261–270 of 287 posts
Amongst others, this is one reason why I'm not an early-adopter. Too many things have odd consequences, and although this one is and pretty much always was obvious, many are not, and require devious minds and talented/persistent hackers to find them. So, in fact, this is an opportunity to say "thank you" to the hackers out there that tinker with and attempt to break (sorry - "improve") everything as soon as they can…
One thing that certainly is true about this: there's no simple, obvious single place to tune all your Google privacy settings. I've found how to do it, but I had to look under cushions and behind the sofa, so to speak.
Where is it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Time travel would be spiffy, but how easy is it to contact the Buzz engineers now? If you've ever dealt with Google "technical support" (even if you're a customer who shovels them buckets of cash each week) you'll find that it's nearly impossible to reach an actual human being who can help you. Convoluted as it is, getting a blog post ranked top in Hacker News seems the easiest (only?) way to get a genuine Google iss…
Seems like a bunch of geeks with autism that fail to understand that what they do in people's mail affect them enormously, is not a game, and you should ask them. People understanding 101.
Seems like this mathematical and logical geniuses are relationships retarded.
Well, Google followed up on it and she wrote another post about that. http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/screw-you-google/
I just found out I am following 27 people I have no idea who they are or why Google choose to make me follow them. I didn't even sign up for this Buzz thing. Google - this is really messed up!
Not that I'd suggest a "run on the bank" ... but what's the easiest way to download a copy of all my GMail to load it into another service? (Linux or OS X, preferably command line util or Python script)
Gmail is accessible via IMAP: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe... Use the client of your choice to copy it to another account or download it to your computer.
> We reached out to blogger in question this morning and addressed her concerns with Google Buzz and Google Reader. Some of the concerns were due to confusion the product experience created. Her report also helped us discover one bug and one product issue in Google Reader:
> 1) If you block people in Buzz, they still show up as following you in Reader. This is a bug, and we're working to fix it. Provided that your Google Reader shared items are protected, only the people you've explicitly allowed to see them can do so -- regardless of who appears to be following you in Reader.
> 2) Until now, there has not been functionality to block people from following you in Google Reader. We're adding this to the Reader interface.
> We are making these two changes as fast as possible and we'll get them live in the next few days.
Archived copy of the article in question: http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/329/harrietjacobsfuckyougoo...
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Not sure what the problem is. I have complete control over the privacy settings of all my accounts. After reading the post, I think the problem is the poster made a choice before this not to use the privacy features.
I'm not sure what the problem is either. I also have complete control over my privacy settings, but it seems you can't say that in this particular topic because the army of group-thinkers will down-vote you (read: censor your comment) to oblivion. We can't have two-sided conversations in HN anymore. Either you bash Buzz/Google or get the hell out of this thread.
Basically, what is happening is the same thing that happens at twitter by default. People follow other people, and followers, NOT contacts, are shared. People can see who is following you, but they can't see your contacts.
So, when someone joins Buzz, Google suggests they follow certain people, and sets them up. These are people they have in their contacts list. These people in turn have also done the same thing, most likely. Followers, like on Twitter, are shared publicly.
Basically, a lot of people were following people when they really didn't want to be, and despite the ability to prevent it, they accepted the defaults.
Google has made changes to make it more obvious, but from my own experience, and from everything I've read, seen, or done, is that this was all preventable. The problem was, people didn't take the time to read, or understand, what was happening, just happily clicking along.
Of course, that's probably just as dangerous. Should Google have handled it differently? Yes. Did they betray users privacy? Possibly, depending on if you accept that users using software have a certain level of responsibility, or that the software is supposed to assume you don't know what you are doing.
Edit: More information this morning, and I feel vindicated. =)
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…
To err is human, but to persevere in error is only the act of a fool. "Cujusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare". Cicero
