Facebook Scrambles after Unexpected Privacy Fumble

bart_scriv writes "Facebook is responding to the recent uproar among its users by deploying better privacy protections and control, as well as being more open about future changes. This could be a case study for other social networking sites on how to avoid or deal with similar problems in the future." From the article: "A week before launch, when asked if he was concerned about a privacy backlash, he appeared surprised, saying, 'No, these people share stuff already and they get something out of sharing.' They've shared all right. And Facebook is listening. On Sept. 7, the site is ratcheting up privacy protections--the result of around-the-clock coding. On their privacy settings page, people will be given greater control over what items will or won't be included in news feeds." Relatedly, an anonymous reader writes "A recent Reuters article mentions that Facebook user Igor Hiller, 17, a freshman at University of California, Santa Barbara is organizing a real-world demonstration next Monday at Facebook's downtown Palo Alto headquarters." Read below for Zuckerman's Open Letter to the community. theStorminMormon writes ""We really messed this one up." begins an open letter from Mark Zuckerberg to the Facebook community. The letter goes on to say: "When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.

When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with.

Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.

This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn't made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.

About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that's what I believe in — helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I'd encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Tomorrow at 4pm est, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Mark"

Comments

Boo-Hoo

[k_187]

if you don't want this information to be out there, don't put it on facebook. How did the news feed work any differently than the real-world gossip chain? I'm amazed that people are suprised that if I say I like johnny on facebook, other people can find out about it? Eh, maybe this will convince people that they shouldn't put their whole lives on internet.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

a) unlike most other features, there wasn't a way to turn this off - this has now been (partially) rectified and I for one am happy with the changes

b) as has been pointed out numerous times before, there's a difference between publicly accessible and publicly announced

Re:Boo-Hoo

[PresidentEnder]

While it's true that people shoudln't be putting private info online and expecting it to remain private, it's also true that those same dumb folk who do so are a part of facebook's community. There's nothing wrong with asking for changes to a service, and even less wrong with the people who provide that service changing it based on what their customers want. So people are dumb. Big deal. Facebook is listening to its customers.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[BecomingLumberg]

Its not the fact that they can see it, it is the fact that it is *broadcast* that makes it bad. I don't care that people I know find out that I break up with a girl, but I don't want it to be sent RSS style to everyone I know. They will find out in time, but preferably not all the next time they log to facebook. The old way, sure you were posting it on the internet, but there was a certain anonymnity to be found in the data overload of facebook. Now that changes are highlighted, its too easy.

Also, others are allowed to submit content to your page (like to my wall). If they do, I may want time to respond to it before all of my friends read it. Sure, the old way one or two might see it, but that risk is low.

This funtionality, if cut back, would be very useful. A notification of when friends put up new pictures would be great. Some things should be exempt from the feed, or at least have the option to have them never broadcast, so that they can fly 'under the radar'.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[theStorminMormon]

Why is this insightful? It's not. Do we really have to go around this circle again? How information is accessible is sometimes just important as what information is accessible.

No one previously thought that information they posted on Facebook anywhere was private (at least, from their friends). But now it is being aggregated and broadcast to every friend. If you think this is the same thing, then I suppose you also think that Google making the full-text of every book available on line is the same thing, whether they do it (as they are doing it) by allowing you to see only a snippet at time or whether they allow you to download the whole thing as a text file. The information available in either scenario is exactly the same, but based purely on how easy it is to get at that publicly available info one is fair use and the other is not.

It's just a simple fact, even IF information is public accessible, it still matters how accessible. Stop acting as though privacy is a binary proposition: either top-secret or totally-public with no differences in between. Facebook users are not posting info on the Net and getting annoyed that people aggregate it (which would be annoying but fair) they have joined a private networking group and then the rule's of that networking group got changed and it made a lot of them mad. Nothing private was revealed, but information that would have taken hours to aggregate every single day was suddenly available with 0 effort. That is a change, and not everyone has to be happy about it.

I say "them" because I didn't mind the changes. Now that the new privacy features have been changed, there's pretty much nothing left to talk about. The only complaint Facebook users have left is that the Feed disrupts the layout and (apparently) there's no way to turn it off by default so that you never even see it.

But considering how incredibly fast Mark and Facebook were to implement the needed privacy controls, I'm sure that this too will be available soon in the future. If only every company was as agile and quick to respond to its customers demands...

-stormin

Re:Boo-Hoo

[thelost]

this is hardly insightful. facebook is a closed community and as such there are certain requirements to joining it, such as already being part of a given community. There is also an expected certain level of privacy, as is explained in the letter written by Mark Zuckerberg.

If a site advertises a certain level of privacy and fails to provide it, that's bad, but it's something the guys at facebook are trying to fix. However you cannot simply say "boohoo you put your info on the net, suck it down". These people put their information on the web expecting its privacy. that isn't unreasonable.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Andy Dodd]

More importantly, don't add people to your friends list you don't want to be able to see such news.

I laughed when I saw all the "Get rid of the new stalker tool" groups. Um, only people on your friends list get your news items. By joining those groups claiming the news feed was a "stalker tool", people readily said, "I added my stalkers to my friends list to artificially inflate my friend count." Way to go!

For every person angry about the news feed that blew it WAY out of proportion, there are ten people like myself that can now figure out why the heck someone appeared on our "Friends with updates" list.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to completely miss the point, I mean you werent even close.

First of all..this news feed is absolutely nothing like a gossip chain. Because the details on it wouldnt be gossiped about in the first place.

I think you were too busy writing a message about how people shouldnt put everything on the internet to be bothered by facts of what the news feed is.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Tweekster]

Pretty much hit the nail on the head.

I just found the feature to be really really stupid. I dont care that my friend added a favorite book to their list...

Re:Boo-Hoo

[be-fan]

I think it just confirms what we all knew. At least 99% of Facebook users are idiots, and the other 1% are there because some of the 99% made them...

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a damn social networking site we are talking about, not a copyrighted work. People make changes to their profiles with the clear intention of making the new information available to friends. So to complain that that information is made available more easily is absolutely ludicrous.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[theStorminMormon]

This is a damn social networking site we are talking about, not a copyrighted work.

You mean my analogy wasn't the same scenario as what we were talking about? Are you serious? Crap! Oh wait, it's an analogy.

The principle of spreading information still applies in both cases. That's like me making an analogy about how different OSs are like different car brands, and then you complaining that cars have wheels and OSs don't. The response would be... so? Unless my analogy relied on some intrinsic quality or characteristic of wheels or the lack thereof, then you're just not saying anything intelligent.

People make changes to their profiles with the clear intention of making the new information available to friends. So to complain that that information is made available more easily is absolutely ludicrous.

As opposed to authors, who desperately hope and pray no one will ever read their books.

Authors don't just want people to read their books. They'd also like to get credit for writing them. And they'd also like to get paid. Clearly they want people to read what they write, but there are other considerations.

The same goes for Facebook users. First of all, they don't want everyone to know what's on the profile. If they did, they'd be MySpace users. Second of all, they don't necessarily want all of their friends to know everything that they do on Facebook. A Facebook friend might not be a friend in real life, it might be a passing acquaintance or even an old high school buddy you haven't seen in 10 years or more. I have a couple of Facebook friends whom I don't even recognize (just one or two, not sure when I friended them), a couple of strangers who just wanted to make friends when they moved into my geographical area, and also my wife and my closest friends. Are you seriously saying I want them all to have equal access to what I write?

Now it would be really complicated for me to have to set up unique privileges for all of them. Or to set up nested hierarchies of user groups. Not to mention that I might be giving away information I don't really want to give away (e.g. someone may consider me a closer friend than I consider them, and neither of use would know this until I had access to their entire profile and they had access to practically none of mine). So the Facebook method is simple: if someone wants to find out all about you and track down every comment you've made on every album and wall and discussion board all across your network: they have to do the work. This is a type of marginal privacy in the same sense that locking your front door is marginal privacy. Someone that really wants to break in will be able to. But it would take them time and effort. And most people don't want to do that (plus the threat of jail time - it's not a perfect analogy) but the principle is simple and elegant.

That's what Facebook's new system endangered. Although now of course you can get it back by opting out of the Feed.

-stormin

Re:Boo-Hoo

[walt-sjc]

as has been pointed out numerous times before, there's a difference between publicly accessible and publicly announced

I really think many people don't really "get" the internet.

There are these things called search engines and spiders out there that scrape information from public places constantly. It matters not what Facebook does or does not have for functionality. They are not the only gatherer and publisher of information on their site.

If it's on the internet and publicly available, it's public. If you don't want something public, to everyone, forever, don't put it on the internet in a publicly available place. It really is that simple. Teens and other young adults frequently post wacky / private crap about themselves or their friends all the time. Do you REALLY want a future potential employer "Googling" you and finding all this stuff? How about a potential boyfriend / girlfriend / husband / wife? Hell, I can still find posts of mine from the late 80's via google - and google didn't even exist when I wrote them! I can also find via the internet archive copies of my web site from 7 years ago.

You can't put something out there, publicly, and then scream when someone you don't want reading it, reads it. That's sheer stupidity. Publishing a blog or having conversations on social networking sites such as myspace / facebook in open forums is no different than publishing it in the New York Times or broadcasting on CNN. You have publicly announced the information. You like to THINK that you have a tight little private group, but that's just an illusion.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Hangin10]

Thank you
The following has also been posted in a note on my facebook:
The Nature and Mindset of a Stalker

Be in control of your own information. Don't throw papers containing your SSN in the trash, don't post things online you don't want people to see. The bigger problem is people in one's network having full access to your profile without befriending you first. Someone stalking you is going to be psychotic about viewing your page anyway.

Perhaps someone familar with the psycology will comment below, but the privacy settings are quite sufficient, unless you want your interests, etc private. I tried setting my cell phone number to friends only and discovered friends only to be the default. I don't believe that a stalker would settle for using the news-feed, they would go directly to the page everytime (probably having it bookmarked) obsessing over every detail as if it were indeed new.

Plainly put, this is like parents defering to the government to make the decisions for them. The Man should not be expected to protect your information; we DON'T like him, or have you forgotten that?
(end)

I honestly don't understand people's problem with the Feeds. If you don't want people knowing the info, you shouldn't have put it up in the first place. People just don't understand the concept for some reason. It's like the movie Saw. Noone wants to be self-sufficient and independant anymore (I'm not saying I am, and I will say I wish I was). I do like the new privacy setting capabilities, but I still think people made rather too much of a deal out of it. Anyone that agrees with this should join the facebook group "The Pro News-Feed Group".

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Kevin Stevens]

So if you get divorced because she left you and cheated on you, thats a public record, and you obviously would not mind one bit if on the day of the filing that was on the front page of the NY Times? Or how about you got in a fight with your wife and I could hear it from outside so I recorded and played it back over the PA system at your office the next day?

Or how about how much you paid for your house? You have no problem with me sending a letter to all of your friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc telling them exactly how much you paid for it? That is most likely listed on the deed to your house which is a public record.

I disagree. There is a societal expectation that your private life not be broadcast even though it is "public." This expectation will probably change as tools like this become available. If you break up with someone, you may not care if people know, but just because your coworkers are linked to you on a social networking site doesn't mean you want that information immediately and easily available.

I perfectly understand how tools like this are deemed unacceptable and thats OK. It is how our society functions. If I have the time and effort, I can dig up dirt on anyone, but it will take more time and effort than I really care for. You can make a claim that this all goes out the window because its on the internet, but these sites are trying to mimic online what goes on in the real world, and enable real world friendships. However, making "stalking" like this so easy just deters people from making social connections. Just because I met a girl I kind of like at a bar last weekend and I made her my friend on Myspace does not mean that I want some girl I am seeing to get an immediate update of that fact. You are saying that this is obviously exactly what I want, and that is just not true.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[teamhasnoi]

I've been modded troll for this already in the last thread on FB, so give it a rest already.

