Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

Post by wvenable » Fri, Feb 12, 2010, 7:07 PM UTC

Tawheed wrote: post #84

tessro wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there's a huge difference between "waiting to be found" and "pushed to the foreground". It's just like the Facebook Newsfeed debacle. People tend to have an expectation of "how public" something is on a scale, and when that changes suddenly it can be a bit jarring. Ultimately, people adjust -- but it's a mistake to look at public/private as a binary concept. In many people's minds, it is a sliding scale.

If anything, Google should've learned from the Facebook debacle before releasing a News Feed of their own. Essentially, Google made the SAME EXACT mistakes as Facebook did.

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 12, 2010, 7:11 PM UTC

raquo wrote: post #181

fnid2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are certain that this was absolutely predictable, you are implying either: a) The Google Buzz people are so stupid that they couldn't have predicted this absolutely predictable thing (no one else did that I know of until it bit them) or b) they knew this would happen and chose to allow it to happen in the bad times hoping the love they'd get from those who like it would be greater than the pain experienced by…

So you say that a team of engineers does not understand that most frequent contacts != those whom I wish to share my stuff with? Are edge cases like the original post hard to predict? Did they do any testing, even with their friends/colleagues? That doesn't sound smart to me. Either their incentives are misaligned (b) or there are some other problems.

Post by grourk » Fri, Feb 12, 2010, 7:19 PM UTC

chubbard wrote: post #190

The choice between privacy goes something like this on the internet these days. Be apart of the internet and give up all hope of privacy, or don't participate and be a Luddite. This choice is not acceptable or practical for any future. Google grossly underestimated how important privacy has become to average user in last year or two. Unfortunately this could have been the killer feature that Buzz could leverage over…

Post by moultano » Fri, Feb 12, 2010, 7:24 PM UTC

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #35

illumin8 wrote: post #21

I'm trying to understand how this is a problem. Surely, it doesn't matter who is following you, as long as you don't post through Buzz. This sounds like someone complaining about wierdos following you on Twitter. Nobody is forcing you to tweet. If you don't want to publish your life to the world, then don't.

I think the point is that she was operating under the understanding that she was NOT publishing to the world ... and all of a sudden, not only is she publishing to the world, it's been made retroactive and she can't block anyone stalking her. How does that not suck?

Post by wmeredith » Fri, Feb 12, 2010, 7:27 PM UTC

goodside wrote: post #74

rwhitman wrote: post #6

There are clearly no longer any humans working at google, just one giant heartless inhuman machine calling the shots... Or at least thats how Google looks to the public these days. If thats the perception they want, they got it. I think this Buzz privacy fiasco is an historic lesson in the convergence of humanity and software and the lesson learned is that privacy of personal relationships should be a fundamental rig…

Recklessness and lack of foresight doesn't make you inhuman. If you forwarded this post back in time to the Buzz engineers, they would try to fix it before launch -- not laugh maniacally at the thought of an innocent woman fearing for her safety.