Facebook Founder's Pictures Go Public

jamie passes along a Newsfactor piece that begins "In a not-uncommon development for the social-networking leader, Facebook's recently released privacy controls are leaving the company a bit red-faced. As a result of a new policy that by default makes users' profiles, photos, and friends lists available on the Web, almost 300 personal photos of founder Mark Zuckerberg became publicly available, a development that had gossip sites like Gawker yukking it up."

Comments

Karma.

[SilverHatHacker]

It's a b****.

Re:Karma.

[phantomfive]

It would have been if he'd had any pictures that happened to be embarrassing. Instead the most personal thing on there is probably that he's going to visit a facebook company party soon. Woohoo. I was hoping for pictures of Mark drunk with writing or Mark doing a keg stand or something. With the stuff up there that he has, he may very well have left it public on purpose.

Re:Karma.

[mwvdlee]

My guess is it's fake.

They either had the choice of (A) cleaning up his profile and "accidentily" making it public or (B) setting his profile private by default thereby admitting it's a bad idea to make profiles public by default.

Obviously there's choice (C) of making profiles private by default, but the marketing people probably didn't like people having privacy.

The lesson is simple; never trust any company to keep your stuff private.

Re:Karma.

[antek9]

That should be all the rage on Fark over the next days.

Re:Karma.

[awehttam]

Which is apparently what he did.

http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)

Re:Karma.

[Rogerborg]

Yup. Number of people dumb enough to believe what he said rather than what he did: one, apparently.

I'm trying to figure out why he'd post such a ludicrous and trivially disprovable assertion. Either he's trying to own another news cycle, he really is that dumb, or he thinks that his customers really are that dumb.

Re:Karma.

[hyartep]

just as I've thought:
1) It was intentional.
2) It is his "public" profile.

Re:Karma.

[awehttam]

Yup, I believe it's zuck as well. Same statement, different walls.

From Mark:

[Anonymous Coward]

"For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"

Re:From Mark:

[Khyber]

BULLSHIT.

He set his shit to private, it got exposed, he said "I meant to do that" and then most everything went private again.

Give me a fucking break. He got caught with his pants down and egg on his face.

Re:From Mark:

[ardle]

He got caught with his pants down and egg on his face

Did anyone save a copy of that photo?

Re:From Mark:

[Dahamma]

Well, he originally had hundreds of photos on his public profile, and now there are about a dozen.

So either he was bitten by the profile privacy issue everyone is talking about, or he did it intentionally and then changed his mind. The first means he was confused by it, and the second means he doesn't think the default settings were appropriate after all. Which is is?

too funny

[pertelote]

I have spent the best part of the week trying to adjust my facebook profile to some level of discreteness that I am comfortable with. Have been very unhappy with the "all or nothing" choices, and have started just simply deleting content. I feel a little better, because now I am sure the settings will get some fine-tuning.

Just for fun:
http://www.facebook.com/pertelote

And this is after I have locked down as much as I can without insulting my family and classmates.

Re:too funny

[gleffler]

Actually, it isn't. If you go to the URL of the friends list, you can view anybody's friends list.

See http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=zuck even though if you go to http://facebook.com/zuck, there's no way to view his friends list.

Re:too funny

[Gizzmonic]

If she has any level of discreteness, then certainly she be divided into a single entity!

Re:too funny

[FlyMysticalDJ]

This scandal must have had a big effect on Mark's social life because I went to http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=markzuckerberg and it plainly told me: "Mark has no friends."

Re:too funny

[Culture20]

I am seeing that most of slashdot is now on facebook, which is totally sad. I can't reply to everyone, so I had to pick someone, and that was you, congratulations!. Here it goes:

You use Facebook? What a faggot.

There, I feel much better now.

Someone's totally going to troll you on usenet for having an account on /.

Re:too funny

[Anci3nt of Days]

except Tom.

Re:too funny

[Nocterro]

Actually, it isn't. If you go to the URL of the friends list, you can view anybody's friends list.

Interesting? -1, Wrong. If your profile is not set to be searchable, that information is unavailable.

Coincidentally, I've taken five minutes to set my privacy settings correctly and have only praise for the increased granularity now available. What percentage of those complaining here have ever used facebook anyway?

Ok so where are the pictures?

[areusche]

I clicked the link in the summary and I didn't find any pictures. So after a quick search I found this http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-private-photos-2009-12#with-girlfriend-priscilla-chan-from-her-album-moments-have-you-seen-a-sweeter-thing-today-probably-not-1 Enjoy!

Re:I'll never use Facebook

[bkpark]

I am really worried about the fact that Facebook has access to data such as people's real name (that's the point of it, right?)

Um, no it doesn't. It has no real name verification mechanism, so if you are like me and you go by a nickname among your friends, you can register using a nickname. I think at some point they changed it so that you couldn't change the name easily once you register ('didn't used to be that way in its first year), but if you start out with a pseudonym, they don't stop you.

