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Comment by Qz | Hacker News Reader

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.

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