There is a difference between information broadcast, and information available. You don't even have to be a overly-pedantic /. reader to know this.

This is the difference between the small town bar fight recorded in the small town paper, and it getting the leading position on every station in the country.

Yes, they're both public, though in the first example you have to look at the small town paper to get the info - which for 99% of people not in that small town - represents too much trouble.

Compare to disinterested parties getting their shotgun news - they didn't care, but now they know that Billy and Bobby were in a fight in 'small town'. Maybe they do something with the info, maybe not, but thousands & thousands of people now know as opposed to the hundred or so that read the paper.

There you have it. If you can't see the diff, maybe you need this.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[theStorminMormon]

So if you get divorced because she left you and cheated on you, thats a public record, and you obviously would not mind one bit if on the day of the filing that was on the front page of the NY Times?

You need to update your browser. It's not catching the sarcasm tags.

-stormin

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! You like Johnny too!?!?

Re:Boo-Hoo

[eraser.cpp]

Why do people keep making this argument? It's completely irrelevant to the actual problem being voiced. This is not an issue of people posting information to facebook and expecting privacy, it's an issue of bad UI design where people are given every small action performed by their friends on the front page. Even worse, people tend to friend everybody they've ever talked to and wind up getting spoon fed more information than they care to know about those people.

You're also wrong on a few counts, have you ever used facebook? The privacy controls severely limit the number of people able to view your profile. Google's crawlers won't be able to index this information unless the folks working for facebook open it up to them. The privacy controls are of course only as trustworthy as the people working for facebook, and also if you're friending everybody under the sun you have removed the ability of the privacy controls to help anyway.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[IamTheRealMike]

You're ignoring that Google can't index Facebook profiles, and Facebooks own search engine obeys the privacy controls.

In a way it's silly yes, but the fact that so many people felt so strongly does indicate that the way people treat and perceive networks is a more subtle thing than anybody thought. There is, in fact, a difference between broadcast and accessible in a few situations, and Facebook is one of them. It's the difference between telling everybody something and telling only those who ask. It's not amazing people prefer the latter, though how Facebook could have predicted this is anybodies guess .... social software is just hard.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also the fact that information that was NOT public in any form before became public. For example, if you turn down an invite, it would just be like you didn't respond. This was touted as one of the best features of Facebook, and feeds killed it by making it public! This shows just how sloppy feeds were implemented and Facebook really did screw up big time.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[walt-sjc]

You are right on one aspect, I don't use facebook. On another, you are naive to the extreme if you think that ONLY people in your "private" circle of friends will ever see the stuff you write. Ever hear of cut and paste?

Re:Boo-Hoo

[hungryfrog]

Am I already way out of touch with this current college generation? Geesh, it's only been 8 years since I was there myself. People are acting as if Facebook is sending out spies to listen in on them and then post it to the site. That's not what it is -- they're publishing *to your frends* info *you* post on the site to in a new way. Don't want your Facebook friends to find out you broke up with your girlfriend? How about not posting it on Facebook and Myspace? That'll take care of the "privacy problems". How about a new "social networking" site: www.MyBlackHole.com. You post your info, and then the site immediately deletes it. Sounds like about what these whiners want. Also bugs me that some of these articles are indicating that this is a rare case of "political activism" by this generation. If this is what passes for political activism, we've got problems.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Moofie]

"Or how about you got in a fight with your wife and I could hear it from outside so I recorded and played it back over the PA system at your office the next day?"

Would I mind? Maybe. However, it is up to me to not broadcast things I don't want broadcast. Want to keep a secret? Don't publish it on the Internet.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[TubeSteak]

Google's crawlers won't be able to index this information unless the folks working for facebook open it up to them. The privacy controls are of course only as trustworthy as the people working for facebook, and also if you're friending everybody under the sun you have removed the ability of the privacy controls to help anyway.

As an aside, it might be against Facebook's TOS for anyone to spider the site.

Member Conduct
"you agree not to use automated scripts to collect information from the Service or the Web site or for any other purpose"

While they don't define "information" I imagine it can mean whatever they want it to mean and since they outright say "any other purpose" I'm guessing that rules out your own personal Facebook checking program.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[skidz7]

"Or how about you got in a fight with your wife and I could hear it from outside so I recorded and played it back over the PA system at your office the next day?"

Wow you have REALLY missed the point. Facebook isn't posting private conversations between their users, they're only listing information that their users have PUBLICLY posted on their profiles. If you decide to post on facebook that you broke up with your girlfriend, why would you be upset that your friends find out about it?! If you are upset then why are you posting it?!

It's like putting up a billboard, then getting upset that the billboard was in the newspaper.

I'm disappointed that facebook has listened to these whiners. It should be a feature that is turned on/off by the feed reader, not the person whose actions are producing the feed. If you don't want to read it, fine. But if I want to log in and see which of my friends updated pictures, joined groups, etc, then I'd much rather just view the feed.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[senocular]

So... the Anti-Slashdot?

Re:Boo-Hoo

[thermostat42]

I really think many people don't really "get" sociology.

For many (most?) FB users this isn't about what information is strictly available. It about the social consturcts that govener when and where it is appropriate to use that information. Example: Your breakup causes you to change your "relationship status" from "in a relationship" to "single." Now, presumably your real friends know this without looking it up on facebook. People who are acquaintances (but "friends" on facebook) might not be aware until they look at your profile. If they look at your profile every day (and specifically look at your relationship status), they might notice immediately. However, if they mention the breakup, its considered stalker-ish.

So basically, its not what information is made available, its how that information used. If you make it known that you're aware they changed relationship status earlier that day, then you're giving away information about yourself, specifically how often you check their FB profile. This is really the complaint about the news feeds. It can't really be considered stalker behavior if the information is presented to you.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[vain gloria]

Teens and other young adults frequently post wacky / private crap about themselves or their friends all the time. Do you REALLY want a future potential employer "Googling" you and finding all this stuff? How about a potential boyfriend / girlfriend / husband / wife?

Problem is: they're young. Trying to get that message across is analogous to telling them "smoking will give you lung cancer" or "drink more responsibly for the sake of your liver".

I mean, like, what-ever!

Re:Boo-Hoo

[lysergic.acid]

By your logic all privacy settings on websites/online networks are useless. Just because person A can relay a message to person B doesn't mean that I can't expect to be able to tell person A something in confidence without person B finding out. And it certainly doesn't mean that if I tell person A something, it's exactly the same as me telling both parties.

Unless you associate with a bunch of sociopaths you can expect a certain level of common courtesy amongst your peers.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[nova_ostrich]

That's an issue with being able to trust your friends, not with Facebook.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[k_187]

no it isn't, the only people that would get broadcast the updates that you yourself make are the people that you've added as friends. Thus, if you didn't want all those people knowing everytime you did something, maybe they shouldn't be your friend? The things that change aren't getting sent out to everyone, just the people that you've already oked.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[theStorminMormon]

It matters not what Facebook does or does not have for functionality. They are not the only gatherer and publisher of information on their site.

This is just manifestly false. It this were true there would be no RSS feeds. There's a difference between having to go out and find articles on X, and having articles on X delivered automatically. There's a difference between checking blog Y manually for updates, and having updates from blog Y sent to you. It's really basic. Call it "publish" vs. "broadcast", call it "push" vs. "pull" but to act as though there's no difference is mind-bogglingly stupid. There is a difference - that's why people make money offering these services you twat.

-stormin

Re:Boo-Hoo

[AeroIllini]

Its not the fact that they can see it, it is the fact that it is *broadcast* that makes it bad.

What part of "publishing on the internet" is not broadcasting information?

I don't care that people I know find out that I break up with a girl, but I don't want it to be sent RSS style to everyone I know.

Well, then you better not publish it on the internet.

The old way, sure you were posting it on the internet, but there was a certain anonymnity to be found in the data overload of facebook. Now that changes are highlighted, its too easy.

Security through obscurity is a Bad Thing (tm). For reference, please see every article about closed-source software on Slashdot.

Also, others are allowed to submit content to your page (like to my wall). If they do, I may want time to respond to it before all of my friends read it. Sure, the old way one or two might see it, but that risk is low.

And people might call all your friends and say bad things about you, too. How about not pissing people off?

This funtionality, if cut back, would be very useful.

Wait, isn't the whole purpose of Facebook to post your whole life online for everyone to read and keep up with? Isn't that what Facebook, MySpace, blogging, and the entirety of the narcissistic end of the internet are for? What part of this functionality doesn't fit the "I write about every inane detail of my life on here so other people can read it" model?

Some things should be exempt from the feed, or at least have the option to have them never broadcast, so that they can fly 'under the radar'.

Which is exactly what Facebook did, to appease people like you who write their personal details on a sign in a public park and then get angry when people read it.

If you don't want information to be read, DON'T POST IT ON THE FRIGGIN' INTERNET.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[AeroIllini]

I think it just confirms what we all knew. At least 99% of Facebook users are idiots, and the other 1% are there because some of the 99% made them...

As a card carrying member of the 1%, I would like to just say that I am OUTRAGED that the information in my empty profile, which I was specifically coerced into posting on the internet with the intent of having other people read it, is now publicly readable by the very people who use that site. This kind of blatant privacy breach will not be tolorated, and the Facebook community is rising up against the oppressors who have forced their details to become public!

The citizens of Facebook will not tolerate this kind of privacy breach any more!

But large companies selling my private data to telemarketers and data miners, in return for a 2% discount? Naw, it's cool. I save money!

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Kevin Stevens]

I disagree that I have really missed the point, I think you missed that I specifically mentioned a fight that can be heard outside the walls of your house. The point being is that the second you can raise your voice so that it can be heard from outside, you are "in public" and therefore in the original poster's eyes asking to have it broadcast to the world. Once I can hear it from outside your home, its no longer a private conversation. If your neighbor put a microphone on his fence and distributed every argument he heard as a podcast on the internet and sent updates to your family and friends whenever a new fight occurred, I think you might object.

Not all information that is put out in "public" is intended to be broadcasted to everyone.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand your point, but I think that most users treat their page as their house, and while you can drive by their house and maybe even peek into their windows and thats not a problem to them, this feed is kind of like putting a webcam in every room, which is a problem.

Ultimately, its up to the users to decide how they want their pages treated, and they have apparently spoken.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[RandomPrecision]

Indeed - it gave information about every specific thing that somebody did on Facebook. This is why I made a group with the sole intention of fouling up the feed system, and subsequently left and rejoined the group about 30 times. Unfortunately, this was only yesterday, so instead of seeing the resounding "WTF" from everyone in my network the next day, I saw the open letter from Mark Zuckerberg.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[skidz7]

A fight or conversation that happens to be overheard by someone in public is different from something you intentionally broadcast on an online profile for all of your friends to see. Your nosy neighbor doesn't look over your fence and then post his findings to YOUR Facebook profile. Online profiles are collections of information that people CHOOSE to broadcast about themselves to anyone they like. With the news feeds, the only people who see this information are the people who already had access to it, and the only information they see is the information you chose to share with them. If it seems creepy, then maybe you're sharing too much information.

Re:Boo-Hoo

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

Google's crawlers won't be able to index this information unless the folks working for facebook open it up to them.

It's worth mentioning that the protection over user content consists of more than a Robots.txt file. Facebook is much more privacy-minded than MySpace.

I was on the fence about the additions to Facebook. On the one hand, I agree with most of the Slashdotters here in that most of the people -- I should say, studests -- probably don't have a good grasp of how public the Internet really is. The newsfeeds were then a constant reminder that content uploaded can and most likely will be seen by unwanted people.

