Popularity Trumps Privacy For Many On Facebook

Hugh Pickens writes "A recent study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that adults have almost as much need for being popular on Facebook as teenagers do, and people who crave acceptance are more likely to share personal information, says Emily Christofides, lead author of the study. 'If you're someone who has your privacy settings set quite high — you don't post your birthday, you don't post what's going on in your life — you're not giving other people the opportunity to comment on those things,' says Christofides. 'You're going to find that there's less going on on your page, and you may actually feel less popular as a result.' The study also found that those with higher self-esteem are more likely to protect their personal information."

Comments

Google+

[zget]

This is also why Google+ will fail unless they get these types of people in.. And the majority of Google+'s users, those who tried to escape all the games and these users there, will be surprised. However, a social network is dead if no one is saying or sharing anything.

Re:Google+

[oldredlion]

Social people get more from a social network than Anti-Social people. Who'd a thought it!

Re:Google+

[zget]

I would personally hate if someone always called me about every mundane detail in their life. I have lots of things to do, I don't want to chit-chat in phone unless it's actually something important. However I can go to Facebook when I have time and most of my friends (you know, you can choose them and even ignore the real life friends who spam shit) post only interesting or fun stuff. Besides, how do you show photos via phone?

Social networks aren't the problem here, they're really good especially if you know people from several parts of the world or travel a lot. You just have to use them correctly.

Re:Google+

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

I'm not anti-social, I'm just misanthropic.

Re:Google+

[blair1q]

Google+ users have so much self esteem they don't even sign up.

Re:Google+

[sakdoctor]

Sorry, disagree with your last statement that social networks aren't the problem.

Facebook has some fundamental flaws, which arise from conflicts of interest between their users and their business model. Facebook don't want you to use it "correctly" as defined by the power user.
(Inb4 that trite meme about the users being the product.)

Maybe google, with it's broader product range, and less reliance on any individual product, will be able to offer a far superior product, because they don't have to cannibalize and whoring Google+ for every last penny.
Time will tell.

Re:Google+

[cayenne8]

I'm far from anti-social...

Apparently, according to the article, I just have extremely HIGH self-esteem!!!

Apparently that allows you to have privacy, and stay in contact with friends quite easily, like I've always done in the past.

Re:Google+

[Oswald McWeany]

I would personally hate if someone always called me about every mundane detail in their life. -- Sorry, just feel it necessary at this moment to point out that I am enjoying a nice cup of tea after a blissfull pee.

Re:Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

(Inb4 that trite meme about the users being the product.)

"trite meme"? That's an odd way to spell "absolute truth".

Re:Google+

[RKBA]

Exactly. I began the sign up procedure but stopped when it got to the point of asking for my real name (or something else personal, I forget).

Re:Google+

[zget]

Narcism isn't a personality disorder. There are many good things it brings to a person. You could just as well say that anyone with good self-esteem is narcistic. People seem to make up "disorders" for every kind of behavior nowadays..

Re:Google+

[fermat1313]

Exactly. I began the sign up procedure but stopped when it got to the point of asking for my real name (or something else personal, I forget).

Not sure why you're so worried about protecting your real name, Ron, considering you link straight from your Slashdot profile to your personal website with your name and photo. Are you really that concerned about your privacy, or is this just privacy theater?

Re:Google+

[blair1q]

He wants to hide from people dumb enough to think that's someone else because the name doesn't match.

Re:Google+

[Si]

Facebook is a poor implementation* != social networks are the problem.

* For the sake of argument, at least.

Re:Google+

[Deep Esophagus]

Not everyone uses social networking for that purpose. There are family and friends that are interested in changes to one another's health, jobs, interesting activities we've been pursuing, etc. Rather than individually email or phone 50 to 100 people to tell them my daughter's cat ran away or my son graduated from arrrrrrrmy training sir, I can post that on Facebook while limiting the availability of that information to a whitelist of known friends. I'm not seeking popularity any more than I tried to be "popular" by calling these same friends up on the phone -- remember when phones were used as a primitive voice chat interface? -- and asking them how they're doing. I share this information, and read theirs, because we care about one another.

