Facebook Groups Start Showing Exactly Who Saw Each Post | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Groups Start Showing Exactly Who Saw Each Post

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43 pointsavirambm57 comments

Creepy shit. If I want to acknowledge a post, I can already comment on it, or do a passive like. And how exactly does fb decide that something was seen? I might not even have bothered to read the entire message. Is there any way to "unsee" it?

I feel that social contracts and relationships that people have are more complex than what fb models them to be. And leaving these imprints without any control over them is just gonna result in awkward moments.

I can't decide if this is good or bad. I don't participate in a lot of FB groups, but I do a lot of politely keeping my mouth shut in other forms of online communication. I think I would feel like I was being put on the spot to say something, particularly in a small group.

A lot of times, I'm not going to lie and agree with that thing someone said, but I also don't want to invest the energy into arguing it with them, either... especially when it's someone who's clearly just looking for accolades and doesn't seem open to criticism.

If the other person knows you saw their message, then there's the potential for them to perceive your lack of response as rude or a show of obvious disagreement.

In huge groups, it wouldn't be an issue, but in smaller, more intimate communities, it could get awkward.

I think the social issues will work themselves out pretty quickly once people get used to it. When instant messaging was new, the same discomfort existed.

I think there's a huge difference between private messages between two people, and allowing everyone in a group to monitor other's usage.

As a student, my classmates and I use Facebook groups to organize activities. If, for example, the stage manager announces via Facebook that there will be rehearsal at a specific time, or that you should bring $5 for the director's gift, it'd be pretty stupid for all 35 cast members to reply "k" and nobody does this. But the message needs to reach all of them, and the SM has no idea who's been informed, so instead he gives himself carpel-tunnel texting everyone individually (because there is a social expectation that you acknowledge texts.)

A stage manager is in serious trouble if half the cast didn't know to show up, so he'll do it the hard way if he has to. But for large, informal social groups, people who don't use Facebook as actively simply fall through the cracks. I'm part of a roughly 30-member group that gets together to watch hilariously awful movies. We organize on Facebook, and people who don't happen to see our posts get left behind and forget about it. If the host of a movie night could easily see who already knows about it, he can contact the others by phone or in person, increasing engagement with the group while respecting those who silently declined.

Being able to see who you've already reached makes Facebook a pretty massive convenience in cases where it previously had no advantage, increasing engagement with both Facebook itself and the real-world entities represented by Facebook groups. I'd call it a win-win.

>If the other person knows you saw their message, then there's the potential for them to perceive your lack of response as rude or a show of obvious disagreement.

This goes both ways. Yes, it does eliminate ambiguity - you saw the message and chose not to respond; there wasn't a technical glitch. But where the person you're talking to would previously have escalated to a more invasive form of communication like a phone call, he now knows there's nothing wrong with Facebook; you're just not interested.

I hope this doesn't spread to Events too... it'll be harder to flake out of stuff. Or maybe that's what they're going for?

Then I'd say fuck events. Stop trying to change my behavior by holding me responsible by being a creepy web application I'm forced to use due to network effects.

I still file this one under fuck Facebook.

>Stop trying to change my behavior by holding me responsible

In general, being responsible is a good thing...

having the choice is the fundamental thing for fucks sake, what world do you live in? sheep

To be responsible or not? Forgive me for not thinking you're taking the moral high road, here, jerk.

I value freedom of choice over "doing the right thing" as freedom is not subjective while moral high roads are.

You have a choice not to use facebook, I suppose. I can't see a single complaint against this system that doesn't end in bullshitting someone else (i.e. deception). Someone sends you a message, you read it, don't act on it. Now the other person can see you didn't act and ask WTF.

It'll cause some friction, sure. People will get over it.

I certainly do have a choice not to use it... but then again, not really (I even said people are forced to stay in it due to network effects).

Theoretically speaking, maybe I love Google+ but none of the people I want to keep in touch with use it, and thus the lock-in. I get what you're saying. And I really only use Facebook for two things - keeping in touch with family and friends that do not live near me, and posting Anti-Facebook articles to my News Feed.

you're kinda authoritarian aren't ya? basically, if I got it right, you think that if anyone uses their freedom as an individual to act in any way you and the collective consciousness you follow disapproves then it's ok to limit that person rights

and you also think it's ok to just embed your vision of the world as a framework(like, facebook forcing this behaviour down everyones throat) because if everyone would just think like you do, everything would be better?