On the other hand, the newsfeeds were a gross exaggeration of what internet publicity will mean to most people. I remember an argument given by a fellow slashdotter (too lazy to look up the name, so props to the original poster) that the newsfeeds were dehumanizing, in that when someone breaks up and puts the information on facebook, the intent is so that his/her friends can gradually learn of the breakup, not all simultaneously receive a notice "John Smith is no longer in a relationship." The point is not that the person wants it to be private, but that the person wants it to be a gradual dissemination.

The main problem I have with most of the arguments on Slashdot is that they assume a false dilemma: post info on the Internet, and EVERYONE EVERYWHERE WILL KNOW!! Or, if you don't want that to happen, DON'T POST ON THE INTERNET!! I think it should be quite clear that there are problems with this. There exists a middle ground between the ignorance of normal Internet users and the alarmist attitude of most Slashdotters.

Another thing: a lot of Slahsdotters said that if I want something private, don't post it on the Internet. But keeping a piece of info off the Internet is no assurance of privacy. Indeed, politicians, Hollywood stars, and many other public figures have their personal lives, information, and past scrutinized by media, and the uncovered information is disseminated to the public, whether wanted or not. But if you're worried about that happening to you, is the solution to stop writing, and stop speaking, and burn all records of your past? Of course not. The practical thing is to try to limit access to that information. Maybe let close friends A, B, and C look at your personal stuff, and you just have to trust them not to spread that info to persons D, E, and F.

Facebook's goal was just that: let friends A, B, and C (and D, and E... and whomever else you want) have access to your history and personal info that you will share, and limit (or outright forbid) others' access to that information--and you just have to hope that you can trust your friends. Whether said info is on the internet or not is of little importance.

A demonstration?

[Aladrin]

A Demonstration!? Before you start screaming and harrassing a company, maybe, just maybe, you should give them some time to respond. In this case, the company has responded in record time and it still wasn't enough to stop this radical from freaking out. Nothing shouts 'unstable' like organizing protests at the drop of a hat.

Re:A demonstration?

[Enoxice]

My thoughts exactly. I think they've done an excellent job in their response so far. The only other feature I want is the ability to turn off the newsfeed on my homepage. I don't care if other people have it or can see my information/actions, but it's cluttering up my screen and I don't like it.

Interesting that people believe a protest outside of the headquarters of a website that implemented an unpopular feature is a rational reaction. I mean, they haven't done anything to hurt anyone or anything illegal; they've only implemented an unpopular feature, tell them you don't like it and go on with your life.

Re:A demonstration?

[andrewman327]

In my own experience, Facebook has had the best response times of any major website. All of their features just plain work. The record time for a Microsoft patch is three days. Facebook implemented this change in less than a week, which is pretty fast. Facebook has also never spread adware through its homespage like MySpace did.

While I did not like the Facebook feed, I was always confident that they would intriduce some privacy measures. That is just the level of trust that they have established.

Re:A demonstration?

[ResidntGeek]

And another thing: why the hell does it take two days for college students to organize a protest about Facebook making already-public information easier to access (OMGNO!!!), when they don't seem to do shit about secret prisons, torture, and other problems of large-scale government?

Re:A demonstration?

[theStorminMormon]

What do you expect from college kids?

Imagine if they viewed MS the way they view Facebook... I'd hate to be in Redmond in the days after Vista rolled out.

"WHAT!? YOU'RE MISSING A DRIVER!?? PROTEST TIME!!! "

-stormin

Re:A demonstration?

[Otter]

The record time for a Microsoft patch is three days.

This seems to have gone over everyone's head on that story, but the reference to 'Quickest Patch Ever' was meant to be facetious, not a precise factual statement about Microsoft's entire history of patch issuance.

Re:A demonstration?

[AceCaseOR]

What state are you in? In Oregon we've had a lot of college student protests over the summer about the war in Iraq and other, important, issues.

Re:A demonstration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the general public, who have been feeding like pigs to the trough of rampant consumerism and banal popular culture* are too ignorant, apathetic and cynical to feel like their voices will be heard. Facebook is an easy target and has proved itself to be pliant and accountable, where they could just as easily turn around and say "fuck off, this is our website and we can do what we want." The government and corporations, on the other hand, are a much scarier and formidable opposition. It takes real strife to make people want to confront them, and while we are all safe and happy(TM) nothing will be done.

*by the way, I count myself among this group

Re:A demonstration?

[ResidntGeek]

I just moved out of Florida, and I'm now in North Carolina. In Florida, I knew maybe 5 people who cared about things other than how many brain cells they were going to kill each weekend, and here I know none so far.

Re:A demonstration?

[Mister Whirly]

Nah, the college kids would never tread on Slashdotter territory...

Re:A demonstration?

[Karthikkito]

Facebook has also never spread adware through its homespage like MySpace did.

They did have a few banner ads that tried to install infected wmf scripts...obviously the fault of the network that hosted the ads, but problems have occurred.

Re:A demonstration?

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW!!! A demonstration organized by a UCSB student. Do they DO anything else besides protest? I'm so sick of hearing about UCSB protests, what a bunch of losers.

Re:A demonstration?

[IamTheRealMike]

Because a protest has a much more obvious and immediate effect on a small company (accountable to the market), than a protest has on an government that acts as if it's accountable to no-one.

Re:A demonstration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Their response sucked. If they really cared about users more than their new "news" paradigm, they would have turned feeds off until the privacy controls were in place. However, if they got rid of it, the users would never put up with them putting it back up, so they didn't do it.

Re:A demonstration?

[IdolizingStewie]

Where in NC are you? Every time I visit UNC there's a protest going on. And that's when school is out.

Re:A demonstration?

[ResidntGeek]

I go to Duke. And school is in. I pay attention, and I've never heard about any protests here. The noticeboards are filled with stupid shit about dance groups, frat parties, and religious mutual-mental-masturbation sessions (I think they usually call them fellowship meetings). Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but from conversations I overhear on buses and while walking, I doubt it. I have heard 1 (one) group of three talking about something besides parties or how much their classes suck and they can't wait for the weekend.

Re:A demonstration?

[Enoxice]

They obviously think that they can make the feature work and make it good for everyone. They apoligized for not considering the privacy issue, and they addressed it.

Re:A demonstration?

[Siward]

My guess would be that it's easier to place your ire squarely on a company and its singular headquarters. The number of people responsible for this decision is small, it's obvious who's responsible and who can influence change.

I'd argue that what I just said applies to hardly any government action. I deplore the war in Iraq, but as a Texan, to whom do I turn? My Republican Senators who agree with the President on this issue? My centrist Representative, who might agree with me? Though he has been in office a long time, he has an even smaller chance of being able to get my point across in the backwater legislature known as the House of Representatives.

I have always felt like an active participant in the political process, but fighting corporate decisionmaking can be done in many ways. Fighting government decisionmaking can only surely be done in one way. Even an effective protest does not necessarily ensure policy change (as has been best demonstrated lately as the Bush administration has decided it more worth their while to make their point using different arguments) -- changing who has power in government is the only way, and that can be an incredibly daunting task, particularly given the amount of time it takes for political momentum to shift in this country, and the unsettlingly small amount of attention the general population pays to political issues.

Facebook, however, is relatively small and eager (as is obvious through these stories) to please its userbase. Even if part of the government is eager to please its base, there are no guarantees that anyone else will follow suit. In this regard, large-scale government -- like big business -- truly comes across as monolithic. It's difficult for average Americans to sort out exactly who is the cause of the issues they care about, and provided they figure that out, it's even more difficult to figure out whom they should be talking to. Most everyone says to write/e-mail/call your Representative and Senators. If you're lucky, your Representative or one of your Senators is on a committee ruling on the particular issue you've taken interest in, and they either agree with your position on the issue, or are swayed by your argument. In any regard, your success means that you have convinced three out of the combined 218 + 51 members of Congress needed to pass legislation.

Of course, Facebook could decide that it doesn't care either, but then someone else could merely create a similar environment without the controversial features and profit from what Facebook has worked so long to create. Repeating the same action against the government is a rather more difficult task.

Why...

[locokamil]

... didn't they just roll back to a version that didn't have the feed in it?

Re:Why...

[Duct Tape Jedi]

no, they actually added settings that let you control what goes into your feed.

Re:Why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this was invented by some "community-viral marketing" idiot and all people just fell for it. STUPID!!!

Of course they will not roll it back. That would be too easy. It would defeat the purpose of getting free publicity and meanwhile the user count will likely peak. It all means money.

Boo-Hoo? Yeah but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, maybe this will convince people that they shouldn't put their whole lives on internet.

You're just jealous your whole life isn't on the internet like George Washington's!

But seriously, people feel important when they leave something online that might last forever. Legacy and stuff. Plus, we're a gregarious species so we love interaction with our peers. I don't think some people realize the trade-offs that come with publicizing your info.

For the better

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't take long, thankfully

This just in...

[Lurker2288]

"A recent Reuters article mentions that Facebook user Igor Hiller, 17, a freshman at University of California, Santa Barbara is organizing a real-world demonstration next Monday at Facebook's downtown Palo Alto headquarters." In other news, people have way, way too much free time.

Oh FFS

[goldcd]

" Igor Hiller, 17, a freshman at University of California, Santa Barbara is organizing a real-world demonstration next Monday at Facebook's downtown Palo Alto headquarters."

Has he really nothing better to do with his time? If you don't like facebook, just trash your account and leave.
Find something worthwhile to get upset about.

Re:Oh FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

He obviously mostly just wants attention, some people in college will look anywhere for an excuse to protest. These people seem to forget this is a site that offers a free service and is completely voluntary.

Re:Oh FFS

[Otter]

Has he really nothing better to do with his time?

Seriously -- one has to wonder how much someone spending his first week of college (UCSB, no less!) driving hundreds of miles to protest Facebook over this needs Facebook in the first place.

If anything, I'm pretty impressed with how well the company has handled this.

Re:Oh FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, facebook screwed up, people protested, and they had to fix it. Sounds like "the system" worked.

Re:Oh FFS

[RyoShin]

Jumping ship is the worst way to deal with a situation. Sure, you personally might benefit with not having to deal with the problem, but the problem remains and won't get any better just because you're there.

If everyone held up the notion of jumping ship when things got too hot, there would eventually be no ship to jump to, because they would all sink. A lot of people think that the current political and economic situation in the U.S. sucks, but if we just jumped ship to Canada or Europe, we'd eventually have a country full mainly of religious fundies who would start going after other countries, anyway. Better to stand and fight.

While you may think it's a "miniscule" problem, and Igor could focus on world hunger or something, this is something that more directly affects Igor, and if he wants to protest the mini-feed, more power to him.

Re:Oh FFS

[SydBarrett]

I can just imagine this "demonstration". A bunch of guys just standing around fiddling with their blackberries and cell phones while avoiding eye contact.

Maybe someone should show up and hand out these fine products: http://www.cafepress.com/ebrushdesign/1727415

Re:Oh FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

He's probably short too... and has a bad complexion... I bet he also smells funny.

Re:Oh FFS

[Jmechy]

FYI: UCSB doesn't start fall quarter for another two weeks. We are still in summer sessions.

Why wasn't news feed disabled?

[Devil's BSD]

After the almost instantaneous uproard over news feed, why did Facebook not take care of the privacy issues right away and revert to the pre-newsfeed code? Instead, they waited three days to plug this massive breach of privacy. I believe that the facebook creators need to be held accountable for this delay.

Also, the fix code was so hastily put together, several of my "home page" links and the "My Groups" link in the menu don't work anymore. Anyone else having these problems?

Re:Why wasn't news feed disabled?

