Senator Al Franken Facebook privacy settings | Hacker News Reader

Senator Al Franken Facebook privacy settings

franken.senate.gov

88 pointskp21231 comments

They aren't going to stop until someone sues the $@%& out of them.

Remember News Feed? People freaked out, started screaming about suing, etc. Just watch: people will get more comfortable sharing their basic information, and you will too.

This privacy freakout is really amazing to me.

The Instant Personalization stuff has potential to actually be an issue, but everything else seems like an overreaction.

Well, yeah, people are getting kind of twitchy about Facebook privacy issues. It's like Water Torture -- the individual drops of water are basically harmless but they just keep falling and you have no idea when the next one's coming. Most people aren't wired to deal with that very well.

I've already had to deal with two stupid surprises in the last week: the expansion of their ability to track your use of other sites, and their mandatory conversion of your likes/interests/employer/etc. information into "likes" on an automatically-generated community page. The former is genuinely intrusive, and while the latter is arguably trivial it creates another entire layer of crap I have to manage. (I also lost most of my likes & interests in the conversion because it wasn't clear that disallowing the "like" would actually delete the entry. Pricks.)

When I first joined I was kind of amused at my friends who had registered under pseudonyms -- but the benefits are becoming apparent.

Remember Beacon?

The News Feed is shared with people you know, and only people you have added as Friends (or sometimes one step removed when somebody you know comments on a photo or something).

Beacon was about selling your information to advertisers and 3rd parties whom you had a very loose connection with. The example being the guy who bought his engagement ring and had it broadcast via facebook before he was even engaged.

With the news feed, you control the information which is posted (with the exception of being tagged in photos).

Now Facebook is sharing your information with 3rd parties whom you have NO connection with.

I don't use Docs, Yelp, or Pandora, but they were given access to all my information.

Remember, they were 'given' access before Facebook announced what was happening. Before we had the option to opt-out.

Beacon was great because it showed that Facebook isn't scared to take risks. They later admitted it was a bad idea.

I'd rather a company like Facebook err on the side of innovation.

Selling my information to third parties without permission or prior notification is neither innovative nor brave.

I suppose you could say it's 'brave', though, in the same way that trying to swindle someone and hoping they don't notice is brave.

That's not what "brave" means.

/pedant: it is, actually. Definition is "ready to face danger or pain". "Brave" is mostly used approvingly, but it's also completely proper in sentences like "He decided the app should be IE-only, which was a brave move but one he felt was justified by ..."

Similarly with "daring" -- you often hear of "daring robberies" and the like.

Interesting point. "Brave" is usually considered to be a virtue, and people don't want to attribute virtues to scoundrels.

Ah, the joys of learning English from dictionary definitions instead of literary use.

Because dictionary definitions aren't based on literary use at all.

Sorry, you don't get to be all prescriptivist in telling someone what "brave" doesn't mean, then suddenly produce a descriptivist defence when you're called on it; they're incompatible.

It's sometimes funny that people take this position.

Personally, I don't give 2 hoots if companies want to sell my information to each other. Good on them. I lose nothing by them doing it. Couldn't care less. (As long as it's stated in T&C that they are doing it).

It's especially ironic, since people moan at the music companies, saying that downloading music illegally isn't theft, since you haven't deprived them of anything.

scammy =/ innovative

The demographic is vastly different now. Imagine this sorta thing goes on the 6 o'clock news which parents would interpret as a hazard to their family's privacy. Most of the current demographic will not understand Facebook's privacy settings. And the whole freakout over this is will be blown out of proportion to the point where parents are going to tell each other to "protect" their kids on Facebook or worse demand some sort of legislation that does.

One of the biggest reasons I think this might happen is because a vast majority of people still trust what they hear on the TV or radio over some website or online document that says Facebook cares about your privacy.

"Most of the current demographic will not understand Facebook's privacy settings."

That's because they're intentionally byzantine.

This is becoming a FB blindspot. Zuckerburg (and FB in general) now just dismiss all criticism of any changes they make because -- hey! News Feed was criticised.

