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Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

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Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#101

Post by jenius »

phwd wrote: post #98

(Cross-posted on TC) These are all wall to wall posts. You can inspect for yourself using a Facebook Developer account. Rollover the timestamp grab the POSTID. http://www.facebook.com/PROFILEID/posts/POSTID Example, http://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/11111111111 Throw it in the Graph API Explorer https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer with /PROFILEID_POSTID or curl http://graph.facebook.com/PROFILEID_POSTID .…

The fact that they are showing up as wall posts means nothing - it just means that the bug was that facebook swapped messages for posts somehow, and now they are all showing up on the wall.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#102

Post by baddox »

speg wrote: post #44
palebluedot wrote: post #35

This seems to be anecdotally confirmed by multiple people here. To me, if true , this screams of a broken engineering culture inside Facebook, where the model for data privacy and security is secondary, not primary. If this is indeed verified, no one should ever use Facebook for anything truly private, regardless of what apologies or excuses are made. It is difficult to think of something like this, where private ema…

Someone must have a copy of an email notification that they can tie to one of these posts...

That would be too easily spoofed for it to provide any meaningful evidence.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#103

Post by [deleted] »

drbawb wrote: post #77
wilfra wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correct, if u go back and forth you can read whole conversations.

This fact alone may also add a bit of credibility. If they were originally wall posts, your "threads" of conversation would be comments, not individual posts on each other's walls.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#105

Post by drbawb »

jenius wrote: post #101
phwd wrote: post #98

(Cross-posted on TC) These are all wall to wall posts. You can inspect for yourself using a Facebook Developer account. Rollover the timestamp grab the POSTID. http://www.facebook.com/PROFILEID/posts/POSTID Example, http://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/11111111111 Throw it in the Graph API Explorer https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer with /PROFILEID_POSTID or curl http://graph.facebook.com/PROFILEID_POSTID .…

The fact that they are showing up as wall posts means nothing - it just means that the bug was that facebook swapped messages for posts somehow, and now they are all showing up on the wall.

True, I wouldn't give Facebook a free pass on this alone.

Is it really so hard to imagine that somebody, somewhere fudged a query and accidentally ran [pseudo-SQL] "UPDATE posts SET type='status' WHERE type='private-message' AND date = 'x' TO 'y'"?

I'll admit, it's a bit of a stretch; but the fact that these show up as wall posts is not necessarily an indication that there is no bug.

The bug may very well be that data has been manipulated to look like wall posts.

Unless Facebook discloses that these posts were flagged as "status updates" _in an archived version of their dataset_ (specifically an archive before the issue first manifested), this information means practically nothing. We could gather from the bug itself that these were flagged as wall posts in FB's backend.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#106

Post by zevyoura »

Havoc wrote: post #95
AlexMuir wrote: post #82

You know what's most interesting to me here? The tug between trusting my social network, and trusting FB and my own knowledge. My friends are ASSURING me that these are private messages. But every media outlet is now running the story that this is not true. And I have seen no evidence. So what do I believe?

EDIT: zevyoura pointed out that I misunderstood the comment I was replying to. Please ignore if not applicable. Trusting FB? I hope you are joking. You are the product being sold & FB will maximize the value of that at any cost. Its all one big scam: They provide endless privacy controls over what your friends can see, but discreetly forget to provide controls over what they can sell to advertisers.

You seem to have misconstrued the parent comment; he was talking about trusting FB (and by extension the media outlets that are reporting their statement as fact) over his social contacts on this issue specifically.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#108

Post by randartie »

phwd wrote: post #98

(Cross-posted on TC) These are all wall to wall posts. You can inspect for yourself using a Facebook Developer account. Rollover the timestamp grab the POSTID. http://www.facebook.com/PROFILEID/posts/POSTID Example, http://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/11111111111 Throw it in the Graph API Explorer https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer with /PROFILEID_POSTID or curl http://graph.facebook.com/PROFILEID_POSTID .…

Old facebook that we don't remember:

A post on someone's wall had a link to 'Wall-to-wall' or 'Write on wall', in place of what we have today, the commenting system.

Screenshot: http://blog.hishamrana.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/facebo...

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#109

Post by toufka »

zabar wrote: post #86

True or false, it's not going to help Facebook stock. Even if it's just people's perception, it actually matters a lot. Facebook need user to trust them on privacy issues, that's their core.

wha, 10% cliff-drop isn't good enough for you? http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:FB

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#110

Post by Havoc »

zevyoura wrote: post #106
Havoc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: zevyoura pointed out that I misunderstood the comment I was replying to. Please ignore if not applicable. Trusting FB? I hope you are joking. You are the product being sold & FB will maximize the value of that at any cost. Its all one big scam: They provide endless privacy controls over what your friends can see, but discreetly forget to provide controls over what they can sell to advertisers.

You seem to have misconstrued the parent comment; he was talking about trusting FB (and by extension the media outlets that are reporting their statement as fact) over his social contacts on this issue specifically.

I see. Thank you for pointing that out. I've added a comment highlighting the situation.
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