[QuoteMstr]

"Held accountable?" For what damages, exactly? For god's sake, we're not talking about a bank's website. All we're talking about is a way for people to slightly more easily discover information that was already public. You should be happy they responded as quickly as they did.

"Massive breach of privacy" my ass.

Re:Why wasn't news feed disabled?

[Devil's BSD]

There are ways to hold someone accountable other than monetary damages. I was thinking more along the lines of more extensive testing of new features (open beta period), and at the very least more communication between the developers and the users. Sure, there's a facebook blog, but it's not linked from anywhere I can see on the main page, and the blog isn't frequently updated at all. And as it's been mentioned repeatedly before, there's a difference between public information and broadcasted information. There's a difference between walking by a pile of shit and having a pile of shit dropped in front of you. I can walk farther away in the former case, but nobody likes having shit shoved in their faces.

Re:Why wasn't news feed disabled?

[theStorminMormon]

Instead, they waited three days to plug this massive breach of privacy.

OK, I get really annoyed at the stupid people who can't tell the difference between making information available and delivering it to you all collated and sorted. Clearly how you present the information matters. But to call the Feeds a "massive breach of privacy" is really silly. Every single thing the Feeds announced was information already available to everyone that got the Feed. How is this a "massive" breach?

Massive breaches are when companies lose millions of social security numbers or credit card numbers. You seriously are crazy if you think just broadcasting to a group of friends whom you have already selected to see the information is really that horrible of a deal.

So for 3 days people had an easier time tracking your wall posts. Was it really so traumatic for you?

-stormin

Re:Why wasn't news feed disabled?

[Mister Whirly]

Facebook is gladly refunding all the fees you paid to them, plus interest. The check is in the email.

You really don't have a leg to stand on when complaining about a free service. Read their policies - if you don't agree, don't sign up.

Re:Why wasn't news feed disabled?

[sasdrtx]

Good point - they should have. Not that it's much of a privacy issue, just a customer disatisfaction issue.

Since they didn't (back out the change), and they obviously still don't understand their business, what you and every other annoyed facebook user needs to do is delete your account.

Once facebook is out of business, smarter people will create better systems.

So-called "privacy" settings

[Anonymous Coward]

This is only one example of something that's all too common -- user "privacy" and "preference" settings that mysteriously reset themselves after a period of time. On sites that I actually do business with, I have repeatedly specified that I don't want advertising emails, I don't want my information shared, EVER. And yet, after a time, the spam starts up. I go back to the site only to discover that I'm not only signed up for every stupid email they send, but that my "share nothing" setting has changed to "share everything".

I wish there were some legal protection against that, but if you look at how slow and ineffective legislation is against real spam, I doubt that "solicited" spam is even on the radar.

I think k_187 is right -- if you don't want your information shared, keep it to yourself.

It wasnt a loss of privacy

[Tweekster]

it was just stupid. You basically had this screen of irrelevant information that was frequently updated...

seriously I dont care that someone I know added "V For Vendetta" to their favorite movies list.

I dont get the big privacy issue, it was just a lame annoying feature to begin with

Re:It wasnt a loss of privacy

[The MAZZTer]

Actually it was useful, as you could use it to see the names of the Anti-Facebook News Feed groups everyone was joining. ;)

Default settings should have been OFF

[Wormholio]

I didn't know about this until I saw the slashdot article. I don't check facebook that often. Suddenly all sorts of events about what I've done, and what my friends have been doing, are visible. That's nice if you wanted it that way, but I didn't.

They added a new feature. They now have a "privacy" control which lets you select what is shown about you and your goings on and what is not shown. And the defaults, for someone who didn't even know about this, are to show everything.

This may end up being a nice feature in the long run, but the initial defaults should have been OFF for everything.

I Still Don't Like It

[stevemm81]

I just wish you could turn the feed off altogether - I miss the old, uncluttered homepage. I'm not that concerned about my privacy; as someone said earlier, if I wanted things to be private from my Facebook friends I wouldn't post them on Facebook.

They've managed to turn one of the more attractive looking pages on the Internet into an ugly mess cluttered with useless information about my friends joining groups I've never heard of, etc. I think they should either eliminate the feeds altogether or put them on a separate page.

Re:I Still Don't Like It

[Anonymous Coward]

They've managed to turn one of the more attractive looking pages on the Internet into an ugly mess cluttered with useless information about my friends joining groups I've never heard of, etc.

Wait, I thought we were talking about FaceBook and not MySpace? :)

Re:I Still Don't Like It

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this get modded interesting?

The homepage still has all the same information, available on the right column, easy to view. On profile pages, just push the little arrow > button and "wa-la, it's gone"

Re:I Still Don't Like It

[natrius]

I just wish you could turn the feed off altogether - I miss the old, uncluttered homepage.

There was pretty much no information on the home page before. Why exactly is that desirable? Why does it matter if the page is "one of the more attractive pages on the Internet"? Personally, I never spent more then two seconds on the old home page. I was either on my way to my profile, or on the way to my list of friends to see who had updated recently. Now the home page is actually useful, and that's a problem somehow? Explain.

Re:I Still Don't Like It

[Anonymous Coward]

"wa-la, it's gone"

It's Voila. Please stop typing walla, it just flaunts your ignorance. It's pronounced with a 'vw' sound as well. See the link for more details.

Re:I Still Don't Like It

[Anonymous Coward]

I always pronounced it "viola".

The whole world in Palo Alto?

[winkydink]

No way! The bookstore isn't that big.

Yes, a Demonstration! Like the Good Ole Days!

[eldavojohn]

Nothing shouts 'unstable' like organizing protests at the drop of a hat.

I hate to sound like a patriotic tool ... but it was demonstrations that built America. It was the right to protest at the drop of a hat that made it so appealing. The fact that more people don't take to the streets when anything goes wrong in the government upsets me. We've really forgotten why this country was built and why so many millions gave their lives. We've taken for granted the right to protest and ignored it.

You're exercising your right to free speech by saying this protest is uncalled for. I don't understand your logic for calling it 'unstable' but instead they must have some good control of the situation if they can organize people instantly. No company should be above the scrutiny of the consumer and we're all consumers of facebook. They aren't 'harassing' a company, they're asserting their right to make their voices heard. The fact that you used the following words leads me to believe you don't support demonstrations: "screaming, harassing, radical, freaking out, unstable." These are very negative words and it sounds like something that a Facebook employee would say to defend their company.

These people feel that Facebook breached ethics. Is this true? I'm not sure, but I am willing to listen to a mass of my fellow Americans that feel this is a big deal.

Perhaps mass protests at "the drop of a hat" would keep our politicians in check? Right now, it seems they can get away with murder and spending more money than we have. I honestly only wish more people would non-violently protest and speak their minds.

Sad, really.

[Rob T Firefly]

It's pretty sad that this sort of thing needs to be said, but it still needs to be said to a generation growing up in a world of Livejournals and Myspaces and Facebooks.

It's a damn good thing the Web wasn't born yet when I was in school. If half the things I said and did in my youth were posted to the web, I'd probably never crawl out from under my rock. Hell, I'm still paranoid someone wil dig up the message bases from the old BBSes I used to frequent and say really stupid things on. :-P

Re:Sad, really.

[Billosaur]

It's pretty sad that this sort of thing needs to be said, but it still needs to be said to a generation growing up in a world of Livejournals and Myspaces and Facebooks.

In the "good old days," all the people on your street used to know what you were up to. If you did something, the grapevine usually got that information to your folks before you got home. Of course it wasn't a perfect system and if you worked at it, you could hide your deeds from prying eyes (that's what tree forts were for).

Now, people are actually writing down the things they're doing and placing that information where anyone on the planet can see it. It really should come as no shock now. Was Facebook wrong for not doing a better job of protecting privacy? Sure. Are people culpable if they're silly enough to put embarassing and/or potentially damaging information on the Internet? You bet. The fact is, the younger generations don't understand the whole "global neighborhood" concept and it taskes something like this to make them aware that something they think is local is most assuredly not.

Re:Sad, really.

[Rob T Firefly]

Exactly. And not only is it the global neighborhood concept, but there is the permanent record. Throw something online now, from a blog entry to a website to this Slashdot comment, and in 20 years it'll probably still be archived somewhere. Every Usenet post I've ever made is saved on Google groups. I'm in who knows how many IRC logs. Archive.org hosts a copy of my first website ever, but thankfully the embarassing background MIDIs no longer work. And anyone can easily rustle it all up if they want to.

It's very hard if not impossible to "erase" something from the net. There's always the chance somebody saved it. Once you post it, it's there for friends, relatives, enemies, strangers, police, stalkers, prospective employers, and whoever else to possibly get hold of one day.

Re:Sad, really.

[Anonymous Coward]

This information is not available to "anyone on the planet". LJ users make posts friends-only, and most information on facebook is invisible to people who aren't your "friends". The information is being selectively dispersed, but people don't like how easily it can be spotted by those they've chosen to be able to view it.

Re:Sad, really.

[Pollardito]

Of course it wasn't a perfect system and if you worked at it, you could hide your deeds from prying eyes (that's what tree forts were for).

i always wondered what those were for. i thought it was to provide cover from the incoming fire of the children of oppressive foreign dictators, but all this time it was as simple as "what happens in tree fort stays in tree fort"

Re:Sad, really.

[mdwh2]

In the "good old days," all the people on your street used to know what you were up to. If you did something, the grapevine usually got that information to your folks before you got home. Of course it wasn't a perfect system and if you worked at it, you could hide your deeds from prying eyes (that's what tree forts were for).

And that's how it is on the Internet - Facebook is not public to everyone on the planet, and people use systems such as restricting content to a few people, or writing under a pseuodonym. And just like in real life, it's not perfect, but usually works good enough that it's better than not being online at all.

It I stalked you, took photos, made notes of everywhere you went in real life, and broadcast this information on national TV, that'd be okay, because if you wanted privacy you shouldn't have stepped out your front door?

honestly.

[kenny!wasarealboy]

i love how upset people got due to something they did to themselves.

The problem with facebook...

[usacomp2k3]

Is that it puts all your friends on the same level. I don't care about what happened to most of the people that are my 'friends'. If I wanted to know about them specifically, I can look at their page. What would be better would be to have a list of 'close friends' or something like that that you can add to a feed and only get reports from those few people. Also, a 'opt-out' check box in the privacy settings would be nice. Or, as another comment said, it should be an 'opt-in' feature in the first place from a security setting.

Re:The problem with facebook...

[tehcyder]

What would be better would be to have a list of 'close friends' or something like that

I think you should have to rate all your fucking facebook friends on a scale of 1 to 20 with no repeating rankings, so each week you could have a "top 20" countdown on Sunday evening and see who were the lucky risers and unlucky fallers.

Re:The problem with facebook...

[3-State Bit]

What would be better would be to have a list of 'close friends' or something like that that you can add to a feed and only get reports from those few people

Good idea about keeping your friends close, but even better if you can keep your enemies even closer: have every action they perform highlighted in red, and a little graph that shows exactly when they must have been up, in order to make that change. Also, intelligent aggregation should keep a tally of each time they report about having done the same thing, and how often this has happened. For example, if your enemy mentions a concert, you should know that this is the first fucking concert they've mentioned, and they've been using this shit for four years. Newb.

The sad thing about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

is that it just highlights how stupid college kids really are, at least here in the good ole USA (maybe elsewhere, I'm an American, how should I know?).

I still don't get it...

[Finnegar]

While I like that Facebook has made changes in responce to user demand (the largest protest group reached over 700,000 members, even though I don't think it would have reached that WITHOUT the help of the feeds...*grumble*), I still don't see why there was a demand in the first place.

NOTHING on your feed was something that someone couldn't have seen otherwise. In fact, there are many things that were specificly excluded, such as pokes, messages, things you rejected, and (most importantly) photos you deleted.

