Comment by iamelgringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamelgringo | Hacker News Reader

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Just to clarify. I don't have an app. I don't have anyone's permission to do anything. I'm just messing around with URL's in their search API: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api

This is also what prompted my to try and start a discussion about privacy over here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341227

From the search api docs:

You can search over all public objects in the social graph with https://graph.facebook.com/search. The format is:

https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=QUERY&type=OBJECT_TY... We support search for the following types of objects:

All public posts: https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=watermelon&type=post People: https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=mark&type=user Pages: https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=platform&type=page Events: https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=conference&type=even... Groups: https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=programming&type=gro... You can also search an individual user's News Feed, restricted to that user's friends, by adding a q argument to the home connection URL:

News Feed: https://graph.facebook.com/me/home?q=facebook

To be clear, this is only searching public posts. Its just that a large number of FB users either don't know, or don't care, what they are now broadcasting to the world.

There's a little lock button under the status box that lets you set your privacy settings for each post. They should expand it to put the actual label of your privacy setting on the button, so people would see "Everyone" on the button when talking about their rectal surgery. I honestly think most people don't mind posting their thoughts for everyone to see (cf. Twitter), but there is definitely a minority that is doing so accidentally, and that's easy to fix.

The lock is especially powerful if you combine it with lists. For the longest time I didn't know about lists because I didn't use FB's chat or any similar features that revealed lists to me. Being able to quickly block just "Family" or "Old Bosses" via lists and locks is one security change FB made that really works for me.

(one big problem, though, is that I don't think there is a way from Facebook mobile to use the lock's functionality.)

? Everyone on facebook can already make these searches. A much simpler way is to go to search, "posts by everyone", and type in watermelon.

edit: Clearer instructions: 1. Login to Facebook.

2. Type 'blah' in search and hit enter.

3. When it says no results found, click on "Posts by everyone" in the left bar.

Searching everyone's posts has been a feature on facebook for a really long time, it's just somewhat buried in the interface so I'm not surprised if no one noticed it.

I don't know if this distinction has been made yet or if it even matters, but you would have to be logged-in to crawl that data. Assuming you wanted to compile a dataset of Facebook user data, this is clearly the superior method.

I left a comment on your other post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341519), but here's a proposal - why not make a privacy app for those who care about, that can monitor their as well as their friends' feeds and help them squash unintentionally public posts about personal details? I'd be willing to collaborate if you're interested.

Sounds eerily familiar.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1337644

At the level that the intention is to let you use facebook safely, yes. My feeling is that it would be far easier to convince us scared geeks to install a privacy app that helps our friends and family (with little effort on our part) than to get the unwashed masses to do anything about privacy violations.

If you use the Facebook condom, as it were, and as a part of that it synchronizes your data with some open source format, then you get safety and privacy, you move your data to an open format, and friends get transparency. Good for all, no?

I don't think it would be hard at all. Privacy could be the new anti-virus.

You can scare the general public pretty easily. All it takes is one example of what could go wrong and all of the sudden there is a boom.

Privacy is the new anti-virus.

The question is who is going to move into this area and claim a market.

So, not to be too PC, but the OP's example seems really uncalled for. These people are basically facing colorectal cancer, possible metastasis, and probable death.

I'd much rather pick up on people whose questionable (idiotic?) behavior combined with a mishandling of FB's privacy settings make them deserve the opprobrium:

https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=fuck%20my%20boss&typ....

How many of these people do you think actually realize that their boss can (and more and more do) read what they post?

edit: the first hit is spot on (hiding the name):

"from": { "name": (hidden), "id": (hidden) }, "message": "Oh fuck! Now my boss wants to come over on friday as well. Let's rob his ass!(jk) What do you think the chances are that he has a facebook account and he's readin this?", "link": "http://www.facebook.com/, etc...

It could be related to this: http://searchengineland.com/facebooks-posts-by-everyone-feat...

If Twitter allows to search public statuses, then it's fine. If Facebook allows to search public statuses, then the world is doomed. Utterly nonsense.

If you don't like it, don't use it.

Just hoping that Flickr doesn't let me do that, not willing to find out.

Ok, so you wanted to mess around with their URL and you decided to search for "Rectal surgery"? I'm not going to judge, but... wait, no I am going to judge. That's just weird.

Right. This is the internet. That was a horribly tame example search - "anal prolapse" would have been far more entertaining.

Ok, who else just searched for "anal prolapse?"

So, not to be too PC, but the OP's example seems really uncalled for. These people are basically facing colorectal cancer, possible metastasis, and probable death.

I'd much rather pick up on people whose questionable (idiotic?) behavior combined with a mishandling of FB's privacy settings make them deserve the opprobrium:

https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=fuck%20my%20boss&typ....

How many of these people do you think actually realize that their boss can (and more and more do) read what they post?

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