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Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

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Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#131

Post by codexon »

kmavm wrote: post #130
codexon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Beacon The prime example that resulted in a lawsuit settlement. I mean really? Opt-in to reveal your purchasing and browsing habits with selected companies and then spam your friends? http://gawker.com/5426176/facebooks-great-betrayal Another opt-in that is equivalent to Facebook buying web coverage at the expense of user privacy. http://gigaom.com/2010/04/22/facebooks-inst…

The claim that facebook has changed defaults in order to indirectly make more advertising revenue is very different from the claim that checks were written to facebook in exchange for private user data. You implied the latter, and it's bogus. None of these programs involved facebook giving user data to advertisers. Even the dreaded Beacon was strictly one-way: it allowed sites elsewhere on the Web to publish to faceb…

Sure I'll admit that it is not literally packaging private info into a file and selling it. But it sure is asymptotically approaching it.

Your argument is analogous to saying Microsoft didn't really have a monopoly because 3% of computers used Linux and OSX. Plus, how does F8 instant personalization work? I doubt it is solely based on a 1 pixel tracking image.

And I do hold up AdSense to the same level of scrutiny. While it also has privacy issues, it is not of the same level. It does not force browsers to become advertisers to their friends, revealing their purchasing and browsing habits. Your friends do not know that you visited a certain website or bought a certain product and can link you by your name, age, friends, and likes/dislikes and organizations you belong to.

That is the sole reason why people think Facebook can beat Google.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#132

Post by jarek »

steveklabnik wrote: post #18
ihodes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, and I'll miss Facebook for the very reason you like it, too. But I'm often more worried about what my friends do that can effect the amount of information out there, about me. Facebook makes it easy to inadvertently share information about your friends. That, I don't like. I'd love a replacement Facebook, one that is a little bit like Facebook used to be: relatively simple, u…

Even with the way Facebook used to be (I signed up in 2004), people could have still shared information about you. One wall post is all it takes. For that matter, this could happen anywhere on the Internet. Someone could write a blog post about you, or tweet about you, or any number of ways to publish information about others. The web is increasingly becoming read/write, and Facebook privacy settings aren't going to…

Writing a wall post or tweet takes active action on behalf of the friend. Hmm, this is on Jarek's Facebook profile -- let's paste it somewhere where others can see it too.

With the recent app privacy changes, all they have to do is use an app. The programmer can take care of the rest. Different level altogether.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#133

Post by jarek »

steveklabnik wrote: post #117
zmmmmm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, the only information that I've ever put on Facebook is information that I'd want everyone else to know Congratulations, you already demonstrated your agreement with the author and effectively stopped using Facebook then. The whole point of Facebook is to enable a you to form a private community of friends that share things. If you've degraded that to "only what I will share with everyone in the universe" t…

Maybeyou've assumed facebook is for private things. I assume anything on the internet is public, at all ties, except for my bank.

I'd say that's a pretty common assumption. Back in the day Facebook really did use to be a pretty walled garden and I have no doubt things were said that would not be said on Twitter or elsewhere on the web. I'm sad to see that aspect go.

Maybe it's different for people with 300 or 600 friends.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#134

Post by kareemm »

derefr wrote: post #105
joshhart wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a fraternity brother in college who was gay. At some point in time, he realized that he was gay, but didn't want to come out. An incriminating picture was posted on facebook and he was forced to reveal his sexual orientation to all of us (well we kinda suspected anyway) before he was ready in a pretty awkward way. He had to do the same not that long after with his family and it didn't go well at all. All becaus…

> I put the blame mainly on the person who put up the picture, but still, he should have had control over this kind of thing. Facebook isn't special ; it's just a subset of the Internet. If the people at your college had had, say, a mailing list instead, and someone had sent that picture to it (thereby putting a separate, cacheable copy in every person's inbox), would you reason similarly that "he should have had con…

> There's no such thing as privacy in a network where even a single person is less than 100% trustworthy, no matter the medium.

