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Dark Stalking on Facebook

pjf.id.au

1–10 of 24 posts

Re: Dark Stalking on Facebook

#3
post #2

Why does knowing friends' past events cross a moral boundary?!

They may not want you to know. They may have had a reason for not telling you about the event (i.e. they're going to a party thrown by your ex-girlfriend). There's a number of social reasons people don't generally let people know everything they do.

Re: Dark Stalking on Facebook

#4
post #3
post #2

Why does knowing friends' past events cross a moral boundary?!

They may not want you to know. They may have had a reason for not telling you about the event (i.e. they're going to a party thrown by your ex-girlfriend). There's a number of social reasons people don't generally let people know everything they do.

If they don't want things published, they shouldn't be publishing them on Facebook. Nobody should be using Facebook as their personal calendar.

Also, if a detail of how Facebook handles event queries is enough to "keep you up at night", how the hell do you handle nuclear proliferation in the CIS states?

Re: Dark Stalking on Facebook

#5
> "I didn't expect it to share info when people had declined those events."

Just to clarify, does this mean events you replied "No" to, or events where you clicked "Remove from My Events"? If an API call surfaces the the latter, that would indeed be worrying.

Re: Dark Stalking on Facebook

#6
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not want you to know. They may have had a reason for not telling you about the event (i.e. they're going to a party thrown by your ex-girlfriend). There's a number of social reasons people don't generally let people know everything they do.

If they don't want things published, they shouldn't be publishing them on Facebook. Nobody should be using Facebook as their personal calendar. Also, if a detail of how Facebook handles event queries is enough to "keep you up at night", how the hell do you handle nuclear proliferation in the CIS states?

They should not be putting that stuff online anywhere. Even in 'private' services. If you put something online you might as well broadcast it on TV or radio, at least there the damage is limited to the moment of transmission.

Whatever you write or do on the internet will be there pretty much forever.

So, when in doubt, don't click 'submit', don't tweet, don't email and so on.

Re: Dark Stalking on Facebook

#8
post #7
post #2

Why does knowing friends' past events cross a moral boundary?!

Your friend may go to S&M conferences. Your friend may be a swinger. etc.

If your friend goes to an S&M conference and posts that on Facebook under his own name, your friend is a public S&M conference attendee. If your friend swings, and posts that on Facebook under her own name, your friend is a public swinger. We are losing the forest for the trees here: Facebook is a publishing medium.

Re: Dark Stalking on Facebook

#9
post #5

> "I didn't expect it to share info when people had declined those events." Just to clarify, does this mean events you replied "No" to, or events where you clicked "Remove from My Events"? If an API call surfaces the the latter, that would indeed be worrying.

It would be an annoying bug. It would not be a breach of the public trust. For every time quantum that passed between you publishing the event and you removing it, any of your friends could have scraped your attendance.

Re: Dark Stalking on Facebook

#10
I didn't sleep well that night.

Finding my friends' old events crossed a moral boundary I honestly didn't expect to encounter.

What makes this all rather chilling...

Over-dramatic much? None of this is secret, or underhanded, or arguably even a violation of privacy. If you don't want your friends to see stuff, don't post it on Facebook. And if you don't want a particular person to see it, including some guy messing around with the API, don't be friends with that person.

It sounds like this guy is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill for the sake of attention, to be honest.

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