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Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

toph.me

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Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#21

Post by Tuvaloon »

tytso wrote: post #11

So now Facebook isn't passe because of secret groups, which aren't visible outside the group of people who are communicating privately? That was the same argument which pro-Facebook partisans pooh-poohed when it was made about Google+, interestingly enough. The only difference was that G+ started with private circles, and later added circles which could be shared and public communities, whereas Facebook started with…

Everyone, stop harping on Randi's picture as some horrible Facebook bug. One of her sister's friends leaked a photo, which could happen just as easy in any online medium, like email or smugmug.

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#22

Post by tytso »

joe_the_user wrote: post #19
tytso wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, G+ does support pseudonyms, although there are some subtleties with how they work and the approval process involved with them. See this very long thread for the details, and some really interesting discussion about names, pseudonyms, "core identities", "peripheral identies"/hats, "firewalled identies", and more: https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/YJbzDptWGQt

I don't think your statement accurately describes the text in your link. The only thing I see here is the ability to add a nicknames - your "alternate names" - to your "real" name. That is not at all the same thing. Edit: Comment on the page - "I'm sorry, but the only difference I see here is that you're now listing the nickname field on the hovercard and profile. I see no substantive policy change. Fame was already…

Read through to the rest of the comments..... there is also the ability to use pseudonyms.

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#23

Post by Tuvaloon »

joe_the_user wrote: post #19
tytso wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, G+ does support pseudonyms, although there are some subtleties with how they work and the approval process involved with them. See this very long thread for the details, and some really interesting discussion about names, pseudonyms, "core identities", "peripheral identies"/hats, "firewalled identies", and more: https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/YJbzDptWGQt

I don't think your statement accurately describes the text in your link. The only thing I see here is the ability to add a nicknames - your "alternate names" - to your "real" name. That is not at all the same thing. Edit: Comment on the page - "I'm sorry, but the only difference I see here is that you're now listing the nickname field on the hovercard and profile. I see no substantive policy change. Fame was already…

G+ has the same policy as Facebook now: you must use a name that looks reasonably appealing for a marketing campaign, and nothing obviously not anyone's real name, nor excessively foreign looking.

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#24

Post by seiji »

Tuvaloon wrote: post #20
seiji wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that Adams quote about the universe being bigger than you can impossibly imagine? Like, really, really big? Well, people are like that. Our brains kinda blur the world together and, without realizing it, our brains map other people onto our own experiences so we think people are kinda like us. Except they really aren't. Really, really, really aren't. In every day interactions, we gloss over, ignore, and excu…

>Two solutions: get much better (more complete, more self-actualized, more authentic) Reading your whole post, I think you mean 'more exactly like your favorite part of yourself', but otherwise, spot on. On FB you have to listen to everything everyone says to everyone, not just what they would choose to say to you to accommodate your sensibilities.

Let's say the spectrum is something like:

  [90s Valley Girl] ... [Richard Dawkins]
(people are one-dimensional in this example)

I'm sure people cluster around ranges on the line. The stereotypical self-obsesed pinhead probably wants more people to reinforce his or her introspection and less talk about the world. They want celebrities, gossip, sales at stores, and shoes, shoes, shoes. The other end of the line probably doesn't want those things.

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#25

Post by Tuvaloon »

temiri wrote: post #8
batgaijin wrote: post #4

Can some people talk about example secret groups? I quit using facebook/never had the friends to discover these.

The only secret group that I am in is for an organization which is, in turn, a secret. I can't imagine why you'd want a truly secret group otherwise. Not just closed, where non-members can't see the content, but secret, where non-members don't know the group exists.

Tautology? Of course no one would want a non-secret secret group.

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#26

Post by webwanderings »

joe_the_user wrote: post #19
tytso wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, G+ does support pseudonyms, although there are some subtleties with how they work and the approval process involved with them. See this very long thread for the details, and some really interesting discussion about names, pseudonyms, "core identities", "peripheral identies"/hats, "firewalled identies", and more: https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/YJbzDptWGQt

I don't think your statement accurately describes the text in your link. The only thing I see here is the ability to add a nicknames - your "alternate names" - to your "real" name. That is not at all the same thing. Edit: Comment on the page - "I'm sorry, but the only difference I see here is that you're now listing the nickname field on the hovercard and profile. I see no substantive policy change. Fame was already…

G+ totally allows pseudo names.