Agreed. The issue w/ Facebook is that these "identity collisions" (when an aspect of your identity is exposed to a group of your friends that formerly didn't know, i.e. parents find out you're gay) can happen accidentally far too easily.

In other words, it's not about maliciousness... and even if someone did want to spread information about you maliciously, it'd be a hell of a lot more challenging to do so over a mailing list (finding your boss', former co-workers', parents', siblings', friends', etc's email addresses vs tagging a photo or note).

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#136

Post by kevintwohy »

gte910h wrote: post #45
kevintwohy wrote: post #25

I think the 'don't put anything you want kept private on the internet' is, generally, a good argument. I will say though, that I do think Facebook encouraged a reasonable expectation that certain data would be 'private,' and that's since changed.

I honestly hate I can be tagged in photographs and cannot turn this off.

Yeah. The same is true of certain actions like '[name] commented on [otherName]'s photo' - you used to be able to control those kinds of feed stories but no longer.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#138

Post by netcan »

codexon wrote: post #131
kmavm wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that facebook has changed defaults in order to indirectly make more advertising revenue is very different from the claim that checks were written to facebook in exchange for private user data. You implied the latter, and it's bogus. None of these programs involved facebook giving user data to advertisers. Even the dreaded Beacon was strictly one-way: it allowed sites elsewhere on the Web to publish to faceb…

Sure I'll admit that it is not literally packaging private info into a file and selling it. But it sure is asymptotically approaching it. Your argument is analogous to saying Microsoft didn't really have a monopoly because 3% of computers used Linux and OSX. Plus, how does F8 instant personalization work? I doubt it is solely based on a 1 pixel tracking image. And I do hold up AdSense to the same level of scrutiny. W…

No it isn't analogous to that at all.

You want to make some sort create some sort of moral equivalence between literally selling user data and changing user privacy defaults. Maybe there is some moral equivalent, but I don't think so.

In any case, the way you made your case is by lying. An anti-US activist might want to claim a moral equivalence between the casualties of the Iraq war and mass executions. But, to say that the US executed 100k Iraqis is lying. That is an analogous to your argument.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#139

Post by rit »

araneae wrote: post #58
cmelbye wrote: post #40

No, I'm really happy with the service that they provide. If there's something that's actually private, I'm not going to be posting it on the Internet in the first place.

I agree with you generally, but the most damning information about me that's on Facebook was posted by other people.

Ditto. I created an account because people kept sharing family photos, etc. with me. For the most part I've set my profile private.

However, when my sister started scanning pictures of our childhood and posting them tagged as me, public for the world to see I started get uneasy. Nothing compromising or unusual in them but there's that part of me that wants a say as to when crap like that is posted online.

It turns out of course I can "hide" photos tagged of me by other people - but still... Despite having my account private, other people can post pictures and tag them as having me in them. Frustrating.

Re: Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

#140

Post by codexon »

netcan wrote: post #138
codexon wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure I'll admit that it is not literally packaging private info into a file and selling it. But it sure is asymptotically approaching it. Your argument is analogous to saying Microsoft didn't really have a monopoly because 3% of computers used Linux and OSX. Plus, how does F8 instant personalization work? I doubt it is solely based on a 1 pixel tracking image. And I do hold up AdSense to the same level of scrutiny. W…

No it isn't analogous to that at all. You want to make some sort create some sort of moral equivalence between literally selling user data and changing user privacy defaults. Maybe there is some moral equivalent, but I don't think so. In any case, the way you made your case is by lying. An anti-US activist might want to claim a moral equivalence between the casualties of the Iraq war and mass executions. But, to say…

You are really stretching it if you are trying to say Facebook isn't trying to exploit private data to the fullest extent possible.

A more apt analogy using your theme would be this: Saddam Hussein didn't kill anyone, his soldiers did. Only a pedant would be worried about the literal meaning without looking at the big picture.

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