The correct question is "Why is the default wall post set to 'Everyone'?"
Searching public posts is just fine. I just think that people should be more made aware of who exactly they're broadcasting to.
Searching public posts is just fine. I just think that people should be more made aware of who exactly they're broadcasting to.
It's called a wall for a reason :/
For example, with Facebook fan pages there used to be an option to hide which pages/groups you were a fan of. Now you can't do that — all of these are public. There is now no way to hide them without 'unfanning' them.
Yes, before the change if someone started looking through the many thousands (millions?) of fan pages they could have found you listed on one. But now it's just sitting on your profile page.
It's obviously very inappropriate to change the privacy settings in ways that deceive people or change privacy settings without users knowing (clearly, and well in advance) that they're going to be changed. But it's hard for me to foresee a coming Facebook diaspora over privacy when I don't think most people think of Facebook as being private... the incredibly vast majority of people that I know don't see privacy as a hierarchical set of access control lists that they're going to tweak to their contentedness: I think they see a particular site as either private (say, gmail) or public (Facebook) and treat their interactions on the site along that binary divide.
My girlfriend cut out a couple of "fan pages" like that because now they are all public. That reduces value for the user because they will find other ways to follow these companies (twitter) and to the companies who lose users.
edit: I think there's perhaps a distinction here between things like personal profile information (one might not one's psycho ex to see their phone number or even wall posts, while not minding sharing them with friends) and things like fan page liking. The former certainly needs privacy controls, and they should be clearer than they currently are; the latter is hard for me to get upset about, and I think it dilutes the message of privacy advocates to mention it.
You may not find yourself in that kind of situation often, but it is a very real possibility -- there was even a study done where a computer could make a highly accurate guess of whether you were gay just by looking at who is in your friends list (also public), without any information from your profile. Everything on facebook is information.
I could give you an example where the bumper sticker is also relevant, but I think the example above is enough to prove my point.
His parents could be fans of that page. His teacher could be.
Becoming a fan of a page, but wanting that to remain private seems contradictory to me.
Maybe if you're a fan of something deeply unpopular - Java for example, then you'd want to keep that as private as possible.
I think it'd probably just be best for facebook to make the leap and say "OK you privacy nerds, SHUT UP. From now on, everything is public apart from private messages. Now quit your incessant whining."
As for 'becoming a fan' being inherently social, that's true. The issue is whether something that's inherently social is also inherently public. Going on a date with your girlfriend is social, but you may not want it inherently public (and keep in mind there's a difference between internet public and people seeing you together at a restaurant public.
(the point isn't about the extreme of freedom of speech, but your idea that we should only worry about things that have actually happened is total garbage)
"I think there's perhaps a distinction here between things like personal profile information (one might not one's psycho ex to see their phone number or even wall posts, while not minding sharing them with friends) and things like fan page liking."
My point is that fan page liking is personal profile information. Everything you put on facebook is personal profile information. The Bob example was merely to show that 'becoming a fan' of something can reveal profile information about the person. The fact that Bob could potentially be 'hurt' in the scenario was just to make Bob sympathetic (as opposed to the all too typical scenario where people post severely racist or homophobic content without realizing how public it might be).
Should comments on public blogs have privacy controls?
There's a difference between the kind of information (response), and the method of communication (comment on a blog).
There's no real evidence that anyone using facebook really minds the changes facebook makes.
Changes to their privacy are fairly moot. It's not like they're changing the color of a button, making it harder to play fishville or anything massive like that.
Can we get back to moaning about appstore policies now? Or iPad articles?
Facebook users are noticing, the question is how many.
Privacy SettingsFriends -> Tags and Connections Current City, Hometown, Interests, Things I Like, etc. are all fan pages, and you can choose to restrict who can view them on your profile.