And yes, I have my birthday and anniversary listed there; it's a conscious decision to find safe middle ground between absolute privacy and absolute isolation from the world. I frequently recheck my security settings to make sure FB hasn't decided to arbitrarily give my private data to some new third party and expect me to opt out, I do limit the exposure of that data to friends only, I *only* accept friend requests from people I personally know (with all but three or four, people I have met in the flesh), and I never ever play any game or other FB app because they all require you to expose your privates before you can play them.

With that in mind, I wouldn't even go so far as to say Facebook's implementation of social networking is flawed; it's the way most people use Facebook that is flawed. If everyone kept a tight rein on their data and never played those stupid privacy-defeating games and only shared relevant news with actual known friends, FB would be as safe as... well, as Slashdot. Of course, if everyone did that FB's profits would tank and they'd either shut down or find some new intrusive means of getting our data to advertisers, so I guess the stupid people fund the free access for the smart ones.

Makes sense

[DemonGenius]

The study also found that those with higher self-esteem are more likely to protect their personal information.

Pretty much sums up the driving force behind social networking. Give people a reason to actually like themselves in society and not feel like they have to be attention whores 24/7 and privacy becomes much less of an issue in the context of these sites.

Re:Makes sense

[Spectre]

I find this interesting as I subscribe to the exact opposite thought process. I am an extremely confident individual who has almost no feeling of need to justify myself to others. I could care less about what people that I don't care about think of me and I don't really care to be close to people who don't like me (though I do try to be likeable as I don't want to intentionally upset people). I could care less what people know about me and have no issue with info about me being public information. I'd rather the information be out there for people who want to find it than not have it available for people who need to find it. I don't obsess over posting every detail of my life, but I also see no reason to conceal details of my life that I do feel like commenting on.

You seem to talk about yourself a lot.

Re:Makes sense

[DemonGenius]

Doesn't that just mean you're a statistical outlier in the context of this study? This is a trend, not a mathematical equation. One contradicting piece of data doesn't disprove a trend, whereas in math, one contradicting piece of data can disprove a whole equation.

Re:Makes sense

[AJH16]

Yeah, I was not faulting the study, I was just commenting on the assessment of the previous commenter that if people had confidence they wouldn't have a reason to put their personal information out there. That said I guess we were also kind of talking about different things as he seems to have more issues with spilling a life play by play instead simply exposing personal details. I was also trying to offer a counterpoint to show a rationale of outliers on the edge of the curve even if it is non-standard.

Re:Makes sense

[DemonGenius]

I believe I said (with added emphasis):

Give people a reason to actually like themselves in society and not feel like they have to be attention whores 24/7 and privacy becomes much less of an issue in the context of these sites.

The argument was not:

... if people had confidence they wouldn't have a reason to put their personal information out there.

If you want to argue on whether or not privacy becomes less of an issue with increased self-esteem, go nuts. But don't argue on something you conjured up yourself and say that's countering my point. You're interpreting my words as you want to see them, rather than trying to understand what I was trying to say in the first place.

Social networking isn't going away whether people like themselves or not. However, when people allow themselves to be slaves to how society views them, they may weigh their popularity over any concerns of privacy. When you're confident enough to not care much about how society views you, then you leave your mind freer to prioritize over other things such as privacy.

Re:Makes sense

[Obfuscant]

I am an extremely confident individual who has almost no feeling of need to justify myself to others. I could care less about what people that I don't care about think of me...

Hmmm. A confident individual who has no clue how foolish he looks to others, or do you really mean you could care less about what others think about you? If the latter, I apologize.