While it'd be good to be able to turn the thing off if you really don't like it (and that's what the protesters are still pushing for), I actually like the change. Instead of taking a look at profiles and guessing as to who has changed what, I can see everything in a single place.

I expect that in a few months this will be forgotten or considered overblown. Facebook has made something convenient, not malicious.

Re:I still don't get it...

[KevinIsOwn]

There really are some issues that the feed highlights. For example, messages about when people enter and leave relationships. This isn't the kind of information people want blasted around, but have no problem letting people know. It's simply something most people wouldn't notice, but now know the minute someone de-relationships someone on Facebook. The information that once had to be shopped around for is now readily available right on the front page. You can't miss it even if you try. For the last few days I've learned all sorts of things about my friends and acquaintances that I didn't necessarily want or need to know.

The way I have interpreted this whole mess is that even though people are rallying against the feed, I feel that many people may really be concerned about the amount of privacy they lose on facebook in general. The feed did a great job of highlighting the amazing lack of privacy one has on facebook. So even though facebook has implemented a number of "privacy" features for the feed, I suspect many more people will be taking a harder look at what they post on Facebook and other P2P sites. This will serve as a wakeup call for many, including myself.

Re:I still don't get it...

[izomiac]

While I like the feature, I do have a rather small friend list and am careful with what I post. Before now there wasn't really any downside to making someone a friend on facebook. Sure, they could see your profile, but it was in its entirety and if they also have several hundred friends then they probably wouldn't notice if you made a change. Now, people are (subconsiously) realizing that it's generally a bad idea to post private information to a public website and to explicitly allow hundreds of people to have access to it. (But this feature will get all the blame and people will grow complacent again when it's "fixed".) I guess that this is the threshold where average joe starts to care about privacy...

Re:I still don't get it...

[Neoncow]

Exactly, it seems like this is the first time that many people are learning that everything you post on the Internet is public. Web 3.0 kids will look at us and won't believe that we could be so silly about such common sense things (just as we are amused by those who came before us).

Oh, and Hello future historians!!

Re:I still don't get it...

[FleaPlus]

NOTHING on your feed was something that someone couldn't have seen otherwise.

No kidding. Facebook basically just replicated the functionality of the Facebook Stalker firefox extension. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm guesing FB Stalker's functionality still works.

What amazes me is

[shirizaki]

The fact that college students were moved to do soemthign not involve with drinking, fornicating, or sleeping. When has anyone ever seen such a sweeping movement done by a group? Atilla the Hun? Napoleon? I didn't find anything wrong with it either. I think it's a great exampe of how peopel want to be out there, but don't "want to be out there". I joined the "don't like it? quit" train of thought. So someone knows I put my relationship status as "single" and I commented on someone's profile that "I think you should jerk me off at the party next week". Anyone can read those comments. The mini feed just summarized my browsing. Ultimate proof o fthe double standard: People want to know everythign about someone else without anyone knowing anythign about them.

Re:What amazes me is

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that college students were moved to do soemthign not involve with drinking, fornicating, or sleeping

Perhaps the Vietnam War protests? Oh... no wait... that was drinking, fornicating and sleeping in protest of the Vietnam War. Funny how time changes what you remember from Woodstock.

What this generation really cares about

[Anonymous Coward]

Controversial war in Iraq.

Immigration issues.

Overreaching government power.

Corporate and government privacy invasion.

And what do they want to actually go out and protest?

Yes folks, these are the leaders of tomorrow.

Re:What this generation really cares about

[Anonymous Coward]

First, no one's going to show up.

Second, if any one does, it's because we actually have a chance at getting these people to listen to us (unlike our wonderful administration).

You were young once, get a clue.

Ideal Privacy Settings

[juxel]

Facebook is a social networking site intended to make connecting with people easier, but the problem with all sites like this has always been the lack of classify your level of friendship with someone. For example, my roommates and close circle of friends (who actually care what party I'm going to this weekend) would like to have me on their news-feed. However, the people I have as "friends" that I've met a couple times and we are now Facebook buddies mainly so I can easily let them know when we are having a party don't care whose wall I wrote on.

I was extremely please when Facebook came out with the limited profiles, I just wish you could have multiple limited settings and then tag friends are a certain level to determine what profile they see. This is a step in the right direction though.

Re:Ideal Privacy Settings

[Mister Whirly]

"my roommates and close circle of friends (who actually care what party I'm going to this weekend) would like to have me on their news-feed. However, the people I have as "friends" that I've met a couple times and we are now Facebook buddies mainly so I can easily let them know when we are having a party don't care whose wall I wrote on."

I believe there is a perfect device for what you describe here, the telephone. Remember those from back in the day?? When you wanted certain friends to know something, but not everyone??

Not every little detail of your life needs to be "online, immediately accessible" by everyone you know. I have a Myspace page but use it for specific networking purposes and wouldn't ever put anything on my page I wouldn't scream in a roomful of strangers. No names, specific locations, place of work, address etc will ever be posted no matter what Myspace says about privacy. Ultimately, everyone is in charge of their own privacy when it comes to this sort of thing - no matter what "policies" are in place, someone will find ways around them. Don't rely on others to protect your privacy.

Re:Ideal Privacy Settings

[Kadin2048]

You have a point, but it's akin to saying "hey, if you don't like people reading your email, why not just write a letter, stick it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and put it in the Mail!"

Sure, you could use the telephone to keep people appraised about your plans for the evening, just like folks have been doing for the last 50-odd years (I think individual telephones in dorm rooms were uncommon prior to that), but that negates the value of the new technology.

What people want is something that lets them push information out to people effortlessly and quickly, with a modicum of privacy, and with less effort involved than using a telephone. In the same way that people want to be able to use email for business purposes, even though they could probably accomplish the same functions with paper mail and have increased security.

In short, could people use older technology to do the same thing? Sure. Civilization got along just fine with slide rules, typewriters, and comptometers; that doesn't mean that the systems we have now aren't an improvement on any of those things. People will find a balance between the advantages of a new technology (speed of communication, less effort required) and its disadvantages (lack of privacy), just as we've always done with new inventions. The fact that people use them despite the disadvantages speaks to the perceived value that they add.

Re:Ideal Privacy Settings

[TubeSteak]

It's kind of a hassle, but you can demote people to your "limited profile", which can then be tweaked in the privacy settings.

As it is now, you have to go through multiple steps to put someone onto the "limited profile" list. I bet if Facebook streamlined the process, it would be much more useful.

You'd have a conveinent information-limited place for those "kinda-friends".

Oh I dunno

[goldcd]

1) I am on Facebook. 2) I have no friends. 3) I want some Facebook people to put as my Facebook friends. Facebook protest probably isn't too bad a place to try - would all have been a lot simpler if his mum had just breast-fed the retard.

Zuckerberg not Zuckerman

[grev]

Read below for Zuckerman's Open Letter to the community.

His name is Zuckerberg.

Re:Zuckerberg not Zuckerman

[Anonymous Coward]

Igor: Dr. Zuckerstein...
Mark: "Zuckersteen."

'Bout time for 'nother "Joel on Software" story...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Bout time for 'nother "Joel on Software" story . . . I see it on the wall. It's coming.

Mod Me Up: Free Professional Advice Here!

[RobotRunAmok]

There's a difference between walking by a pile of shit and having a pile of shit dropped in front of you.

I suppose. But from where I'm viewing this, this is more a matter of people having jumped into a pile of shit months ago and only now wondering why they're starting to stink.

Let's review the Rules for Living in a Networked World:

1. Don't put anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't want your boss, your wife, your child, or the Attorney General's Office to read.

2. Don't put anything on a website linked to your name that you wouldn't want Anyone, Anywhere, Now or Forever, linked to you.

It's simple really: Think someday, maybe, possibly, slight chance, back-of-your-mind, you might want to run for public office? Stay away from MySpace and Facebook and their ilk like they were kryptonite.

understanding people's perception of privacy

[JimBobJoe]

Eh, maybe this will convince people that they shouldn't put their whole lives on internet.

I can't disagree, but, at the moment, it's a fascinating experiment in human psychology (vis a vis people's understanding of privacy and their preferences for it.)

Perceptions plays an enormous role in social networking. Facebook's little institutional net may have felt safer, but I thought it was intolerably anti-privacy, and it's user agreement is worse than Myspace's.

It actually seemed that most people can articulate why they didn't like the feed, even though it was simply broadcasting something that was already public. The feed changed the way that people interacted with the site, which would, at the very least, imply multi-layered privacy preferences.

As an individual who has spent years being a privacy advocate that's really exciting. Many of my colleagues came to the conclusion that no one gives a damn about privacy, and yet, as this shows, people have odd instinctual reactions.

Bad Acronym Association...

[RyoShin]

About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that's what I believe in

He should have named it "Free Information Flow on the Internet", or "FIFI" for short.

Re:Bad Acronym Association...

[Mister Whirly]

Or Public Information Public Internet or PIPI for short...

(with apologies to R. Kelly)

Oh, Yeah: The Correlary to #2:

[RobotRunAmok]

Nothing you write about yourself in your blog will seem as clever, funny, and/or meaningful at age 35 as it did at age 22, and it's not because you have lost your sense of humor or appreciation for art and philosophy. And unless you plan a career as a full-time Ren Faire professional, stay away from the "Fan Fiction" completely.

Happy to Help.

Re:Oh, Yeah: The Correlary to #2:

[RobotRunAmok]

full-time Ren Faire professional

Not that there's anything wrong with, I hasten to add.

kk, done now.

Re:Oh, Yeah: The Correlary to #2:

[grappler]

Nothing you write about yourself in your blog will seem as clever, funny, and/or meaningful at age 35 as it did at age 22, and it's not because you have lost your sense of humor or appreciation for art and philosophy.

Agreed. When I was between 20 and 22 or so I wrote some stuff in a few posts to usenet, using my real name. Not that there's a lot of dirt there, but I shared more than I would have cared to. At that time one probably would have had to go to DejaNews to find it. Of course DejaNews is now Google Groups, and it'll probably be there for ever and ever. I found it recenetly (I'm 26 now) and cringed at my rambling prose, and somewhat self-important tone.

That might have been one of the worst ways to put something out there. At least if you're running a blog you can take something down and it takes something like the internet archive's time machine to retrieve it.

A mini-feed program

[JimBobJoe]

The old way, sure you were posting it on the internet, but there was a certain anonymnity to be found in the data overload of facebook.

There was a website at one time that plugged into myspace to deliver a semi-similar feed. It watched the profiles of all your friends (or people you wanted "watched") and if their relationship status flipped to single you'd get an email.

I thought it was a brillant concept. (I believe it was shut down because the way it interacted with myspace violated that site's terms of agreement.)

What would it take for me to design and distribute a program that you can install on your own computer to do the same thing? (I figure if it interacted with facebook or myspace in a low key way, and basically surfed your friend's profiles as if you were doing it from your own computer, it might just pass TOA muster.)

It could do a a semi-regular feed of all your friend's walls. It could collect all the pictures from their profiles and put them into a nifty slideshow. It could surf all the profile's friends ad nauseum and create a neural network of the way people have friended each other which you could probably do something really nifty with.

Re:A mini-feed program

[TubeSteak]

Do you really comprehend what you're proposing?
Recreating that feed using a 3-rd party tool is not a trivial task.

• Here's a list of items you can see from the feed:
      Add/Remove Profile Info
      Write a Wall Post
      Comment on a Note
      Comment on a Photo
      Post on a Discussion Board
      Add a Friend
      Add/Remove my Relationship Status
      Add/Leave a Group
      Add/Leave a Network

The Feed gathered all that information server side & presented it to you.

