Slashdot Mirror
Google Starts Indexing Facebook Comments
First time accepted submitter SharkLaser writes "Users of Facebook Connect have previously enjoyed extra privacy as it was harder for Google to index comments made on the platform. Google, which also runs the competing service Google+, has now started indexing Facebook's public comments as well as comments made on platforms Disqus and Intense Debate, which all used programming that was hard for Google to read. Public comments and links made on those platforms will now be directly visible and searchable in Google."
Hey guys, where else can we find more drivel to dilute our search results?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Forget TFA, I stopped reading the summary after "Users of Facebook Connect have previously enjoyed extra privacy..."
The Slaves of Corporate Big Brother have also enjoyed extra silent company.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Yes, it couldn't possibly be useful to anyone else for any reason. (rolls eyes)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
The fact that it's only "public comments" killed that emotion.
I hate it when the information I post on a publicly readable service isn't private.
Looks like I picked a good time to quit facebook. :)
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Posting a comment publicly means you have no problem with who sees it or how it's used. "Available to all" is the definition of "public". This is like shouting on a street corner and getting mad at someone listening!
If you're posting publically about things that future employers might feel would make you unsuitable for a position in their company, then you deserve anything you get.
Maybe those people shouldn't have publicly posted information that would tank their job applications if read by potential employers. I have never understood the mindset that what you post on Facebook is Facebook's (or Google's) fault.
It sounds like Facebook, Disqus, etc., used to use "programming" that made it hard for Google to index them. Apparently, that has changed. So... is this a change by Google or by the comment platforms? It sounds like it's the comment platform that changed, not Google.
Why blame Google, again?
For that matter... if you post something publically (public comments, not private/friends-only)... why should you expect that it won't be indexed?
I'm just not seeing the reason for rage here.
Google starts to index an additional source of publicly available content.
or in other words,
nothing at all has happened.
This should be tagged !story.
This is more like having a discussion in a coffee shop and having 1000 random people write it down everything you said.
Google's job is to analyze the content of a web page to make it as relevant as possible to people searching for that information. The fact that the public facebook comments are rendered in javascript shouldn't mean anything to that mission. If there is information publicly available and that information is relevant to someone search, Google aims to lead the searcher to the information.
No one ever said that a search engine should merely parse html. That's how it started, because that's the easiest way to get at the content. It's up to google to get that content and then figure out how important it is for a given query. A little innovation doesn't make this sinister.
If the content were private and google were circumventing securities to get at it, I would share in the outrage for sure. This is just technology catching up in a fast changing environment.
Historically, Facebook hasn't had any problem deciding that was once private is now public. Lots of people have posted stuff that was private, but is now public.
On top of that, Facebook hasn't exactly tried very hard to make their privacy settings understandable or accessible. I'm sure lots of normal people (ie those not reading Slashdot) would be surprised just how public their lives are.
Maybe it's more like having a casual conversation with a friend at a bar which is heard by someone miles away and years in the future.
As long as this drivel isn't included in my search results by default, I don't really mind it at all.
This effectively makes semi-private posts (those set to viewable by friends only (or certain groups)) to completely public. That is the breach.
There should be a reasonable expectation that those are not indexed and given to people they were not meant for.
Yes. Like religious and political leanings, your position on right to work, and worker's rights - anyone who reveals things an employer might not agree with deserves to get fired and never ever work again.
This is more like having a discussion in a coffee shop and having 1000 random people write it down everything you said.
This failed analogy underscores that people do not understand privacy and demonstrates why Facebook thrives.
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The problem is not that you use your real info on FaceBook. That was the intent of the customers. It was a way to walk easily with friends, family and other relationships. Have an account for that sort of thing and have one for a public face. You just need to remember that you are being watched online now. Gone is the anonymous for the average user. It was always a false sense of security.
The problem is that we had grown use to an anonymous community. The digital era is being driven back to small rural community level Jante Law by corporations and governments wanting to know what is up for various motives. This brings me.... bah.
Screw it, my real name brings up two pages of Google results of some fifty year old hobo and his series of alcohol fueled. You have to go five pages down to find a single image of my in a Google Search. Any public Facebook comment I make would likely only improve my reputation at this point.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
From TFA:
Previously, search engines were unable to read comments because Facebook, Disqus and Intense Debate used programming that was not easy to read automatically.
