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

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

#211

Post by neurotech1 »

stanleydrew wrote: post #202
raquo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

buzz was internally available at Google for a few months before launch, so yes there was testing.

If it was a 'work' gmail account, it is quite possible that the people in their frequent contacts, are people they normally share related information with so the question didn't really come up.

Another possibility is that they assumed people would simply disable and that would solve the issue. It turned out to be an incorrect assumption.

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

#212

Post by kellishaver »

jfager wrote: post #162
EricBurnett wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That they acknowledged as a mistake, and rectified early on. When you first turned on Buzz, there would have been an option for whether or not you wanted to have your contacts displayed, however I guess it wasn't easy to find. Shortly after releasing Buzz, they made it a lot more obvious (I guess due to user complaints): http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/millions-of-buzz-users... (item # 1) They are certainly res…

As of about an hour or so ago, it still wasn't fixed. Clicking "No, thanks" on the first Buzz popup screen means nothing - Buzz still gets enabled, still auto-populates a big list of followers and followees, and still makes that list public.

I had the same thing happen not 10 minutes ago. I logged into a rarely used gmail account, got the Buzz landing page, clicked "no thanks" and then was redirected to my inbox. Buzz was there and active and had added followers automatically.

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

#213

Post by datums »

I thought about a few shitty scenarios, but this one didn't come to mind. Google calculated the risks and choose to have autofollow enabled. They knew what they were doing. I think they released it and waited and reacted. Venn diagram it, they have more users using their system because of it.

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

#214

Post by [deleted] »

fnid2 wrote: post #161
waterlesscloud wrote: post #2

This is the sort of thing that was absolutely predictable.

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…

[deleted]

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

#215

Post by lallysingh »

EricBurnett wrote: post #51

I think the point most people are missing is that the data Google shared was already public . Reader has its own privacy and sharing policies, and as far as I can tell Buzz respects these. Even if this person successfully polices Buzz, the reader feed is still out there, public and waiting to be found. Reader privacy settings can be changed at https://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=my#friends-manager-p...

bullshit. Google just redefined "public."

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

#216

Post by jamesbritt »

jfager wrote: post #138
jamesbritt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And you will terminate them. Anything less, and we can do no more than expect similar bad decisions -- from those same people -- in the future." I'm not looking to defend Google's choices about Buzz. But I take exception to the idea of firing people who make bad decisions without due consideration for how those decisions came about. It flies in the face of a mantra at HN: Fail early and often. It goes against the id…

It flies in the face of a mantra at HN: Fail early and often. It goes against the idea that you learn by making mistakes. When you're a young, tiny startup, you can fail early and often because the costs of doing so are outweighed by the benefit of the education you get, both to yourself and to society at large. This is Google. It's huge, it's been around the block a few times, it's already had a ton of failures, and…

"This is Google. It's huge, it's been around the block a few times, it's already had a ton of failures, and millions of people rely on it. It can't and shouldn't have the same latitude to fail, especially in an area as important as privacy."

All the more reason to consider what is the best course to prevent similar mistakes in the future. Knee-jerk firings may make things worse.

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

#218

Post by danudey »

fnid2 wrote: post #167
andreyf wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we have a source please, from either of you?

it's common knowledge that many juries have ruled in favor of plaintiffs and defendants in lots of civil cases. No one needs to cite anything for this.

There's lots of common knowledge out there. The common knowledge which is true ought to be easily citeable. ;)

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

#219

Post by danudey »

Psyonic wrote: post #198
protomyth wrote: post #166

Stuff like this leads me to believe there is a pretty good business out there for a paid-by-the-user service. Google's real customers are advertisers not you.

I can't vouch for it, but it already exists: http://www.lavabit.com/

'Lavabit was built for people like you. People who want a fast, reliable, private POP3 e-mail account with the most advanced features.'

POP3 account… with advanced features? I mean, I know they don't want to go IMAP because they don't want to store information on their servers, but it's still contradictory at first glance.

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

#220

Post by thrdOriginal »

ajdecon wrote: post #179
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…

(b) is almost certain. I have trouble believing no one at Google thought, "I have people in my email contacts I don't want to share with on Buzz." They probably thought that these cases would be in a tiny minority, and that they could respond to complaints with pointers for how to block people.

You're probably right but what would make them think this would be a tiny minority? Have these engineers never had ex-girlfriends?
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