Now consider this: some people have hundreds of "friends" and some of these friends have hundreds of pictures.

To do it 'outside' of Facebook, you're going to have to fetch hundreds of user pages + potentially thousands of photo pages... and you're going to have to do it every single time you use that tool.

I imagine that the guys running Facebook's server farm would freak out if a tool like that became popular. It wouldn't be too hard to ban any spider-like usage since *nobody* uses Facebook that way.

This is why I think everyone who says "well, you could already get all that kind of information" is an asshat. It isn't practical, both from your standpoint & from Facebook's, unless the person you're stalking has:
a small number of friends*
who have a small number of pictures
and hasn't joined many popular groups
*they're all your friends too, right?

Re:A mini-feed program

[L7_]

and they even thumbnail the pictures that people added. >:)

first time I've logged into facebook in a while, its a breath of fresh air from myspace (which I logged into last month).

Re:A mini-feed program

[John Hurliman]

Facebook has an API you can plug in to that allows you to do all of that. Per account there is also a privacy setting to turn off access to your profile from third party web apps, but it's fairly obscure in the privacy settings and I don't think many people have turned it off.

Re:A mini-feed program

[jb.hl.com]

There was a website at one time that plugged into myspace to deliver a semi-similar feed. It watched the profiles of all your friends (or people you wanted "watched") and if their relationship status flipped to single you'd get an email.

I just found a new reason to feel better about myself; that I don't stalk girls on MySpace, and constantly check if they're single or not.

Why people cared

[hunterx11]

The whole appeal of facebook was that it selectively disseminated information. People put things up because of its limitations. The newsfeed essentially shifted facebook away from the model that made it popular. People were upset because they liked the idea behind the original facebook, and for a bit it appeared that the most popular implementation of that idea was gone.

Re:Why people cared

[Anonymous Coward]

The information that the mini-feed shows is the same exact information that Facebook previously allowed others to see.

The only difference is that it convineiently lists every act you do on Facebook in one place whereas before someone would have to digg around more to find it. However, the information was still visible.

The complaints about the news feed are akin to those who think that closed source code is more secure than open source. Security through obscurity has been debunked many times, why is it different for Facebook?

Re:Why people cared

[hunterx11]

Discreetness is the better part of networking

Re:Yes, a Demonstration! Like the Good Ole Days!

[Hex4def6]

"Perhaps mass protests at "the drop of a hat" would keep our politicians in check? Right now, it seems they can get away with murder and spending more money than we have. I honestly only wish more people would non-violently protest and speak their minds."

The situations you defined is hardly at "the drop of a hat." These would be legitimate reasons to protest. The fact that you consider protesting a feature change as legitimate as protesting murder seems odd to me.

This is a ridiculous protest, and cheapens the impact of protests. God knows what she would have done had she been old enough when "New Coke" came out...

Push/pull news

[Mister Whirly]

RSS feeds are like television - pushing news to you. I prefer to pull the news I want to me, not have everything pushed at me.

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

The only point I was making is that going out to news.google.com and searching for the latest news on topic X is not the same as setting up an automatic filter or feed to send the articles to you. Similarly, checking out the latest article from blog Y is not the same thing as subscribing to the RSS feed from blog Y.

Some people may prefer one to the other, but they are not the same thing The information you get, however, is. So this proves my point: that there's more to this question than just what information is available.

This is so manifestly obvious that it's frustrating to believe there are people too stupid to realize this, and thick enough to actually argue that it's not the case.

If only we could make stupidity more painful...
[thanks to whomever I ripped the sig from]

-stormin

Re:Push/pull news

[mypalmike]

Similarly, checking out the latest article from blog Y is not the same thing as subscribing to the RSS feed from blog Y. Some people may prefer one to the other, but they are not the same thing The information you get, however, is. So this proves my point: that there's more to this question than just what information is available. This is so manifestly obvious that it's frustrating to believe there are people too stupid to realize this, and thick enough to actually argue that it's not the case.

Put me in the stupid column then. It's basic information theory. Signalling versus polling. The only informational difference between an external signal and a repetitious poll is the latency of the information. If I can poll your information with a reasonably high frequency, you are essentially providing a feed.

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

Put me in the stupid column then

Apparently that's where you belong. I say "there's more to this question than just what information is available" and then you respond by saying "the only informational difference..." That's like me saying "even though these boxes are both red, there's more to the question than color. This one is wood, and this one is plastic." and you responding with "yes, but if we restrict ourselves to just color..."

I'm not making the point that the information is different, I'm making the point that even though it is the same information there is a difference between having the information delivered and having to find it yourself. The difference is the amount of work it takes to gather that information for delivery (assuming cost of delivery itself is zero). From the perspective of a research would you rather make 1,000 phone calls to call people or sit in your office and have 1,000 people spontaneously show up and add their opinion to a carefully maintained database?

I don't really think you're stupid, I think the difference is just so mind-bogglingly obvious that you are assuming no one can be so stupid they don't see it, and are therefore looking for some other possible difference in information science and not finding it there. The trouble is that some people really just are that stupid.

-stormin

Re:Push/pull news

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the difference between calling customer service at a company and having them telemarket you, or getting emailed everytime one of your friends calls someone else and finding out two of your friends talked yesterday from those friends. Really, if you don't use facebook or haven't seen a model similar to it, then you probably have no idea what the change actually is.

Re:Push/pull news

[mypalmike]

Maybe you understand what I'm saying in concrete terms. I can write a computer program (say, a script in Python) to periodically pull down the html of all my friends' pages at myspace. Based on the changes between revisions, I can extract events as a "news feed". Writing such a script is not difficult. The only difference between this and a myspace-provided news feed is that my information will be delayed somewhat. Even if it's delayed by 5 minutes, it is still "realtime" for the type of information we are talking about.

Re:Push/pull news

[mdwh2]

Surely RSS is pull? The reader has to decide which RSS feeds he wants to read, unlike say email which is pushed to him.

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

I'm getting so tired of this.

Option 1 - Facebook the old fashioned way. If you want to get info, you have to manually go get it yourself.
Option 2 - Facebook with a Feed. Now the information can come to you automatically.

Clearly there's a difference between 1 and 2, and it's essentially the amount of effort you save. That's one way to look at it: in terms of cost.

All you're doing is replacing Option 1 with this:

Option 1b - Facebook the old fashioned way. If you want to get info, you can write your own script to get it yourself.
Option 2 - Facebook with a Feed. Now the information comes to you automatically.

So now the difference in effort between 1b and 2 is less (a lot less). Is it the same? No. It took me ZERO effort to get Facebook Feeds. I just logged on one day and there it was. Would it take you ZERO effort to write the script? No. So there's a difference.

Furthermore, how much effort did it take for you to learn Python scripting? You could arguable include some portion of that in the "cost" since scripting in python is not a skill you can assume everyone has (like, say, breathing, walking upright, or even typing if you like).

I'm not saying you can get rich scripting, but it is a valuable skill in the sense that you can make some money doing it. You have a specialized skill that means for you pesronally the benefit of the feeds is dramatically less than for most people. But in general, most people can't script Python (or any language) and so, in general the difference in cost between the options is that reflected in 1 vs. 2 (and not 1b vs. 2).

-stormin

Re:Push/pull news

[mypalmike]

Seriously, the up-front effort is not high.

while true:
    for each url:
        wget url > file.html
        diff oldfile.html file.html > event
        cp file.html oldfile.html

A small amount of effort up front yields an infinitely free resource. The amortized "work" is zero over time.

The whole issue is that people are "creeped out" that their data is getting consumed immediately. The fact is, as a producer I have no control over whether my data is periodically polled. If you don't want your data available as a feed, don't publish it.

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

Seriously, you're just being dumb. How many Facebook users code AT ALL. That looks simple enough that I might be able to pick it up in a few minutes, but I already code in C#, Java, C++, VBA, etc. (Not for a living, mind you, and I'm not very good at it, but I can code.)

But the vast majority of Facebook users don't code at all, and so they don't even know what it would take to begin to learn what it would take to code this. Seriously. Spend some time in the real world and you'll realize that a lot of tech stuff you take for granted may as well be voodoo to these people. These are the same people that manage to post pictures on Facebook, but still can't tell a monitor from a tower when it comes to computer parts, and have no idea what code looks like, how it works, or what it can do.

I guarantee that if writing this kind of code was commonplace among Facebook users, the new Feeds wouldn't have created a stir. Who knows - maybe that's why Mark misjudged the reaction. He too just couldn't fathom that to most people even as simple a bit of code like that is essentially magic.

But proving that, to your own limited and small population group (coders) X is not a big deal doesn't mean that to a very different (and much larger) population group X isn't a huge deal. If you and your buddies are all telepaths, then adding a News Feed is ridiculously trivial. You hear people's thoughts anyway. But to those who don't have that ability, it's a big deal. Same thing here. You can write the PHP code in 5 minutes. Do you want a pat on the back? 99.9% of Facebook users can't. Not a single person in my circle of friends knows how to do that. A few could no doubt learn if they wanted to, but no one knows how to.

-stormin

Re:Push/pull news

[mypalmike]

Calling people "dumb" before making your point is not generally an effective approach to influencing people. Take a look at http://www.amazon.com/103-6581941-1251817?ie=UTF8& s=books.

Regards,
Mike

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

Calling people "dumb" before making your point is not generally an effective approach to influencing people

1. Debate is a spectator sport.

You almost never run into someone who's admitting to be honest and admit they were wrong, and it's a waste of time (all things considered) to go looking for such a person behind posts that lack any evidence of self-revision. In short: the people I'm trying to influence are generally not the ones I call dumb.

2. It's nothing personal

When I come across people whom I perceive to actually be trying to think, I do my utmost to treat them with respect and dignity. But when someone makes assumptions like "the average Facebook user can write Python scripts" I take it for granted that I'm dealing with someone who hasn't bothered to consider what they are saying before posting it.

If that hurts your feelings, I'm sorry. Honestly. That's not just something I say, I do regret it when I hurt people's feelings. My objective is not to be a pain in the ass, but even a cursory glance at Slashdot can show you how much time I'd be wasting if every time some schmuck pounded his infantile rantings I took the time to do a velvet-glove response. If you made an honest mistake, then sorry for biting your head off, but that's the name of the game. I mean this in the nicest way possible: Be more careful next time.

I guess to really understand my posting style you'd have to have been there years ago when I got into my first internet debates. I'd be trying to write some benign post about some hobby of mine and next thing I know 3 or 4 trolls are spreading rather nasty half-truths and lies about my religion. You try being nice to people like that. There's no mercy. (For several years after that I shortened my nick to just "stormin" to try to avoid the confrontation. It worked, but it didn't feel right.) I guess I may not have learned all the right lessons from those experiences, and I'll try to tone it down in future when it's pretty clear nothing major is at stake.

-stormin

Re:Push/pull news

[mypalmike]

But when someone makes assumptions like "the average Facebook user can write Python scripts"

Nice quote. Who said it?

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

Here's another news flash for captain clever, sometimes an argument can be implicit in the premise.

The argument I'm making is simply that the News Feeds drastically reduced the amount of work necessary to collate the information, and therefore the News Feeds constitute a significant change. Stating that "well you could code in Python pretty quick" is either:

a. utterly irrelevant
b. assuming (implicitly) that the average Facebook user can could Python.

Take your pick. I went for foolish relevance over insane irrelevance. Should I have picked otherwise? In either case, the arguments on life-support.

-stormin

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

*could = code

Re:Push/pull news

[mypalmike]

Your point is: the average facebook user isn't getting live feeds unless facebook provides them. This is true.

My point is: live feeds can be had from facebook without facebook providing them. You call this irrelevant. I call it reality. Information you publish about yourself can and will be used in ways you don't expect.