Re:Makes sense

[AJH16]

Oh, I tried to post this too, but my phone died on me. The way I actually ended up reading your post, I thought you were saying is that if we as a society learned to value ourselves (individually more), then privacy issues would be less common on the sites. I was reading it as a societal thing instead of an individual priority to decision making, but your follow up made it much more clear.

Re:Makes sense

[AJH16]

I actually mean that I could care less what other people think. My valuation of myself comes from what I value, not what others value about me. The only way I care about what someone thinks is if they are close enough to me that I have given their opinion of me value. I am not unaware of what people think of me, but it doesn't define me and if they don't like me and I don't feel that their is justification to what they think myself, it won't bother me. Confidence allows someone to be more reliant on what they think of themselves and less reliant on what others think. This either makes them leaders (people who do what they do for themselves but value others) or arrogant assholes (who tromp through life not caring who they hurt because they see themselves as superior.) No matter how confident you are (atleast in my experience) you still need people close to you that you have to value what they think, but that I let what most people think about me bother me. I consider it, and evaluate for myself if I should change my behavior based on it, but it exert influence beyond my own desire to not be an ass.

How do I fit in this scenario?

[taiwanjohn]

I use Facebook daily, but I only have minimal ID info in my profile. I don't play any FB games or take any FB quizzes... basically anything that wants to access my personal info is routinely blocked. I treat FB more like a blog, I post links to some things I'm reading, and occasionally "like" or comment on friends' posts.

How "safe" (or un-) am I if I follow these rules?

Re:How do I fit in this scenario?

[waddgodd]

You fit in as a leech. And just like leeches, you're as safe, (or unsafe) as the hosts, the ones who share content with you

Re:How do I fit in this scenario?

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

Well, having a profile at all means that you are subject to Facebook's terms of service, which is not only subject to change at any time, but currently grants them the right to the information that you do post - at mininum, that comprises a map of your associations, which could easily find itself in the hands of government or law enforcement agencies should they have use for it, since you signed away the rights to this information when you signed up. By your own admission, you post about the books that you read, which happens to be a very useful resource for establishing your psychological profile and your political leanings. Facebook also has rights to the images that you post, and your posts to the site not only establish your frequency of use (another behavioural indicator), but can establish patterns of behaviour - for example, times that you are most likely to be at your computer or away from home. The Facebook terms of service provide for indefinite preservation of anything you have posted to the site since you signed up, so even the things that you choose to delete from your profile indicate the extent of your privacy savvy, or the subjects, photos, etc. which you may find embarrassing or otherwise inappropriate for public consumption. Games and quizzes only make it easier for Facebook to share your data with third parties - they have no bearing on Facebook itself, and even the limited information presented above constitutes a valuable package. You may wish to consider whether handing over, without compensation of any kind, that sort of information to a company whos CEO famously declared that privacy is an "outdated concept", is a particularly wise decision.

Re:How do I fit in this scenario?

[Deep Esophagus]

I'd be fascinated to learn what they can glean about my political leanings from my preference for Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde and the like. Of course they don't really need to look that far; they only need to see on my personal info page under political preferences where I flat-out say "They are all lying weasels."

Aaaaaaaand

[JustinFreid]

Those with no Facebook profile have the highest self esteem.

Trusting privacy to someone else

[Ironchew]

Everything on the internet is public data unless you make sure your own data is secured. While I don't feel the need to post anything and everything to social media sites, I certainly wouldn't trust any sensitive information in the hands of others under the guise of "privacy settings".

Slow Privacy Erosion

[mfh]

Privacy erosion is slow. What you do wrong today you might not notice until five years from now when you're applying for a job, or trying to get a mortgage or trying to get married. Shit you put on Facebook is the permanent record that your high-school guidance counselor warned you about.

People surrender their freedom every day when they go to work. Why wouldn't they then ALSO surrender their freedom when they are goofing off at work?