As for other infos, well, use TOR and litter your profile (and friend list) with a lot of false information so that they cannot separate the truth from lie.

Or, as you said, don't use Facebook.

He should've left them public

[Karganeth]

He definitely should have left them public. He should've made it look as though he meant to do that and left them on. Somebody will have downloaded them all anyway.

Um, he did it ON PURPOSE

[swein515]

"For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"

http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg

Re:Um, he did it ON PURPOSE

[Tacvek]

http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg is a Facebook Page about Mark, that he runs, which allows people to become "fans" of him. His Profile is at http://www.facebook.com/zuck, although either he removed his photos, or Facebook is glitching again. More damning is the fact that he appears to have hidden his friend's list, unless that is part of the glitch.

Re:Um, he did it ON PURPOSE

[Tacvek]

Damnit, s/friend's/friends/.

Also for clarification the reason why the missing friend's list is damning is because hiding the friends list is one of the options that was removed.

he meant to do it, then had the pictures removed

[Mr.Zuka]

I think it says a lot about his personality that he posted to his newsfeed that he meant to post the pictures, then somehow the pictures mysteriously disappear. Kind of scary with an ego that he can't admit to a mistake that small. If there ever was a security breach would facebook ever admit to it?

DID NOT WANT

[phantomcircuit]

Note to self: think before clicking links to private pictures of nerd.

Re:I'll never use Facebook

[TheKidWho]

Facebook is the government database the government never had but wishes they did.

Re:he meant to do it, then had the pictures remove

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's par for the course, isn't it? Naive "I have nothing to hide" never lasts long when the attention comes. Even people who are in the showbiz don't want everybody rummaging around in their private lives. Can you imagine how Zuckerberg's friends reacted to that kind of scrutiny?

my facebook status this past thursday reads

[weirdcrashingnoises]

[name] dislikes facebook's new privacy alert that by default would have made my facebook LESS secure... *rolleyes*

Today's status update is a link to this article with my comment "Oh, the irony!"

Poor choice of defaults

[StuartHankins]

Any system which defaults to "share everything" is a fail. You should never have to opt-out, only opt-in, to release data. Otherwise it's way too easy to screw up and show something private to everyone (as in this example).

Re:Poor choice of defaults

[TejWC]

Oh, this default is even worse than most people could have imagined!

For example, lets say you go to a party and a "friend" of yours takes a picture of you doing something that looks rather scandalous because you are drunk. And then, your friend uploads the pic to Facebook and tags your name to it. You realize you have been tagged in the photo and you don't want other people to see it. So you untag yourself and send a message to your friend to delete it. However, your friend either doesn't go on Facebook very often or doesn't check Facebook messages so the photo is still up there and there is nothing you can really do about it except pray that nobody else stumbles upon it.

And then suddenly Facebook decides to make everybody's photos Public to anybody. Now this bad photo of you is available to everybody and there is nothing you can do about it except call your other friends in order to get the cell phone number of the guy that took your picture.

Yeah, this default sucks real bad.

Re:Poor choice of defaults

[MWoody]

Any system wherein you upload pictures for the world to see is fail for not assuming that's what you want to do? We're not talking an OS or web server here; it's a social site.

I have to ask: if you have private pictures, why are they online?

Re:Poor choice of defaults

[Eskarel]

I wish people would stop making the assumption that because someone shares something on facebook they want to share it with the world.

There are levels of privacy and sharing between telling everyone everything and hiding in a secure lead lined bunker somewhere. I might want to share pictures of my kid with my friends and family who live in other states and other countries without wanting to share that photo with the entire rest of the world.

The reason for using a social site is to allow you to exchange information in a controlled way. If I wanted to just share information with the world I'd stick it up on a public facing web page and let google find it. The problem is that Mark Zuckerberg is an idiot and presumes exactly like you do, that because I want to show my mother her grandchild that I want to share that same information with him and everyone else. Guess what I don't.

I know that the social networking evangalists seem to think that everyone should be metaphorically naked for the world to see and we'd all get along better, and the tin foil hat brigade thinks we should never give our real names even to our spouses, but a lot of times, people want somewhere in the middle.

Re:Poor choice of defaults

[spire3661]

And i wish people like you would stop assuming that you have a level of privacy when you send your stuff to third parties. Unless you have a privacy service agreement with every link in the chain with every provider between here and the person the information was intended for, presume it to be non-private henceforth.

Re:Poor choice of defaults

[Archangel Michael]

I wish people would stop making the assumption that things on the web are private. WORLD WIDE WEB is called that for a reason.

There are no "levels" of privacy on the web. There is only "more or less secure", and Facebook is anything but "secure".

And if you don't directly control it, you don't have control over it.

SO, you see, you're just wrong.

Re:Eh?

[sopssa]

That's MySpace, and it wasn't CEO of MySpace you were friends with.

