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Searching Facebook drives home the privacy degradation problem

willmoffat.github.com

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Re: Searching Facebook drives home the privacy degradation problem

#4

Post by aristoxenus »

Point taken, but what's with the collateral damage? Search for something that's not going to ruin people's lives. FB has a problem. You outing these people on the web isn't helping anything.

If you wanted to be classy, you'd leave out the names and/or put rectangles over their eyes. As it is now, you're at least as much an asshole as Zuckerberg.

Re: Searching Facebook drives home the privacy degradation problem

#5

Post by aristoxenus »

aristoxenus wrote: post #4

Point taken, but what's with the collateral damage? Search for something that's not going to ruin people's lives. FB has a problem. You outing these people on the web isn't helping anything. If you wanted to be classy, you'd leave out the names and/or put rectangles over their eyes. As it is now, you're at least as much an asshole as Zuckerberg.

Let me put it another way: we all have a problem right now that we're trying to solve, which is that FB is screwing people. Your clever idea is screwing them worse, with no foreseeable gain for ethics either now or long-term that another demonstration couldn't provide.

If you really care about the problem, deactivate your project and come up with something more clever that also takes the moral high ground.

Re: Searching Facebook drives home the privacy degradation problem

#6

Post by skolor »

aristoxenus wrote: post #5
aristoxenus wrote: post #4

Point taken, but what's with the collateral damage? Search for something that's not going to ruin people's lives. FB has a problem. You outing these people on the web isn't helping anything. If you wanted to be classy, you'd leave out the names and/or put rectangles over their eyes. As it is now, you're at least as much an asshole as Zuckerberg.

Let me put it another way: we all have a problem right now that we're trying to solve, which is that FB is screwing people. Your clever idea is screwing them worse, with no foreseeable gain for ethics either now or long-term that another demonstration couldn't provide. If you really care about the problem, deactivate your project and come up with something more clever that also takes the moral high ground.

This argument just doesn't make sense. Its trivial to make this search, the OP just put a nice wrapper around it. There are two possible choices he could have made:

Something shocking, like "playing hooky", that could get people in trouble. In this case, people will get in trouble, because someone will find out they were playing hooky and report them. However, because people are directly being effected, a shit-storm will be caused, and people will accept that this is a problem faster.

On the other hand, the examples could have been something trivial, such as "Weight". It may get people annoyed about it, but no one is going to lose their job. And since they won't lose their job, they won't be pissed, and Facebook can drag their feet.

The best part is, anyone with malicious intent could make these searches on their own. Exposing it to the public just forces someone to take action.

Re: Searching Facebook drives home the privacy degradation problem

#7

Post by Chirono »

aristoxenus wrote: post #4

Point taken, but what's with the collateral damage? Search for something that's not going to ruin people's lives. FB has a problem. You outing these people on the web isn't helping anything. If you wanted to be classy, you'd leave out the names and/or put rectangles over their eyes. As it is now, you're at least as much an asshole as Zuckerberg.

That seems rather over the top. I can't really see this ruining anybody's life. It isn't letting me search for specific peoples comments. I don't know any of these people, nor am I likely to meet them.

This website reminds me of being outside, with people, and hearing little snippets of conversations from strangers. Nobody goes to a park and then complains the council that strangers where able to hear their conversations.

Hmmm, I hope this doesn't sound facetious. I feel like I'm missing the point with the facebook privacy hype. There are so many reactions that seem totally strange from my perspective that I feel like I've got something wrong.

The way it sits in my mind is: Facebook is a service provided for free. I've given facebook some information about myself so that it can be displayed to people who are interested. My friends do the same and so we can communicate and share things such as photos. Some people start to get angry at the fact facebook doesn't do what they want, namely provide this service in a private manner.

I have yet to see anyone personally upset by this. Mostly people seem to disagree with the principle, and go and get angry on behalf of others.

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