing for facebook would be not to change defaults for existing users but maybe just to encourage them to post more stuff to the public. And, depending on "evilness", change the default for new users.
What's really scary is the sharing of information with other sites and applications that's going on. By now it's really hard to find any mobile App that doesn't in a way want to integrate facebook and send spam in my name.
But it just got worse in the recent days: Now we learn that even the basic iPhone OS might get facebook integration, that battle.net (blizzard's online game platfrom) will be poisoned by facebook and of course there's that site-wide-"like"-feature which shares who knows what data (that might even be private) with third parties I might or might not trust.
IMHO, there's a difference between just posting something to the general public and providing that information directly to an interested third-party.
It's like in real life: In theory, the mall could just watch me doing grocery shopping in public, because, after all, that's a public action.
But the moment they hand me one of these customer bonus program cards, I know they are tracking me specifically and this is what I'm uncomfortable with - even thought the information they could get from that is public already - now it's directed straight at them.
That's the difference.
While I don't care about somebody using facebook search looking for the term "foobar" and then finding a posting of mine amongst 100 others, I strongly care about a third party getting direct notifications of my interests in foobar as I am visiting their service.
The connection is what's annoying me. Being one of a million interested in foobar is ok. Being returning visitor #1257892 to site X and also being interested in foobar (without explicitly telling them and disguised in a "fancy" "I like this"-button) - that's the problem I have.
I'm solving this not by quitting facebook (which has some value in keeping in touch with old non-techie friends and classmates), but by always logging out after use. Then, I set all my updates to public and I'm only posting what I don't care about the public seeing. Problem solved for me.
The content on the internet that's beside my name is, in full, things I can be proud of and I can stand behind. There are no drunken pictures or anything else I could be afraid of any past or future boss seeing it.
I really like what you said, because this is one of the first comments I have read which actually states a rational reason for feeling somewhat uncomfortable (in this case, a third party being able to target you with ads and such).
I feel like most people have just been whining about privacy issues and following the mainstream outrage against Facebook, but without understanding one bit how public settings could realistically affect them. They're just mad because they're 'supposed' to be.
Facebook does not share private without your consent. At f8 FB released a new authentication flow that is more restrictive for developers and more informative for users. Then people started freaking out. I do not understand.
To a lot of people this is like finding out that someone has spidered and indexed their conversations at the pub.
Their fault? Sure. But a lot of people react worse to bad events when a mistake they made caused it, especially if they were warned before hand. Anticipating hearing 'we told you so' is not going to make the general public feel calm and relaxed.
So are posts public by default for new users? Did Facebook change anyone's privacy settings to "public" behind their backs? Mine has always been set to "Friends" since I had my account (3 years), and as far as I know all my posts have remained visible to only my direct facebook friends.
Personally I keep my twitter even more locked down than my facebook. And having made my twitter feed private I trust twitter not to share it with the universe. I trust facebook much less.
[+] [-] pilif|16 years ago|reply
I can even kind of understand facebook's drive to make as much information as possible public and hence changing the defaults while still providing a bit of warning to the user.
Sure - nobody reads that, but that's ultimately the problem of the people not reading the warnings.
However, In light of this, the ethical thing for facebook would be not to change defaults for existing users but maybe just to encourage them to post more stuff to the public. And, depending on "evilness", change the default for new users.
What's really scary is the sharing of information with other sites and applications that's going on. By now it's really hard to find any mobile App that doesn't in a way want to integrate facebook and send spam in my name.
But it just got worse in the recent days: Now we learn that even the basic iPhone OS might get facebook integration, that battle.net (blizzard's online game platfrom) will be poisoned by facebook and of course there's that site-wide-"like"-feature which shares who knows what data (that might even be private) with third parties I might or might not trust.
IMHO, there's a difference between just posting something to the general public and providing that information directly to an interested third-party.
It's like in real life: In theory, the mall could just watch me doing grocery shopping in public, because, after all, that's a public action.
But the moment they hand me one of these customer bonus program cards, I know they are tracking me specifically and this is what I'm uncomfortable with - even thought the information they could get from that is public already - now it's directed straight at them.
That's the difference.
While I don't care about somebody using facebook search looking for the term "foobar" and then finding a posting of mine amongst 100 others, I strongly care about a third party getting direct notifications of my interests in foobar as I am visiting their service.
The connection is what's annoying me. Being one of a million interested in foobar is ok. Being returning visitor #1257892 to site X and also being interested in foobar (without explicitly telling them and disguised in a "fancy" "I like this"-button) - that's the problem I have.
I'm solving this not by quitting facebook (which has some value in keeping in touch with old non-techie friends and classmates), but by always logging out after use. Then, I set all my updates to public and I'm only posting what I don't care about the public seeing. Problem solved for me.
The content on the internet that's beside my name is, in full, things I can be proud of and I can stand behind. There are no drunken pictures or anything else I could be afraid of any past or future boss seeing it.
[+] [-] char|16 years ago|reply
I feel like most people have just been whining about privacy issues and following the mainstream outrage against Facebook, but without understanding one bit how public settings could realistically affect them. They're just mad because they're 'supposed' to be.
[+] [-] 0nly1ife|16 years ago|reply
Facebook does not share private without your consent. At f8 FB released a new authentication flow that is more restrictive for developers and more informative for users. Then people started freaking out. I do not understand.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
[+] [-] davidbr02|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notauser|16 years ago|reply
To a lot of people this is like finding out that someone has spidered and indexed their conversations at the pub.
Their fault? Sure. But a lot of people react worse to bad events when a mistake they made caused it, especially if they were warned before hand. Anticipating hearing 'we told you so' is not going to make the general public feel calm and relaxed.
[+] [-] tokenadult|16 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346003
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341236
[+] [-] LiveTheDream|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djb_hackernews|16 years ago|reply
It's pretty basic for now, but it doesn't have the privacy concerns the webapp this article links to.
[+] [-] marknutter|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hugh3|16 years ago|reply