Well I don't agree and I'll never do and I'll also stand up against, otherwise it may well happen!

this is a nice article that touches this topic: http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127...

No, you don't have it right. First of all, I don't see how "rights" ever enter into it. How is it a right, in any sense of the word, to have hidden when you've read someone else's message? That's what this is about.

>and you also think it's ok to just embed your vision of the world as a framework

Just.. no. I never said that, or hinted at it. Stop reading motivations into my beliefs that do not exist.

well I was just trying to make the point on the implications some forms of viewing things and doors they leave open

but I guess this is also aching to political/ideological views, as I am very libertarian... Anyway, this argument has lost its purpose, better let it die, be good!

Probably as a way to show visual "engagement" for companies that are on Facebook but don't get a lot of likes. Its more derivative crap. We can call them "seens".

And of course there the creep factor.

I'm having a hard time determining if Facebook is just terrible, low value, and creepy, or I'm just cynical about Facebook. Probably both.

This is a feature for groups, not for pages (the way companies generally interact with people who use Facebook). Groups are generally created by people for groups of people that already meet/know each other in person or to discuss a shared interest, not by companies (unless they're company-internal groups, I suppose).

They are for things like for a bowling team in a league or a user group or other ad-hoc group of people who want to communicate with each other - co-ordinate dates and times, send out last-minute updates. The hope, as I understand it, is that it will reduce confusion/anxiety/overcommunication over who hasn't yet read something ("Did Mike read the update that mentioned he is supposed to bring the projector? Should I send him a direct message/phone him?").

Pages already have Insights which gives them aggregate-only demographic data about the audience who has interacted with a particular post ("52/48% female/male, 80% US, ...").

(A Facebook engineer, but not involved in this feature.)

Makes sense if you look at it that way, but as a potential consumer of your product every move now looks like Facebook wants to track my actions on the Internet and then tell others about it without my explicit permission.

Zero friction, sure. I'd call it zero consent. Most Internet lay users don't have the mental capacity to understand the legalease of a TOS, so to me saying they agreed to it is thin moral ice to stand on.

Seeing something isn't the same as having read and digested it.

I used to have a boss who would send out emails and request read receipts and outlook would automatically send them as soon as I clicked on the item in my Inbox.

I would sometimes get a phone call within seconds of the email arriving asking for my thoughts on it.

Wow, this feature and the comment history feature(when editing a comment) make me uncomfortable. They might as well begin showing you who is seeing your profile and how much.

What about the comment history feature makes you uncomfortable?

They don't? Orkut showed you who has seen your profile (but not in real time).

It's one thing Facebook has (always?) been careful not to show. Even with 3rd party apps they'd proxy all content so you couldn't make a "who's viewed my profile" app.

I would wager that it was discussed in a meeting there at one time or another.

Soon.

Doubt it. It would make users self-conscious and reduce engagement.

This change kind of does that too, though.

Inspired by FuzzyDunlop's subcomment to another participant, I have to ask the direct question: does this help Facebook monetize and gain value for shareholders any more than any of its other features? I'm beginning to think that there really is a market for a PAID service where customers (the people paying for the service) are treated like customers, rather than advertisers being treated like the customers. Some of the friends I most like interacting with on Facebook are looking for a service like that. They are annoyed by Facebook's flailing about looking for ways to monetize.

I don't understand the prevalent HN stance that this is a user-hostile feature, which seems to be the source of your question. iMessage and BlackBerry Messenger do the same thing, though users can opt out. People like those products.

Blackberry doesn't steal your email address, follow your browsing history on other devices outside your phone, sell your personal data to advertisers, continually change your privacy settings in hopes you won't notice, etc.

What makes you say that Facebook will "sell your personal data to advertisers"?

Do you mean that advertisers pay to get information like your name, email address, street location, and other identifiable information about you, like in a huge spreadsheet?

Or do you mean that advertisers can pay money to have their adverts displayed to the sorts of people who most likely will be interested in them but receive no personal data, as explained at https://www.facebook.com/about/ads/ ?

While I get that some people like to make it sound more dramatic by saying "sell your personal data to advertisers" while understanding how it works, it's also common that people just don't understand.

I do understand. Online advertising in a free product is an essential part of the business model where I work. I do understand perfectly the nuance of which you speak because I deal with personally identifiable information everyday.