But that's not really a game changer. Whether you are at FB or G+, if you are using pseudo name to protect your identity, than you are rendering yourself useless because you can't be hiding and expect to be networking authentically with the people you know for real. What would make sense for FB/G+ to provide is the ability to have each person choose his/her self-identity based on different situations, i.e, provide complete autonomy to the people on how they wish to portray themselves to the different sets of people. I can be a real name in front of my family and co-workers, but at the same time, projecting and sharing different sets of updates based on who am I sharing with. At the same time, I can be a pseudo name in front of the strangers and/or people I may only know online.

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#27

Post by webwanderings »

CleanedStar wrote: post #6
batgaijin wrote: post #4

Can some people talk about example secret groups? I quit using facebook/never had the friends to discover these.

I am in several regular groups and one secret group. The regular groups I am in - one is a local group, one is a memorial group for someone who died young, one was started by a friend for his hobby. The secret group has a lock on its tab and says "Secret Group - Only members see the group, who's in it, and what members post". No one who I am friends with knows I'm in the group aside from people in the group. Not sure…

Imagine if you are using your FB and you have other people around you peeking at your PC screen. Now this secret FB group is not really secret, is it?

There is actually no technical way possible for having a truly secret group.

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#28

Post by dredmorbius »

webwanderings wrote: post #2

I use FB only for groups. I think the reason people are not moving off of FB to G+ is because of the groups. These secret/closed groups are heavily organized and ingrained and it is practically impossible for people to make a move to anywhere else. These FB groups are like Yahoogroups (the old fashioned email listserv) which are still going strong as far as I know.

An organized group is surprisingly mobile (and can be fairly robust over time as well).

I've known a few groups which have survived / persisted across multiple platforms over the years. In one case, migrating first from one hosted forum to another, then self-hosting, then that imploded, a "temporary" forum was constructed (and persisted for years), and finally the original self-hosting platform was resurrected.

Bits of the group survived all of that.

What didn't survive were several members (death trumps all social stickyness), and some political and group-dynamics interactions, including a few fairly spectacular flame-outs. But a core element has survived.

If a group were, as a whole, to decide that FB was no longer where its interests were best served, then a migration elsewhere would be trivial to arrange. Despite my own interest in archives, it's not the depth of social media history that matters so much to most users as the breadth of now. Facebook is where "now" is for most people, though this could change (and has for all prior social network giants of the past: Geocities, Usenet, Orcutt, Xanga, The WELL, ...).

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#29

Post by AdamTReineke »

batgaijin wrote: post #4

Can some people talk about example secret groups? I quit using facebook/never had the friends to discover these.

There are private groups for all the Microsoft interns, with a new group created each year. Great for planning housing and such before starting work and gaining access to Microsoft internal mailing lists and for keeping in touch after the internship ends.

// Edit: I'm also in a private group for computer-related majors at our school, kept private so we can talk about stuff we don't necessarily want getting back to administration. (Weak security, but better than public posts.)

Re: Facebook’s dark matter: “secret” groups

#30

Post by tytso »

webwanderings wrote: post #26
joe_the_user wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your statement accurately describes the text in your link. The only thing I see here is the ability to add a nicknames - your "alternate names" - to your "real" name. That is not at all the same thing. Edit: Comment on the page - "I'm sorry, but the only difference I see here is that you're now listing the nickname field on the hovercard and profile. I see no substantive policy change. Fame was already…

G+ totally allows pseudo names. But that's not really a game changer. Whether you are at FB or G+, if you are using pseudo name to protect your identity, than you are rendering yourself useless because you can't be hiding and expect to be networking authentically with the people you know for real. What would make sense for FB/G+ to provide is the ability to have each person choose his/her self-identity based on diffe…

Are you trying to make these identities to be firewalled from each other? i.e., do you not want your family to know that you go by "Master Dan" in certain BDSM communities? Or for someone who is transgener, but isn't yet ready to let a set of friends/family/coworkers know yet by the choice of a differently-gendered name?

It turns out this is extraordinarily difficult, and if users think they can maintain this separation using a single account, and then they get burned, they are very likely to blame the social network involved. Which is a pretty good reason why the architects at FB or G+ would probably think very, very carefully before implementing such a feature.

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