Teens Find Innovative Ways to Control Their Facebook Presence | Hacker News Reader

Teens Find Innovative Ways to Control Their Facebook Presence

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51 pointsskm26 comments

What came to my mind when I read this was the concept of pre vs post moderation. I find myself viewing posts to my wall in a very timely fashion, almost immediately after I receive an email from facebook letting me know that I have a new post on my wall from a friend. The purpose of doing so is more so I can moderate what the individual has posted on my wall and much less because I am so interested in the immediate consumption of that post. I would love an option on facebook to place many public actions in a pre-moderation queue...tagging me in a photo, posts on my wall to name two. In the absence of those tools, the idea of always deactivating on logout seems like an inconvenient but possible alternative to close that time gap.

Pre-moderation would be an excellent addition to FB.

You know that giddy feeling you get when you think you've struck it gold with a genius idea only for that excitement to settle after you've given it a bit more thought? Yeah, well, it's that same feeling people get when they tag all their friends in a bunch of photos, or post something inappropriately on someone's wall; and once it is up in the public's eye, they feel it'd look cowardly of them to retract whatever statement they might've made. So with a feature like that, you're essentially stalling the entire posting process and increasing the chance of people engaging their filters to assess whether a specific post would be appropriate for their world to see. If I know that the pictures I just uploaded won't all be up for everyone to see instantaneously, and that so-and-so will have a chance to filter through the pictures before they're posted, I'd likely not be as excited about posting stuff and I'd actually start posting less. You're basically putting a kink in the hose.

If you've noticed, after all the privacy features Facebook has implemented, not one of them involves moderating the brain -> screen process. I may be reading too much into this all, but I do have a feeling that Facebook understands social dynamics and pressures extremely well and places its users in positions where they will almost always choose the decision to benefit Facebook. For instance, you want to be 'friends' with both acquaintances and friends, and so both groups have the ability to post on your wall. You could block those who you feel may say inappropriate things, but that is a burden and they'll likely find out. So what's your next option? Not allowing anyone to post on your wall. But then you'll seem cold and unsocial. So you'll likely choose to keep your wall open for posts.

People tend to hate on Facebook, but I think they are psychological masterminds.

I'm just speculating, but if everyone in your close circle of friends does this, then FB might start feeling like IM on steroids. You can only see people who are online. When they're offline, all traces of them vanish.

There's no reason someone couldn't create an IM client for this. All profile data could be stored on your local client.

That's sort of what Opera Unite is like, without the UI or killer apps or any users.

Wish people would link to original sources more often. Come on this is HN, we don't need or want the extra layer of gloss for this.

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-re...

I use a different way to keep people away from my wall, that is as effective, but less work.

I have a whitelist (a list of friends) that sets who has access to my wall. So, when I accept friendship from someone, this new connection does not have access to my wall and private photos straight away. I must put him explicitly to the whitelist.

I fing lists a very good tool to set who sees my wall, pictures and info, and even to set who sees what on my wall (more personal posts are just visible to a subset of the whitelist).

How do you deal with allowing others to post on your wall? This is either on or off for all friends right?

He said

> I have a whitelist (a list of friends) that sets who has access to my wall.

I know what he said so let me clarify. Facebook's wall permissions break down into three groups of differing granularity:

1) Who can see a given post by you on your own wall: Each post can have different permissions w/ groups.

2) Who can see a given post by others on your own wall: All posts of this type are controlled by a single permission assignment with groups.

3) Are friends allowed to post on your wall: This is an all or nothing setting. In other words you can either let all friends post to your wall regardless of visibility or none.

My question was, what happens when you allow friends to post on your wall (item 3) but not give them permissions to view posts? This would be a somewhat awkward situation, hence my question.

Gotcha. I let everyone see everything all the time, so I wasn't familiar with that problem. I'd just assumed you'd misread him. My bad.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems really pointless. What would be wrong with friends browsing your content when your not around? As if you knew they were accessing your profile and what-not anyways. The only way I could see this as being useful would be to keep friends from posting inappropriate material - but then setting filters/blocking would be more sensible.

I think it's actually smart given the way teens behave. You know how fast things can spiral out of control (look at Lamebook, etc). Someone trusted today might not be tomorrow.

The problem isn't friends looking up data when you're gone (I agree with you on this one), the problem is that you don't want your friends/classmates putting content on your wall when you're not around to mitigate it.

If you read the original article [1], it provides more details on why someone would to this.

[1] http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-re...

Some people simply cannot be dissuaded from occasionally posting inappropriate content. If they do it all the time, you might want to de-friend them. But it might be only occasional, and de-friending may have other real-life consequences (if only to your social life).

What kind of inappropriate content? The canonical example, I think, is for someone to tag you in a photo where you are doing something against the rules or otherwise inappropriate. It doesn't even have to be illegal; I've read a number of stories (and heard some personally) of elementary and high school teachers getting in trouble for simply being in a photograph where alcohol was also present. Even if they're over 21 and so is everyone else in the photo. I think it's horrifying that school principals and school districts are able to have that kind of policy, but some of them do.

Am I not using Facebook like everyone else is? I've never had anyone post anything inappropriate on my wall, or tag me in a photo I'd rather not be tagged in. If it ever happens, I'm removing that person as a Facebook friend. Not sure why it needs to be more complicated than that.

Some people (myself included) like use Facebook as a mirror to their own social circles. Defriending someone from Facebook for an inappropriate post would be like defriending them in real life for an inappropriate joke. It's easier to just ask them not to do it again.

You're not 14 years old. As adults, we use facebook much differently than people with no/little self control.

If I was 14 again, I would probably superdelete as well. Nothing would stay on for more than 2 days. This is not for friends, but in case parents were watching over my shoulder.

I'd also probably have a private board with psuedononymous names for all of my friends so we could say what we really thought.

Although whitewalling will prevent users of FB from accessing your data, FB will probably retain it, as we have seen them do with pictures: http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/07/are-those-photos-rea...

That was the point of the article - she doesn't delete her account, she reactivates, which means all her data comes back, wall, photos etc..

You two are talking about two different things. "Whitewalling" is deleting all content from your wall so it's blank (hence the name). "Super-logoff" is when you deactivate your account when you logoff.

Someone needs to write a chrome extension to make whitewalling and super-logoff more convenient. If users are able to forgo the annoying questionnaire that is coupled with deactivation and batch delete posts after an expiration date, these techniques become a whole lot more attractive.

The downside is that no one can add you while your account is deactivated. Maybe that's an upside?

I think you can set it to allow "Only Me" to tag yourself in photos. At least, I recall doing that a while back. (Knowing FB, it wouldn't surprise me if it's been changed or broken since then...)

Am curious; what if Facebook comes up with a limit on the number of times "activation+deactivation" can be done during a time period?

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