I don't know that betting your business against growing storms of criticism on nothing more than a reverse gambler's fallacy is the best plan, tbh.

Evidently he's given a lot of thought to the flow and control of personal information posted by users on the internet. It would be nice if websites followed the "opt in" rather than the "opt out" route when it comes to these things. It would be even nicer if some senator made this the defacto standard...

Do you really want to see this kind of government control of the internet?

I can guarantee that any new law designed to prevent facebook privacy violations would wind up having all sorts of awful unintended consequences for the rest of the internet.

Hugh's first rule of government: the unintended consequences of any major government action almost always wind up being more significant than the intended consequences. (See also: social security, Iraq war, emancipation proclamation.)

Accidental downvote, sorry. Would have emailed you if you had contact info in your profile.

I don't have a problem with opt-out when you sign up for a web service. For example, on Twitter the default is for your stream to be open to the public but you can opt to lock your account so only approved users can follow you.

That leads to stronger network effects faster, and creates a more usable tool for everyone.

The problem I have with facebook (note: I don't have a facebook account) is that people signed up based on a particular set of terms but the company then changed those terms and switched a default opt-in to a default opt-out after the fact.

"that people signed up based on a particular set of terms but the company then changed those terms and switched a default opt-in to a default opt-out after the fact"

Thanks for putting this in such clear terms. I am not on FB but whenever i get asked again - this is what i am going to tell them.

Yes, and this is the same sort of problem many people had with Buzz. Your contact list was private, and then -- wham! -- there it is (or parts of it) for the world to see. (And your profile à la Buzz started aggregating Google-related activity; even if aspects of it were not previously designated "private", hanging it all off of your profile sure made it more accessible.)

If you knew at the start that that would happen, it might have stopped you from giving them -- originally and mostly through Gmail -- your contacts list. (Or using other affected services.) But when you signed up, they were all about "privacy" -- particularly after their previous efforts to reassure people in the face of concerns over automated ad targeting in Gmail. (Which was its own event, but I guess people generally decided that, as long as its purely automated and doesn't affect anything more than ad presentation, they could live with it.)

Hmm... as a thought exercise, what if your Gmail content starts affecting not just ad presentation but your search results. Would you have a bit more concern, then?

What if your employer starts examining employees' "customized" search results (perhaps by hiring a third party that specialized in this) and making inferences?

I assume they can and some may well already log and analyze the ads returned on those searches. Now that ads are starting to "follow people" across searches and sessions -- at least at some sites -- what personal habits might you inadvertently be bringing with you to work, via third parties' tracking of and response to your web use?

Exactly. That might merely seem embarrassing, and one could say 'use incognito browsing' for obviously personal stuff. But what if you're interested in politics and your employer strongly supports a different party? Or you have health worries of your own or for your kids, and an employer doesn't want to see health premiums rise? Such concerns seem abstract until they begin affecting people's livelihoods, by which time it can be hard to undo the ill effects.

There is another difference between twitter and facebook.

The twitter opt-out was for one feature and only on that one site.

Facebook doesn't provide a way to completely opt out of this feature.

Note #4 on the list 'Finally, check Facebook’s “Help Center” frequently to see an up-to-date list of applications that need to be individually blocked to maintain your privacy'

Facebook takes the action of automatically adding you to new sites, but not telling you that they have done this. So the onus is on you to continually go back and remove these sites from your feed.

Furthermore, Facebook is continuing to share your information with these sites, all you are turning off is your view of what is being shared.

It's very shady.

He should do a Stuart Smalley skit to get his point across.

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, I have ten thousand friends, and doggone it, people like me!

I'm really on the fence here. On the one hand, its a business and they need to make money to remain viable. On the other, the way the bury the option to turn it off makes me think this could be a lot more transparent. If they feel like they need it to survive, i think they should look at a model where turning it on (opt in) gives you some advantage.

I was wondering why Yalp (which I rarely visit) knew about my Facebook account.

No, those links at the bottom aren't adsense. He's not that web savvy!

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