I don't need to be a programmer to download and run a facebook spider script. Search for "facebook spider" and "facebook rss", and you'll find that people were already doing this before.

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

Your point is: the average facebook user isn't getting live feeds unless facebook provides them. This is true.

No. My point is that there is a cost associated with creating that live feed, and that for the average facebook user this cost is high relative to how they normally use facebook.

My point is: live feeds can be had from facebook without facebook providing them. You call this irrelevant. I call it reality. Information you publish about yourself can and will be used in ways you don't expect.

I'm not calling this irrelevant. I'm calling your example of the coder who can do this at essentially zero cost irrelevant. The vast majority of facebook users are not Python coders, and thus it really is irrelevant if .1% of the population (or less) can do this with essentially zero effort. The cost for the rest is still high.

Now you're bringing into the equation new informatino that I didn't know. You say that spiders are available - thus making the cost of implementing feed-like features practically zero for everyone. You should have done more research before you made this case.

First of all there's the obvious point that you still need relatively specialized information to know what to look for. Poll Facebook users, how many do you think would know what a web spider is? 1%? So even if it's free to download, you're talking about something no one knows exists. If there's a store that gives away free iPods and no one knows it exists, how useful is that?

Secondly, look at the actual features of the facebook spiders available (yes, I went ahead and googled to see what you'd found). As far as I can tell, there are only two that are commonly available from a simple Google search.

Michael Kelly wrote a Perl script that only collects information about user's friends. (http://stephen.evilcoder.com/archives/2006/01/26/ facebook-spider) That's not even remotely close to the functionality of Feeds. I'd say less than 10% offhand, but that's being generous.

The more advanced spider located at that same URL may at first seem to be an improvement. It collects captures all the information available in a user's profile (except for the 'About Me' field). So you're getting most of the information, right? Not so fast.

Where does the data go? That's right - it gets dumped into an SQL database (SQLite3 by default). So if you actually want any information you have to write your own database queries.

So this is your idea of "zero effort"? Search for a term most people don't know exists, download and figure out how to run Perl/Python scripts, get a copy of SQLite, and then write unique queries for everything you want to search?

Did you actually read through what would be required to get one of these off the ground?

I've gone around and around this issue with so many Slashdotters, I'm getting really tired of it. This is what it comes down to:

Facebook is not a public network, it is a private network where people post information they want to be searchable to their friends. They realize full well that anyone they've friended (either real friends, or just acquaintances) can see any and all information they post. They are not afraid that people will find out information they wanted secret. However, they do expect that if someone wants to find information about them real-time, considerable effort will be required. Like bicycle locks this is an easily-circumvented security measure designed only to thwart causal interest.

So while you may be right to say "look, the info was there, anyone determined enough (or who's already a coder) could put together the tool to get at it as a real-time feed" the analogy is this: just because anyone who's determined enough (or who cracks locks for a hobby) can get at your bike should you have no right to complain if someone takes away your bike lock?

There is a difference between information

Re:Push/pull news

[mypalmike]

I don't know why you have such a hard time seeing this. Now if there was a spider out there that you could download and run out-of-the-box (for free) that matched the functionality of the Feeds, then you'd have a strong case to say that the Feeds weren't anything new. But notice that this only strengthens my central case. There is a difference between Feeds or no Feeds, and the only way you can reduce that difference to 0 is with the introduction of an imaginary product that is, essentially, the Feeds.

Of course it strengthens my argument too. Don't publish data you don't want in a feed, because bam, someone will make it a feed. ;)

Re:Push/pull news

[theStorminMormon]

Don't publish data you don't want in a feed, because bam, someone will make it a feed.

If that's all your saying, then I don't really disagree with you. It seemed like you were also saying the Facebook Feed was nothing new, or nothing different. That's not the same, however.

-stormin

The real problem

[Fletchnuts]

The real problem with the news feed is that it assumes that the relationships on facebook are something more than status points. There are of course real genuine friends on facebook and there's no doubt that those people who are real friends wouldn't mind having their other real friends know what they've been up to. The problem is that so many people have 500 some odd friends (people you met at a party one night after downing six glasses of jack in 15 minutes, or some random guy from your class) and there's no way that these people have any sort of meaningful relationship with all those people. The Facebook creators I think incorrectly assumed that the users would like to know what's going on with all their "friends", which we don't - i'm a user -. They also incorrecctly assumed that the majority of facebook connections are genuine - they aren't - (I have almost 200 friends on facebook, and that's a small number to some. Only about five or six of them are people that truly matter to me, the rest I hardly see or talk to).

Re:The real problem

[Darthmalt]

Exactly. And before people start in on the if you don't know them why don't you delete them shpiel. Facebook has been a godsend to student filmmakers like me. It's a quick and easy way to contact people and send mass mesaages about meeting and shooting times. It's also great for group projects just add every one on facebook tag them in a note and voila instant discussion board to review a paper or script.

shameless filmgroup plug Chamber 525

Re:The real problem

[JustinianV]

I agree with you point that people have a lot of "friends" on the facebook, people they sat next to in class, or shared a drink (or six as in your example) at one point or another. I think this is what put people up in arms, that their "every move" is reported to those people they don't even care about, and on the other end, you are finding out things you never really cared about other people.

Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg and company did overestimate the value people put in facebook friends, or perhaps, he sees this as a way to help friendships and relationships grow in the information age. Never before have people been able to quickly see what other people are interested in, what people are doing, when people break up.

When you break off or start up a relationship, you make it "facebook official" it's like the new going steady with the class ring and everything. This just allows all your friends to see that, so they know, so there isn't that awkward, "how are you and your girlfriend doing" conversation. To all the nay-sayers of the newsfeed, I say, "Welcome to being Friends in the 21st century."

The real problem is spamming your friends

[bryz]

Basically, they're spamming all of your friends with all of your actions.

We can show how this works against facebook by taking action.

Whenever an action is made on facebook, this action is immediately broadcast to all users within the networks of people involved. Therefore, if everyone against the facebook mini-feeds just posts 1-5 messages on their own walls or as notes, this will flood mini-feeds making them essentially useless.

In the numbers suggested yesterday there are more than 500,000 users that are against mini-feeds. If these 500,000 users post 5 messages, then this means at least 2.5 million messages will be broadcast. This would also probably reach nearly all of the facebook users.

Filtering

[Jzor]

They made it so you can filter what is sent from your profile, but did they also think to add a filter for what comes into the news feed on your home page?

I'd much rather be able to filter the news feed on my home page rather than have more controls on what gets broadcast. That way I could clean up the useless crap that I don't need to know and not have to wait for all of my friends to take action first.

Brilliant!

[Quixote]

Call me a cynic, but I think this was a brilliant move on Facebook's part. Look at all the free publicity they are getting.

I would not be surprised at all if this guy Hiller turned out to be on the payroll of Facebook (either now, or some day in the future).

Re:Brilliant!

[Mister Whirly]

I think that Hiller is actually a Chewlies gum rep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook Apologizes!

[TechAddress]

Check it out: http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/08/mark-z uckerberg-of-facebook-apologizes/

XSS for better privacy!

[David_Bloom]

I have made a way to use cross-site-scripting to improve privacy on Facebook: clear your newsfeed (you must be logged into Facebook)

Re:Mod Me Up: Free Professional Advice Here!

[walt-sjc]

It's too bad most young people have such a hard time figuring this out, or accepting these facts.

While facebook proclaims "closed" networks, being "closed" doesn't help when your info gets copied and pasted, and sent around to others outside your "closed network". The reality is that it's not as private as people would like to believe. In fact, it's not private at all.

Obligatory

[Hachey]

...well I, for one, welcome our new facebook overlords.

Mod parent up.

[Plutonite]

Exactly, the different is in their head. There is no difference *at all* between "available" and announced on the internet. You have a set of documents accesible via a port and a protocol. Why are people always putting their nasty little secrets online if they don't want to be caught with them? If you must, use a diary, or send email to your friends, or restrict access by setting up your own blog/site with password protection. Then you can claim your privacy has been invaded if the information leaks, and you can in fact sue people, for big money.

But don't put things up for the world to see then get shocked that they really did see them. We know you are not all comp.scientists and stuff, but for Gates' sake this is slashdot!

Re:Mod parent up.

[Alex P Keaton in da]

But don't put things up for the world to see then get shocked that they really did see them. We know you are not all comp.scientists and stuff, but for Gates' sake this is slashdot!
I agree- however, none of that matters. All that matters is what your users think/perceive. Even if you are 100% right, if your users don't agree, even if your users are 100% wrong, then you will be out of business quick...
If the facebook users dont like the changes, and facebook wants to stay in business, they had better undo the changes...
Sort of like, you can have the right of way as a pedestrian in a crosswalk, but when the car runs you over you are still dead. I mean, you were right, but your still run over...

Moot

[SquareVoid]

All the arguments of whether or not Facebook should be broadcasing info is moot now. Weather you think it was within their right or not is trumped by the fact that its user-base did not want the feature implemented. Both sides can argue until they are blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is: it was an unpopular feature that stirred up controversy.

Now, one of two things was going to happen. Either Facebook rolled back their changes hence listening to their user-base, or someone else would usurp Facebook and dominate in its place by catering to the user-base. The former happened and now the world makes a little more sense. Though I have a feeling a bunch of eager entrepreneurs have started their company to champion privacy values and against whatever else the user-base doesn't like about Facebook.

Re:Yes, a Demonstration! Like the Good Ole Days!

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest we stage a protest protesting protest protesting. Agreed.

Facebook misses the point

[kscguru]

I went onto Facebook this morning, read the open note, started to be happier ... then hit the privacy page, and was horrified.

Facebook has done exactly what Microsoft tries to do. They take a list ("don't tell people when my relationship status changes", "don't tell people when I leave a group", "don't tell people when I change an interest") and fix that list. Remind anyone of how Microsoft complied with an antitrust ruling about bundling IE and "fixed" it by shipping a tool that lets you change your default browser preference?

Facebook COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT. They fixed every gripe, but totally failed to understand my privacy concern. I don't want to read minutae about everyone else's life every time I log in; I don't want people to be reading minutae about my life (including every typo I correct) on their front page. And I would really like to NOT know that somebody I wrote a message to has rewritten most of their page but ignored my message.

Privacy is a two-way street.

1. Privacy is the world not knowing every minutae of my life.
2. Privacy is me not knowing the details of everyone else's life.

The original (US Supreme Court) right to privacy was about not getting birth control junk mail - it was about not having to read some interest group's anti-abortion snail-mail spam.

Privacy is not a laundry list of checkboxes. Privacy is not a band-aid to be applied after you totally fuck it up.

From the updated privacy settings page

[lptport1]

News Feed and Mini-Feed will never publish stories about:
* Pokes
* Messages
* Whose profile you view
* Whose photos you view
* Whose notes you read
* Groups and Events you decline to join
* People you reject as friends
* People you remove from your friends
* Notes and photos you delete

News Feed and Mini-Feed may publish stories about:
* Things you add to your profile
* Photos you upload or are tagged in
* Notes you write or are tagged in
* Groups you join or create
* Events you create or attend
* Networks you've joined
* Status updates

There are checkboxes consisting of the following:
Publish stories when I...
Remove Profile Info
Write a Wall Post
Comment on a Note
Comment on a Photo
Post on a Discussion Board
Add a Friend
Remove my Relationship Status
Leave a Group
Leave a Network

If those are not enough, there is a link that says "Have something you'd like to see here?"

Mini-Feed can show the time when stories were published.
Show times in my Mini-Feed

Round the clock coding?