Re:Slow Privacy Erosion

[scottbomb]

This is the bullshit myth that never seems to die. Anyone who's been on FB for longer than 5 min. knows who can see what and how to adjust their settings. I have my settings such that only friends and relatives can see my posts and details. NO ONE ELSE CAN SEE THIS unless I grant them that permission.

Re:Slow Privacy Erosion

[scottbomb]

Apologies for the harsh tone. I just get so tired of people being paranoid about FB vs. their privacy.

Re:Slow Privacy Erosion

[GameboyRMH]

...or until Facebook rolls out a new "feature" that makes that info public by default.

Even if you're smart enough to keep your info protected, most users aren't.

Duh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the newsflash professor obvious!

Re:Look, I don't post personal stuff on Facebook

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

I wonder if there has ever been a study correlating social networking use with narcissistic personality disorder? (I'm not narcissistic, I just have a very high level of self-efficacy.)

Re:Look, I don't post personal stuff on Facebook

[Ironchew]

A regular on Slashdot too, I see ;)

this is true of social psychology, not technology

[circletimessquare]

people who open up the personal details of their life will have richer social lives. those who clam up will have no social life. completely true

the problem is when you inject technology into this basic social truth. now, when you open up, you aren't sharing with people who might become your friends, you are sharing with a database and a piece of algorithm optimized to extract money from you, and perhaps government interested in profiling you, and a whole manner of ways that your personal information can be used in completely impersonal ways that a bunch of people are busy furiously inventing

so an invitation to a social life, with technology as the interface, is now an invitation to have your personal life defiled and raped. by which i mean, there is nothing personal about your life anymore at all

therefore, it is wise to clam up, when technology is the interface in which this social process is happening

in traditional real world social interaction, it is still wiser to open up

Re:It's meaningless

[MozeeToby]

I agree with you, that the concept of privacy for our day to day actions is dead. However, until the rest of the world catches up in a moral and ethical sense, it still pays to put the effort into keeping things you want private to be private.

Should it really matter to my boss if I sleep around/get hammered/love comic books? No, but there are enough self appointed moral guardians and just general 'holier than thou' (and the nearly bad 'cooler than thou') that posting any of those things can damage your career. Until society realizes that any non-harmful behavior should, by default be acceptable it's best if you do your best, even if it won't be 100% effective, to hide the inane details of your life as much as possible.

Re:this is true of social psychology, not technolo

[circletimessquare]

just so you know, i don't want you disappointing me, i'm depending on you

in 20 years, i still want you attaching these comments to mine on slashdot

don't you dare fail me! i need you!

The only winning move

[Anonymous Coward]

...is not to play.

Facebook 101

[v(*_*)vvvv]

From the conclusion:

"Self-esteem increases with age, and those with a higher self-esteem are more likely to protect their personal information".

So it says those "are more likely" but not that "self-esteem causes". In other words, this sentence is made to sound like there is a connection, but avoids claiming there is a causal one. It is only saying "with age people are more private". Well, that directly contradicts "kids and adults are similar."

Secondly, this is an online survey. What kind of online user fills out online surveys these days anyway? Did they enter thinking they'd "win" a free iPad? Savvy adults rarely do surveys, or facebook surveys for that matter.

Thirdly, the study doesn't consider the subject's understanding of facebook, the default settings or how to change settings on facebook. Do they know their faces appear on sites they Like if the sites adds a facebook widget? Or that Everyone can see their friends and photos by default? Or how facebook shares their information?

This study SUCKS.

wrong

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

Just to provide a single obvious example, Mark Zuckerberg can look at your posts anytime he wants.

News at 11

[Johnny Mnemonic]

This is why Google+ will fail. FB understands this, Google doesn't. And I don't think most folks on Slashdot, do, either.

Really, Facebook is a more of a female social vehicle. If you're not female, I think you'll have trouble getting it. Women, as a general rule, are a lot less private than men.

