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Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

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Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#4

This is the behavior I expect. I don't think I'm alone in this.

The problem is the automatic "merge" of Picasa Web with Google+.

If I mark an album as private in Picasa Web, I wouldn't expect anything to be shared. Especially if I would have been doing this for years.

This violates the principle of least astonishment, at the very least.

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#5
I read it when I opened my G+ account, and it sounded to me pretty much like Buzz all over again. Hope that gets fixed soon.

Only because some guy you barely know made his way into one of your holiday photos, it doesn't mean you want to share your complete vacations with him. Probably not even that one picture, why should you be forced to?

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#6

This is the behavior I expect. I don't think I'm alone in this.

The problem is the automatic "merge" of Picasa Web with Google+. If I mark an album as private in Picasa Web, I wouldn't expect anything to be shared. Especially if I would have been doing this for years. This violates the principle of least astonishment, at the very least.

I think it does make some intuitive sense (even if there is confusing messaging on this). If i tag someone in a picture, then clearly they should be able to see that picture (i mean they were there when it was taken so there should be no problem with that). Extending this to the album level makes some sense because presumably everything in an album is related to a particular event (so that person who was tagged would have been there for all of that).

That being said there probably just needs to be better messaging on this so that users understand what exactly it means to tag someone.

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the automatic "merge" of Picasa Web with Google+. If I mark an album as private in Picasa Web, I wouldn't expect anything to be shared. Especially if I would have been doing this for years. This violates the principle of least astonishment, at the very least.

I think it does make some intuitive sense (even if there is confusing messaging on this). If i tag someone in a picture, then clearly they should be able to see that picture (i mean they were there when it was taken so there should be no problem with that). Extending this to the album level makes some sense because presumably everything in an album is related to a particular event (so that person who was tagged would…

Clearly not.

1) It would make sense if you see the world only as one big group (i.e. without any "circles"), like Facebook does. But having different levels an types of relationships is G+'s strong point. This totally contradicts this point.

2) In Picasa, the setting was "private" and it was private. Now, that suddenly changes and there is no way back. Many people have relied on the former policy and know have a big "surprise, you are screwed" flashing on their screen. Not good.

And there are more reasons, but these two are already more than sufficient.

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the automatic "merge" of Picasa Web with Google+. If I mark an album as private in Picasa Web, I wouldn't expect anything to be shared. Especially if I would have been doing this for years. This violates the principle of least astonishment, at the very least.

I think it does make some intuitive sense (even if there is confusing messaging on this). If i tag someone in a picture, then clearly they should be able to see that picture (i mean they were there when it was taken so there should be no problem with that). Extending this to the album level makes some sense because presumably everything in an album is related to a particular event (so that person who was tagged would…

Allowing someone that was tagged in a photo to see the photo is fine with me. Letting them see the entire album doesn't make a bit of sense because there's not really a good way to automatically determine if the rest of the pictures in the album are relevant to that person.

While you might make an album based on events I tend to make albums based on dates. During periods where I don't take a lot of pictures I might have all of the pictures in an album for a specific month. If I then tag a friend in a picture from a baseball game we went to he now has access to all of the pictures in that album which might include pictures from a private family outing or event. Could my organizational habits be changed? Sure, but I shouldn't have to.

The much bigger problem I have with this is that the people tagged in your albums not only get the ability to see the entire album, but to re-share the album. I am extremely meticulous in whom I share anything with. I disable re-sharing on 99% of my posts that are to family and friends. I disable re-sharing on ALL of my shared photos. By using the tagging feature my desire to limit sharing is completely ignored. So while I might want to tag someone in a picture for my own benefit, especially if it was at an event where maybe I didn't know everyone very well, I won't use it if the albums are shared without my consent.

edit: I just noticed that referencing someone with the +name or +email address notation in photo comments has the same effect of sharing the photo + album + re-share

http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=129927...

Re: Google Plus: Tagging automatically shares private photos

#10

This is the behavior I expect. I don't think I'm alone in this.

Wow, do I disagree. Tagging and visibility are two entirely separate things.

You hit the big UI problem and where Google failed. The fact that I tagged a picture has nothing to do with visibility. I added a personal note to the picture to give me more information. A simple discrete event. The fact somebody decided to add a part to the use case that now shares the photo is really bad design.

Folks really need to stop themselves from making user actions have much longer reach than what the user actually did. It would probably be fine to have a "share button" appear next to the tag of the person's name. That shows that the picture is still private, but you might now want to share it with that specific person.

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