[PhotoGuy]

To put in a "don't broadcast my actions" checkbox, and a bit of support code, to, well, not do that? Shouldn't be that major of an effort, although maybe their code is ugly, who knows...

illusions

[cascadingstylesheet]

>You like to THINK that you have a tight little private group,
>but that's just an illusion.

An illusion that seems to pervade the lives of many young folk, even outside the Internet.

More news flashes:

* When you talk really loudly, *everyone* can overhear you, not just the cool kids that you want to overhear you.

* When you wear that little thing (or maybe I should say "wear" that little thing), then even the nerdy and old guys will be able to see all the way to Christmas and halfway to the New Year, *not* just the guys you had in mind ... no point being offended about it :)

Its okay now

[Wiarumas]

Before, the privacy issues were out of hand. I didn't care to see who what left what group and what someone commented on someone else's picture. HOWEVER, i do like the changes now. a little news/gossip feed ain't bad in my opinion. id like to see some added pictures and/or friends to my network. especially as social as i am in college whenever one of my friends meets a new friend there is a chance that i met her too. kudos facebook. okay idea on paper.. bad idea in real life. common sense move (privacy controls).. great product now.

Security Through Obscurity

[Pinky3]

The old way, sure you were posting it on the internet, but there was a certain anonymnity to be found in the data overload of facebook.

I thought that most people on slashdot did not believe in security through obscurity. If you want to keep your information secure, then secure it, don't count on the "data overload" to protect you.

Re:Security Through Obscurity

[BecomingLumberg]

I dont care about the information being secure. I just don't want *everything* broadcast.

Consider: You get wedding announcements. Ever get a divorce announcement? No. The two involved don't care if you find out (normally) but do not go around flaunting it (if they have class).

I don't see this as a security issue, as i really don't care if everyone on Earth knows that I french kissed Kelly Kapowski. I just want to be able to pick and choose what gets sent to everyone.

Umm

[emkman]

Since you obviously don't go to UCSB, let me clue you in on two things.
1st - Facebook has already become a huge part of the social interacion of students here in the 1 year or so we have had it. Every few days we get notified by friends about upcoming parties and concerts, and it is an easy way to share pictures of say, our GIANT halloween celebration. I use my account alot, and I refuse to use MySpace(even pre-News Corp).
2nd - When you are a freshman, you really do have alot of time on your hands.
3rd - We haven't actually started class yet. Due to the crazy UC quarter system, classes don't start until Sept. 28th!

Don't give someone a hard time for making a short drive to protest something which really does affect his or her life, even if its not a huge deal in your eyes. All you guys are doing is complaining that there is something better to protest about. At best, you are protesting his actions. At worst, you are promoting complacency.

So this is what it takes.

[KingOfSnake]

Questionable war in Iraq : No big deal.
Diminishing Personal Freedoms : Whatev.
Facebook Mini-Feed Update : R.I.O.T!

Of all things, this is what people my age have chosen to be indignant about. I've seen so much energy coming from my generation in response to the fact that now they can no longer (quietly) break up with someone (while posting that information online)

I'm a facebook user, and I didn't really like the feeds a whole lot. I thought it was interesting, but that's mainly because anything that I post there I'm more than happy to let anyone see. Also, I'm not one of those people that adds as a friend that dude that I talked to that one time in that one class. Anyone that's getting info off a feed knows me. They might have taken it a step too far in having it reveal who you've added as friends and comments you make to other people. That's not really the kind of information anyone but a stalker(term used loosely) would care to know. I just think that stuff is unnecessary, but probably not worth boycotting.

It is interesting to see something get my generation motivated -- it's just kind of disheartening that it had to be something as trivial as a facebook update. The one bright side is that maybe it showed some people that you can affect change this way.

eh, probably not.

Waaaaahhh

[doesnothingwell]

Your trusted us (any corporation), ya f***ed up. It was a "smarts" test and the students FAILED it. Some things a college education can't buy, for the rest of us there's experience.

The money quote:

[mypalmike]

"No one likes having their every move watched," said Igor Hiller, 17, a recent high school graduate from Palo Alto, California. "Me and my friends are just feeling really creeped out. It's Big Brotherish."

I hope he carries a protest sign that says "Dude, I'm Like Totally Creeped Out."

Why are Slashdotters so dumb about Facebook?

[reidconti]

I simply cannot understand what Slashdotters have against Facebook. If this were a discussion about aggregating any other kind of publically-available personal information and streaming it out to people, Slashdotters would be up in arms.

I don't want all of my friends and family being told when I go to the grocery store, or who I'm hanging out with at any given moment, or what my new driver's license number is, or what time I got to work today. There is tons of information about ourselves that is, by nature public, and some that is private but we choose to make public. Often the tradeoff between what we say and do revolves around *how* public it will be.

I am careful about who I tell personal things on a sliding scale. I might not share a dark personal secret at all, or tell only a close trusted friend certain things. There are other things that I would tell a select group of people in the hopes that it would stay that way. However, we all realize that information we provide to others and put out there COULD end up on the front page of the newspaper.. but it's a balancing act.

Same goes for Facebook. Slashdotters simply cannot understand why anyone would put anything on Facebook they don't want everyone to see. Why is this so hard to understand? You post comments on Slashdot publically, but you might say something negative about your boss because you figure they *probably* won't find out -- however, you're posting with the full knowledge that he might find out, and if he does, its your problem. It's a risk you choose to take and balance.

Why is it so hard to realize that Facebook is the same way? You set your privacy settings a certain way, and post information for others to see, but there is a huge difference between changing your relationship status to single (so that anyone who looks at your profile will see it, and those who have looked before might remember you were once in a relationship), versus having everyone you allow access to your information suddenly TOLD that you broke up with someone.

The real-world analogue is telling your friends when you see them "oh, I'm single now.." or, perhaps, not admitting it until someone asks "hey, how are things going with that girl?"... versus having "Jim is now single!" broadcast into the homes of all of your friends and family.

Yes, Facebook information IS PUBLIC INFORMATION. We all get it. But the world is not black and white, and I'd expect Slashdotters, of all people, to understand the difference between publically available information and publically broadcast information.

To those who don't understand why anyone would put any information about themselves at all online: You're doing it right now. Too late. Get with the program. Your online forum registrations, your slashdot comments. Facebook is cool and fun. It's an incredible way for college students to network with each other, have fun, provide information to friends. The photo tagging feature is just beyond cool. Have you all forgotten what being social and having fun is about? Sucks to be you.

So Facebook users who find this feature creepy are protesting. They're not suing for release of private information or something stupid like that. They just want things back the way they were. If it doesn't go back to the way things were, those who don't like the new features will shrug their shoulders, and move on. Delete their profile, or make more stuff private, or whatever. There is nothing wrong with being upset about a change in the way a favorite site does things. Nobody's claiming this is illegal, they're just customers complaining. Just like if slashdot went to an all-pink color scheme. People would complain, some might leave, whatever. Would you expect to see people on other sites saying "Man those slashdotters were so stupid to trust their personal comments and entertainment to a site that might some day switch to the color pink! Haha, what a bunch of fools!" But that's precisely what most of the anti-Facebook comments on Slashdot look like. Completely uninformed and ignorant.

And, FYI, I refuse to even browse the cesspool known as Myspace.

Re:Why are Slashdotters so dumb about Facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have mod points today, so + 1 Insightful, + 1 Gets it (unlike most Slashdotters who probably never even used the site).

Re:Why are Slashdotters so dumb about Facebook?

[Darker_Raven]

"Man those slashdotters were so stupid to trust their personal comments and entertainment to a site that might some day switch to the color pink! Haha, what a bunch of fools!"

You clearly weren't here on April Fool's Day. OMG PONIES!!!

It's not about privacy!

[OO7david]

All I've been reading on /. is such memes as "if you don't want it public, don't put it up there", and yes that is completely true, and for many people that is the case. However I think the largest complaint is not about privacy, but just framed in those words.

Consider being at a restaraunt with a friend. You are at a public place, and so you really have no expectation of privacy. Now, do you expect everyone there to know about your conversation? Its not an issue of privacy because you aren't in a private place, but at the same time there is an expectation of exclusivity. If I'm talking with a friend in a public place, yes, people can eavesdrop, but I don't expect it.

The problem with the newsfeed wasn't that it was a violation of privacy, but rather that it globalized eavesdropping (per analogy). If someone wrote on the wall, that is something between them, much like the conversation in the restaraunt.

Re:It's not about privacy!

[JustinianV]

I'm going to have to disagree with your metaphor. While I agree, this has nothing to do with privacy, there is a flaw in your argument. You say writing on a person's wall is something between two people, this is not true at all. A facebook MESSAGE is something between two people. A wall post is just that, writing on the wall for ALL to see. As a longtime user of the facebook, I've commented on people's walls about how it is silly to post on a wall as if it were a private message, but then we do it anyways because we aren't concerned with other people reading it. Nothing that the Newsfeed broadcasts is anything private, unless you mistakenly posted something you intended to be private to someone's wall or to your favorites. Facebook is a very well layered system of public and private channels, as a user, you have to be attentive to which channel you are using when you communicate.

Re:It's not about privacy!

[jebjeb2000]

It seems most the people commenting on this have never used Facebook. The news channels are covering this as another "Privacy Fumble." They pick this headline because it is something most any idiot can understand. Privacy fumble is not the case here. Nobody on Facebook likes the "News Feed" feature because it ACTIVLEY BROADCASTS your information front page center. It would be as if somebody constantly followed you with a camera in public places, emailing your actions to your "friends" without asking you. It is idea that the information is PUSHED out to other users that is the issue.

Newbies...

[Duncan3]

The Facebook people, the facebook users, all of them totally acting clueless.

Welcome to the internet kids. It's PUBLIC if you put it up. Welcome to the real world Facebook, stalkers exist and people care about it - don't make it easier. Grow up all of you, oh wait, you're kids :)

In other news, Igor isn't going to be home at 4pm.

Flame-proof suit on ;)

Replace Facebook

[vaderhelmet]

There is an effort by a group of us students to create a site "By students, For students" over at http://www.replacefacebook.com/ [Replace Facebook]
Check it out and spread the word!

Re:Replace Facebook

[jebjeb2000]

this is going to fly like a bag of dead babies.

Re:Replace Facebook

[chouteb]

Replace it with Jaxtop and have control

Re:Obligatory or Why Facebook Is Pervy

[WillAffleckUW]

..well I, for one, welcome our new facebook overlords.

Hachey has befriended Facebook Overlords.
Hachey has posted an item criticizing the Dean of Law on Communist Brotherhood group Wall.
Hachey has changed their relationship from married to married but cheating - and his wife has been informed of it, since she's on Facebook.
Hachey has changed his status from Welcoming Our New Facebook Overlords to Committing Suicide After Wife Left Me. ...

Worried about privacy? Check Craigslist

[juggledean]

Actually check out the Craigslist sex baiting scandal, reported on waxy.org

Protest? some people are clueless...

[seriv]

I was not a big fan of the news feeds when they were first introduced, and I hoped that facebook would get rid of them, but I really didn't care. This whole thing seems so minor. I have been amazed at the sorts of reactions that some people made over it. It is not that big a privacy issue, and it is nothing compared to the sorts of things that already exist or are proposed. Out of all the privacy issues in the news, this one is one of the smallest, yet some have gone to great extents to protest it online, and now some goofball wants to protest it in person. It seems that true privacy issue need to be protested and fought much more, and non-issues like this simply drain away energy into frivolous drama.

Real World Protest Vs. Online Protest

[TheRavenofNight]

Wouldn't it be a more effective hit to the website if instead of doing a real-world protest, users boycotted the use of Facebook for a period of time (i.e., a week), thus costing the company thousands of dollars in precious ad-revenue? Seems like it may be more effective than standing around holding up a bunch of signs.