Frankly--I don't get it, mostly. I work at Facebook. I was leery of the job offer. Then I realized that my wife spends all damn day on Facebook. And that there are lot more women in the world like her than there are men in the world like me. I don't care for people to know things about me, and if someone knows my birthday I wonder why they care. However, my wife wants to share. The more people that know more about her, the better.

The fact that FB was created by a (male) borderline Aspie geek is ironic, but has probably led to the deconstruction of FB privacy barriers too--he just doesn't understand why people would feel like they need to be private. And in the internet age, he has a point--there isn't much privacy left anyways, like it or not. G+ knew things about me that I hadn't explicitly told it, like which cities I've lived in over the last 10 years. At least FB only knows things that you have chosen to share of your own will.

Re:News at 11

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

If I was the world's youngest billionaire, I'd probably feel better about sharing the details of my life too.

Re:News at 11

[Slash.research_Kat]

Agreed that FB is a social vehicle, it's used by extroverts of both genders. They tend to enjoy social attention more than introverts. Maybe G+ would be better suited for those who are less extroverted and wants to post things without turning them into social chatter, which FB seems to be pretty good at.

Re:It's meaningless

[GameboyRMH]

So, you drank Zuckerberg's kool-aid...

Re:Good to know

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

Not to worry - you're significantly more popular now that I stole your credit cards and used them to pay the stalkers that are now surrounding your house.

Re:

[taiwanjohn]

Define leech. A leech's safety is not dependent on the host. Even if the host dies, the leech can simply find a new host.

I don't publish info on FB that doesn't already exist in the phone book. I'm not in a position to worry much about photos. I've restricted my privacy settings to "friends only" for most things (not friends of friends).

The only thing I'm worried about is the "Truth Game," which allows my "friends" to answer questions about me. I never "opted-in" to this system, but my "friends" are still allowed to comment on me without my permission. I reckon my "friends" aren't saying anything catastrophic, but I'd rather not participate at all. But thus far I have not found any way to opt-out. This is the sort of thing that makes me doubt the safety of Facebook.

Pseudonyms

[Daetrin]

This is why pseudonyms are good. I never post anything on Facebook because i care about my privacy. One sites where i can mask my public presence with a pseudonym i post quite a lot of stuff. I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and say "people who give up their privacy so they can try to be popular on Facebook" are losers, i just think there's no good reason why we can't have the options of choosing both privacy _and_ popularity/posting.

They've got it backwards

[cwiegmann24]

There's some people in the world who crave acceptance because, to be honest, they're socially awkward. They seem to lack certain social skills that others take for granted. Those people are the ones who feel the need to post about everything they do, where they are, etc. I know some of these people, and they're a pain in the butt to see on your facebook news feed, because they dominate it. Seeing all of those posts makes you want to de-friend them, or at least block their posts from your feed. Thus the person feels neglected, which causes them to seek more attention, creating more posts about stuff no one cares about. It is a cycle of social ineptitude, and that is the cause behind this study's findings.

I use my FB

[rsilvergun]

mostly for posts about my programming projects (mostly my Firefox Plugin, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/), so privacy is a non issue. I'm just careful about what info I give FB.

This hits close to home

[pokerdad]

I must admit I feel very lonely watching all my friends get scores of birthday wishes every year, and I get one (from my wife, who I then scold because she knows I purposefully hide my birthday on FB) Not only do I get very jealous, but seeing as about half my friends are either in IT or engineering and none of them seem to think twice about having their birthday be public, makes me wonder if my fears of a public birthday are misplaced.

Re:This hits close to home

[SemperUbi]

Not at all. No way would I ever put my real birthday on a website; too tempting for identity thieves.

Re:This hits close to home

[Rinnon]

You won't think that way at all when one of your friends becomes a victim of identity theft. The single most common thing to be asked to verify your identity is your date of birth. Be glad you keep it under wraps.

Re:This hits close to home

[Slash.research_Kat]

you could post a fake birthday :)

Re:This hits close to home

[coolmadsi]

you could post a fake birthday :)

I remember a friend of mine changed his birthday on Facebook, sometime in March I think.

