Slashdot Mirror
Facebook's Graph Search Is a Privacy Test For Internet Users
An anonymous reader writes "An article in the NY Times makes the case that Graph Search, Facebook's recently unveiled social search utility, will be a test for users of the social networking site which will have consequences for the internet at large. The test will show whether people are willing to take the next step in sharing parts of their lives, and whether social search is the future for online interaction. '...the company engineers who created the tool — former Google employees — say that the project will not reach its full potential if Facebook data is "sparse," as they call it. But the company is confident people will share more data, be it the movies they watch, the dentists they trust or the meals that make their mouths water.' CompSci professor Oren Etzioni says it's a watershed moment for the social internet because of the scale at which Facebook operates. A decade ago, people began making the choice to share their lives online; buying into social search would be the biggest step since then. A related post by the Electronic Frontier Foundation can be summed up with this single line: 'If you walk down a crowded public street, you are probably seen by dozens of people—but it would still feel creepy for anyone to be able to look up a list of every road you've walked down.'"
What about those of us that do not want to participate in these things? At what point will it become awkward to say state I don't use Facebook, or will it just become some terrible social stigma ::whisper::"He doesn't have a social account.."::/whisper::
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
How often do you listen to your friends recommendations right now? How often are they right for you?
You can be friends with a lot of people, and have different tastes in all kinds of things: music, food, movies, doctors, cars, clothing, ... etc.
There's no social stigma to not using Facebook, but there is incredulity. People can't believe you don't use it, but I have lots of friends who have opted out of the social network. When people express shock at your lack of an account, just shrug nonchalantly and say you simply don't have time for it. A large number of people who are FB addicts are so because they have no higher purpose in life. If you're engaged with life, you aren't posting perpetually to your newsfeed.
I confess I get a guilty pleasure out of the semi-regular meltdowns and drama people post on the site that they really shouldn't be sharing. People will post things to facebook or associate themselves with causes that they would never reveal to me were we in person, and people really need to think of Facebook as interacting with 100s of people in person and whether you're okay with every single one of those people knowing these things about you (this includes clicking "Like" or commenting on anything controversial, it's amazing the things I've learned about my friends watching the "Ticker" of activity--it's much worse than the public newsfeed). I have one friend who runs two accounts, a fake one with his real name where he maintains a professional facade, and a real one with a fake name where he feels free to talk about politics and make outrageous controversial statements.
My strategy is that I use my real name on Facebook, but I remain highly cognizant of the fact that I am presenting a public persona. I've posted controversial subjects only a few times, and ended up pulling those things down. Instead, I try to post things that I feel present me in the best possible light. I word everything like a politician, keep my content engaging but noncontroversial, and block/hide anyone who posts controversial comments in response to my posts. There are one or two photos of me passed out at a party from 10 years ago online, but you can't find them anymore because I've flooded the internet with subjectmatter that I'm proud of and want associated with me. It's all in how you use it, and every single teenager should be put into a mandatory public school class to teach them how to manage their online reputations and the real life consequences of their online actions.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
Try a search for "gay people in Kenya," for example.
I don't know if these people all made the mistake of thinking the "interested in" sections of their profiles would not be publicly visible by default, or whether they set them public but were relying on the obscurity of only friends looking them up. Perhaps some made their accounts years ago, and haven't kept up with the ever-eroding privacy on this site that requires you to go back and re-specify as private some things that used to be private by default. The point is, it hasn't been this easy before to just search for masses of people based on one common trait.
Whether it's being gay [an orientation (not just a set of activities) still actively punishable by death or jail time in many countries], atheist or minority religion in a fundamentalist country, or some other minority that can be profiled ("people who like red hair in London" -- only partly joking, "gingers" do get bullied), a lot of people are about to find out what Facebook Feature Creep really means.
Get off my launchpad!
So, FB are finally getting around to putting the creepy in feature creep?
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Well, perhaps not.
Arguably "privacy" does not mean what it might have forty years ago. Some of that is related directly to the way that Internet technology can retain data, and the ways that that data can be searched and manipulated.
That is something to be watched, and I've found myself more and more cautious about what I post on-line, but it's also a lot of what makes the modern Internet so damned useful.
I like it that Google usually can guess what I need. I like it that Amazon can suggest books or music that I actually would like to buy. I like that my smartphone is such a phenomenally handy tool, one that I use many times each day, and that would be nowhere near as useful without the might of Google behind it.
Hell, I like that I'm automagically logged into Slashdot every time I open up the site in my browser. It's handy.
Still, despite all of this, I do find Facebook's latest "creep" to be a bit uncomfortable. And yes, I'm one of those people who trusts Google, but who somehow don't trust Facebook. Hence the vast difference between what I'll trust to my Gmail account, and what I'll post to Facebook.
Still, despite the above, you have to accept that people's definition of "privacy" has changed. When I was growing up every house had an album full of photographs. If you came to visit our house we might show it to you, or we might not.
Now I have relatives who have literally thousands upon thousands of baby pictures, kid pictures, family pictures, videos, and God knows what else all posted to Facebook and accessible to hundreds of people. By their standards this is normal, and OK.
Instead of foaming at the mouth, or shrieking that no-one should ever be part of Facebook!!!, we should be figuring out how to manage a reasonable level of privacy in an age that will include Google, and Facebook, and all of those other fun and useful sites that we love.
ps - I can recall, back in the seventies and eighties, knowing people who refused to own a telephone - their arguments sounded pretty much the same.
Three Squirrels
Okay, I'm a hypocrite. I don't have a FB account. But I think it makes far more sense to have a FB account that you fill with partly real, mostly bogus information than not having one and getting marked out as a oddball, paranoid, delusional type. The thing is, use FB the way savvy celebrities use the media. Generate just enough buzz to throw off the scent and make people believe you're a normal person, whatever that means. "Hold" fake opinions on non-controversial topics. Don't hold controvesial views on controversial topics, or pick a few pet controversies like nuclear power, gun or animal rights. And decline invites from people you don't know or haven't re-searched well. Accept invites from the operators of both political parties. This will make you less like to attract the attention of the Feds, than being RMS.
Falsehood modded insightful, verifiable truth modded down. Gotta love this place.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Nobody cares about gays. If you're looking to point out the evils of facebook stalking technology, don't point out minority groups in a country most people couldn't place on a map. Point out instead that kids are now fair game for stalking. *That* is an argument against Facebook that the soccer moms and politicians will get behind 100%.
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127.0.0.1 facebook.com www.facebook.com
Mark Zuckerberg, is that you?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.