The comments appear as human-readable HTML.
If a person can read the comments, a search engine can also easily read & index them.
TFA provides no sources or references to support their claim that this comment-indexing is something new.
Google's servers have been indexing Facebook comments from the beginning of Facebook. Whether those comments played a significant role in the pageranking algorithm is another matter.
Does Facebook have any recourse if Google explicitly ignores the robots.txt for their site as well as the site scraping TOS, http://www.facebook.com/apps/site_scraping_tos_terms.php?
Yes. Facebook suspended Google's account.
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Here's what's funny. Everyone said, "Facebook will crush Google+ by copying its public posting ability!"
Yet, Google was sitting there the whole time going, "Please copy us! Please! Please! Please!"
I8-D
1.) Google indexes Facebook comments 2.) Facebook comments become #1 target for spammers worldwide 3.) Facebook becomes a diluted, email-esque spam haven.... 4.) ...driving all users to Google+, since they - conspicuously - don't index their comments.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
PageRank worked for almost a decade because it lists results from popular sites before obscure sites.
The internet has changed.
Nowadays, Google is great if you're looking for popular stuff like lolcats, memes, angry blogs, discussion forums full of questions and no answers, or corporate propaganda from the 10,000 websites owned by the 10 largest companies in the world.
But for anything else, you can search for days without finding the good stuff. Google is less useful to me at this point than IRC, because if you find someone who knows your topic area, you can find the expert-level sites from that person.
Futurist Traditionalism
So this is just for Facebook Connect? Like if you post a comment to an article on a 3rd party site that allows you to post via your Facebook account?
I figured it was search engine usable, after all it is public. But it is good for people to be aware all the same that someone searching your name on Google will be seeing your posted comments very quickly if you used Facebook to post it (depending on your name). Using Facebook Connect to do that does a lot more than just let you post a comment.
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
This becoming more and more of a problem for the traditional social views of those who still believe some activities are sinful and harmful to society, but which are now politically correct to such an extent that being known to have such views, even without expressing them in the workplace, can be grounds for sanctions. I have stopped using FB for sharing deep beliefs with others who think similarly because of this - I have no idea where the postings will show up. Yes, this is a persecution complex that this "new Age" fosters - enjoy your ascendancy.
Yeah how dare anyone do anything or have views on issues contrary to what the corporate overlords approves of. That's downright treasonous and more than worthy of you getting a lifetime blacklist.
Or, you know, these employers could just get their noses out of people's affairs that have nothing to do with their job?
If you have your casual conversation over unencrypted, megawatt-boosted ham radios.
I use fb as a basic blog and make my Notes public. I have no problem with them being searchable. After all, only people with a fb account can comment.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Do you think that it is always obvious what information will hurt your chances of employment? You are probably thinking of photo albums of binge drinking and nudity, but what about views on social policy that the employer may not agree with? What about one poorly thought-out post, rethought and deleted a couple of days later, but cached forever? What about having a hobby that the employer views as frivolous? Not all information is parsed in an objective manner, even when people are trying to arrive at an objective result (e.g., who is the best candidate for this position?)
Nobody is blaming Facebook or Google for what they posted. What they blame Google and Facebook for doing is publishing it in unexpected ways.
Well yeah, if you record that conversation, and knowingly sprinkling the tapes all across the world for, *literally* anyone to access, forever.
You don't have to post *publicly*...if you do post *publicly* then know that what you post is *public*.
Seriously man?
From the article:
"The update means links featured in comments will also enhance websites' standing.
Social is bad for search, and search is bad for social. Every attempt by a major search engine to use social signals has been heavily spammed. Social spamming is cheaper and easier than creating link farms - the social sites host the spam for free.
Google Places was hit hard starting in October 2010, when Places results were mixed in with web search results. It happened fast - within two months, Google Places was choked with spam, with both phony locations and phony reviews. This was so bad that the mainstream press picked up on it, and Google had to deemphasize "places" results. You don't hear Google talking about "local" as much as they did a year ago.
Citysearch and Yelp are choked with spam reviews. Google +"1"s are for sale for about $0.15 to $0.25 each. Facebook fans cost about $0-05 each. Google's "real names" policy was an attempt to crack down on phony accounts, but it didn't work. You can buy phone and email verified Google accounts in bulk. There are rogue phone services that help with the fake phone numbers.