Come April 1st he had a lot of people wishing him happy birthday, and he had a good laugh (I was a little bemused as I remembered his birthday from a few months before, until I realsed what the date was)

One interesting thing to take from that is that there are people on Facebook who will just check whose birthdays Facebook is saying it is and send a message, regardless of if they have spoken to them at all recently (or since their last birthday message), and regardless of whether it is actually their birthday or not.

It's not the marketing that bothers me

[fyngyrz]

I think it's fair to say I'm an extrovert -- I have a blog where I post things of interest to me and answer questions; I welcome decent quality remarks (I simply remove low-level gibbering before it ever sees the light of day), I have yet another personal website from the pre-blog days, I've released a fair number of PD software efforts (not GPL... GPL is da debbil), and I have a healthy social life at home. I stay in contact with my old friends (and I always have... I tend not to lose track of people I think are worth my time.) I run the key genealogy site for my family (thousands of detailed records and some very neat tech, too), have some free service efforts like this one... and you can find my posts all over the web, including here, I'm not in the least afraid to put my opinion out there (laughs a bit ruefully...)

And I have zero interest in joining facebook. I kind of like the idea of Google's "circles", but I have zero interest in joining them, either. Part of it is the low quality of interaction I've seen on facebook (I think Google might be able to avoid this with those circles, but I'm just guessing... no experience); but the most important part of it is being annoyed, and I mean really annoyed, that these sites won't "allow" anonymity, which I consider a cornerstone of both free speech and free association. Facebook also has some items in their TOS that I find distasteful and unnecessary, part of the "save the children" witch-hunt. I've not (yet) seen that from Google, though frankly I expect to any day now.

It's also fair to say I enjoy high self-esteem. But that's not why I avoid facebook and Google+. I avoid them because in ways important to me, I see them as damaging society, ostracizing and marginalizing people who might very well make important social use of the service. That's their right, but it is also mine to say "I'm not going there under those conditions."

Re:

[Deep Esophagus]

That game (and many others like it) is a meme virus, and it exists *solely* for the purpose of getting access to your personal data. The questions themselves aren't at all revealing -- "what is taiwanjohn's favorite color?" "did taiwanjohn take a bath today?" (I'm not kidding, I saw that one come up when I first thought those were real questions with real answers, and allowed the stupid app to access my data so I could read the answers). The point of the exercise is that you don't KNOW what question your friends answered about you unless you follow the bazillion click-throughs to "unlock" their answers, which of course gives the app full license to run rampant across your privacy. If you're gullible enough to do that, you'll also likely obey its demands that you answer an equally meaningless question about one of your friends, just so it can post the bait on their page ("taiwanjohn answered a question about deepesophagus! click here to unlock taiwanjohn's answer!") and the cycle begins anew.

That said, I haven't dared to unlock answers and look at what the app is encouraging people to answer about me in a few years. For all I know they have stopped bothering with innocuous questions and now come right out and ask: "What is taiwanjohn's birthday?" "what was deepesophagus' mother's maiden name?"

Re:

[coolmadsi]

The only thing I'm worried about is the "Truth Game," which allows my "friends" to answer questions about me. I never "opted-in" to this system, but my "friends" are still allowed to comment on me without my permission. I reckon my "friends" aren't saying anything catastrophic, but I'd rather not participate at all. But thus far I have not found any way to opt-out. This is the sort of thing that makes me doubt the safety of Facebook.

Have you tried turning off platform apps (i.e. turn off all platform apps)? If you have it off, I believe that your friends applications will not have access to your name at all, so they will not be able to invite you to anything, or answer a question about you, as you will not appear in the list of friends that the application has access to (I think turning off platform apps prevents all applications from having any of your information - including your friends apps). I have them turned off, and do not remember having any question being answered about me (but have seen the type of app you are talking about on other friends walls).