What am I missing?

[BlueWaterBaboonFarm]

This is an honest question. I've seen numerous stories about how terrible Facebook's privacy setting are but I just don't understand what is wrong. I've made a dummy account with the same settings as my personal Facebook account. Tell me what you can find out about "Billy Slashdot Perkins". The answer is nothing as far as I can tell. Searching for him on Google or Facebook gives no results as far as I can tell.

As far as I can tell there are two options for privacy on Facebook

(1) Be 'searchable' which means some information about yourself should be included otherwise the search is useless

(2) Not be 'searchable'. Everything you have is private and between you and the friends you have

I have option (1) and I haven't had any problems with it yet.

Please tell me specifically what it is about Facebook that is violating your privacy?

Re:What am I missing?

[/dev/trash]

You have to be like 20 and want to share all your drinking pics with all your loser friends but your boss is like 30 and he's not into that shit, so he'll fire ya if he ever found all those drinking pics.

Re:What am I missing?

[sheriff_p]

Hey buddy,

I have my account on the highest level of lock-down. However, if you get the URL to my profile, or you're a friend of a friend, you can still see (and I can't block this):

- My friend list, in its entirety
- Pages of which I'm a fan
- Profile photo
- An option to send me a friend request
- Some other stuff

None of which I wanted. My circumstances are somewhat special, because not everyone needs or wants this level of security, but I do, and I used to have it, and now it's gone away.

-P

Re:What am I missing?

[chialea]

Go to your profile and hit the little pencil icon next to it. You can hide your friends list from there. (Thanks to another /. commenter, who pointed this out to me.)

BTW, make sure you lock down the settings on what your friends' apps can see, unless you trust them not to accidentally add malware.

Re:I'll never use Facebook

[Jugalator]

True that. Imagine knowing my personal friend network, something that is unattainable to discover without Facebook, and most importantly, that I enjoy Buffy and is looking forward to Guild Wars 2, and make subtle sex jokes in my log when I'm sexually frustrated from having a distance relationship. This is like a new golden age of useful information.

Re:It's too hard to manage privacy on Facebook

[srjh]

Actually, there's a "Preview my profile" in the privacy settings - it shows you what the general public sees and you can modify it so that it shows you what any specific person sees.

Not sure how long they've had that, but I got a nasty surprise the first time I used that, having previously thought my profile was locked down pretty tightly.

This last debacle was pretty disgraceful, though - sending out a message telling everyone they should change to the "recommended" setting of making everything public by default and even calling private settings "old facebook" rather than actually describing them as what they were. For some reason they still don't realise they're not Twitter.

Re:I'll never use Facebook

[MagusSlurpy]

I have a profile for an inflatable sex pig, with a name clearly implying it's a sex pig, and a photo of the pig for the profile pic. They aren't completely on the ball. I also have a profile for a character from a very popular book series, and the profile pic is a still from one of the film adaptations, and both of these profiles have existed for over two years.

Re:I'll never use Facebook

[Random Destruction]

Indeed, I'm friends with a stuffed animal, inanimate carbon rod, a car, and jesus, and I run a profile for a robot.

They are nowhere near on the ball.

Sadly my hypercube got its profile deleted.

Things I love...

[nilbog]

I love it when I read a story about another story that is all about photos, yet neither story contains or links to any.

Re:I'll never use Facebook

[jeffasselin]

I don't even need Facebook for that, I can get it from your Slashdot profile now!

Re:It's too hard to manage privacy on Facebook

[complete loony]

When I hovered my mouse of the "old facebook" a tooltip was displayed that showed what the old setting was. But still, not very obvious.

Re:You can't see his friend list now either!!!

[colfer]

Removing your friends from public view is possible. Instead of privacy settings, just go to your profile and click the pencil icon that magically appears next to "Friends" when you mouse-over. Terrible UI to have this stuff split up and not explained.

Facebook has no privacy anymore

[Psx29]

You used to be able to exclude yourself from the system. Now you can't even opt out of the Facebook API, there is information that is accessible to 3rd party developers as long as your friends install an app. Used to be you could opt out of it though. After this whole debacle I ended up requesting deletion of my facebook account, which should be processed in 10 days.

Google Wave

[JNSL]

We all know that Facebook is afraid of Wave. Now why don't they behave like it?

problem with your post

[commodoresloat]

I love that too! But I can't find the link to become a fan of things like this?

Re:Who cares

[SpooForBrains]

Because the sample of everyone that you know clearly represents the entirety of society.

I am married, happily, with children. I have a healthy circle of Actual Real Life Friends. I also have a healthy circle of online friends, with whom I converse frequently (usually daily), share parenthood stories, exchange photos, and generally have a Gay Old Time(tm). And that's not even including the overlap between those Real Life Friends and the Online friends.

The Internet is many different things to many different people, and what's true for you is not necessarily true for everyone else.