Using social signals for search has reduced search quality and jammed social sites with junk that's only read by search spiders. Facebook (which has to allow Google to do this) just set themselves up for an influx of junk. And Google just reduced their search quality again.
There are useful social signals for search, but they come from systems that see transactions and actually know who bought something, like Amazon, eBay, and Visa International. Even those can be spammed; you can buy an old eBay account, change the name, and inherit the old reputation.
Yes, they make it public that google is doing it.
Yeah, thats their recourse. It should be enough to stop google from doing it. If they still dont stop, facebook can start throttling request per IP, block all known google address spaces, etc.
I'm honestly sick of analogies like this. Google isn't writing it down. You wrote it down, and a Google-bot walked by, noticed it, and made a mental note of where to find it later, in case anyone asked.
Google is less of a shady private investigator and more of a shady information broker--only instead of hanging out in a creepy back alley and only dealing with scumbags, they hang out front and center in the middle of town and make it much easier for pretty much everyone to lead their lives.
If it is on the PUBLIC internet, then it is PUBLIC, regardless of what you or anyone else says.
If you remember this, then there is no problem with privacy as you understand that the INTERNET is not PRIVATE ... ever.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
robots.txt means nothing. The bot CAN ignore it.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
If you (1) intentionally post something online in a way that the entire world can see and (2) also expect portions of the world to disregard it in making a decision about you, the problem is with you.
If you're posting publically about things that future employers might feel would make you unsuitable for a position in their company, then you deserve anything you get.
Problem is, what is to determine the tastes of future employers for public speech. Say, for example, I post negative things about a proprietary technology that then becomes ubiquitous (ie, skype, twitter, twilio, etc). What about political speech?
Sure you can post anonymously or pseudonymously, but speech/text can easily be analyzed for patterns to match against a known good source.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Amen. I once posted on Facebook, without mentioning my employer by name, how annoyed I was to be shafted for overtime. Not just overtime, I wasn't getting paid at all. "Private" post, but my employer had cornered a friend into showing them my wall.
My employer was going to fire me for disparaging the workplace and insubordination.
I mentioned I was surprised they were so upset, and how I was glad how I hadn't posted anything about how they talk about niggers and play grabass all day.
Still have a job. Don't like it, but you gotta do what you can these days. Doing much more anonymous posting now.
This should remind people that posting their opinions on controversial topics under their "real names" decreases their chances to get a job.
Zuckerberg's idea of "single personality" makes it hard to separate professional and personal attitude.
Coding etudes
Similarly, anybody who searches on my real name is going to find out an awful lot about a TV presenter who's from a different English-speaking country than I am.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The whole thing about Facebook, or Slashdot, is that they are evocative of a community... and having another site like Google or anyone else barge in and harvest what is something akin to a chat, and save it for ten thousand years, is bullshit.
This is my sig.
If you're posting publically about things that future employers might feel would make you unsuitable for a position in their company, then you deserve anything you get.
Do you? I can understand why employers might do it, but shit, how far do you take it? Do you keep absolutely everything that's even slightly left-field private in fear of what employers think of you? If you can't share your life, as provocative or dull as it may be, what's the fucking point?
I think the trend of employers not considering you for a position based on your god-damned facebook profile is a sad commentary on the overwhelming level of employer power, not any failing on part of the individual.
Yes. Same as any other site that is being scraped by a bot that isn't respecting robots.txt.
Detect its user agent and feed it error pages (or even fake data).
If the bot starts spoofing a different user agent, detect its IP address.
And if the bot is operating off a botnet and IP detection fails, you'll have to use heuristic-style methods if you want to detect it. You might just plain be SOL.
Agreed, a car with a breathalyzer analogy would have been more appropriate.
- somehow.
http://xkcd.com/137/
That is all.
That's just downright evil.
If only they had done that and fired you over facebook you'd then have grounds for wrongful dismissal!
Hang on, so If i told my beloved over dinner how much i hated my job would that be disparaging the workplace?
If I at home came up with a new CV and asked a friend to pass it on to his boss at his work would that be insubordination?
Do people really think like that?
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -