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****.

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 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: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:I'll never use Facebook

[TheKidWho]

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

Re:From Mark:

[ardle]

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

Did anyone save a copy of that photo?

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

[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.

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?

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.