Where I draw the line is when Facebook goes out of their way to learn about their users as a way to enrich their advertising platform through sneaky means. For instance, every 'Like' button on any web page can track where you go on the internet. While they don't hand this information directly over to their advertisers, its essentially spying without consent and then profiting from it. I consider my browsing history personal data because its mine, not Facebook's.

Would it make you more comfortable to say "they spy on me and then use that information to target me in ways I did not want Facebook's clients to leverage?" This holds especially true since that tracked behavior happens outside of their walled garden.

I say "sell your personal data to advertisers" because colloquially more people understand that and its a recognizable sound bite. But the nuance is there, I deal with it everyday in my job so I understand it, and I think Facebook crosses the line.

It seems to me that "sell your personal data to advertisers" sows more confusion through its recognition than clarity. People who hear "sell your personal data to advertisers" without your background tend to believe it literally - money is given to Facebook in exchange for personal information (ie, someone's name and particular data about them).

In terms of the "Like" button and other social plugins, unfortunately there's not all that much to be done about the way the technologies in the web works. Facebook came up with this "widget" that provided way more value to people than the equivalent buttons from Digg, Delicious, and several others, many of which encourage integration that uses resources stored on a central server which could allow tracking even without clicking on them. Many of these widgets need to talk to a server anyway - to provide credibility and popularity by showing how many people have liked the content. However, the "Like" button needs to talk to a server to provide its additional value - to show you a list of your friends who have also liked this content.

I encourage you to read the Facebook Data Use Policy, especially the section about "Social plugins" under "Other websites applications", and the link through to the Help Center that gives even more information about how that data is and is not used.

I hate this. I feel fine lurking in a group I've been added to unless or until I want to engage. This also gives an inappropriate amount of data to the creator of a group, who isn't always the person who is supposed to be armed with that information.

In the group context, I think this makes a lot of sense. It is similar to Path (which is basically a "group" limited to my closest friend). For every post I make, it shows me which of my friends saw it, and that is convenient and cool.

I think this could work well for small groups of trusted friends (or shared interest groups). For large scale groups of strangers this could be creepy though. I definitely would hate to see it abused by larger brands, etc (or for this to be integrated into the main news feed for that matter)... which unfortunately at this point I can't say I trust Facebook enough to believe they wouldn't try to push it past that limit

Personally, I think this stuff is great. It eliminates a lot of extra communication regarding whether someone has received a piece of information or not.

That said, I wonder at what point is a post considered "seen".

Stalker-esq. FB is on a roll of strange product decisions and 1 star apps. Oy.

Why are some people so eager to give Facebook the role of dictating social behavior, rather than forcing them to be what they should be, a tool that facilitates our own social desires and expectations?

They're fixing a serious error in the way they model conversation. Please explain how this is "dictating social behavior."

People engaged in an in-person conversation constantly and involuntarily give each other verbal and nonverbal cues indicating the receipt (or loss/corruption) of each message. One of the primary gripes against the text-based communication Facebook et al "forced" us to use is the loss of that subconscious channel. Having an unreliable chat system that created the ability to hide behind "oh sorry, I didn't get your message" was one way Facebook corrupted human social interaction. Now they're making it right.

I, for one, desire and expect reliable delivery of my messages to my friends' attention. Do you see a workable solution besides acknowledgments?

Text-based conversations are not in-person conversations! Text-based communication has existed for centuries prior to Facebook, and existing social protocols are perfectly capable of handling "seen" notifications. "Sorry, I didn't get your message" and other half-truths are an essential part of human interaction. If you want to know if your friends received a text message, just ask them. Instantaneous "X saw your message" notifications are an intolerable intrusion into private behavior, as they can convey unintended meaning without verifying user intent, especially in multi-party conversations.

Aside from the mangling of social behavior, "seen" is an impossible flag to get right. Maybe someone else was using the PC, maybe the person shut their PC down without looking at their browser window, even though the browser window was focused, etc.

>Text-based conversations are not in-person conversations!

My guess is Facebook is wants its messaging system to be farther towards in-person conversation on the scale of information-richness.

>"seen" is an impossible flag to get right

I'll agree with you there, but I think most cases would be handled quite well by setting "seen" iff the user interacts with the Facebook window after the message is displayed. This would handle situations where the browser is in focus but the computer is unoccupied, switching users, shutting down, etc.

I think this works in the chat but don't see the use of it in a group. I thought I wouldn't like it when it was announced for the chat but now it's nice to see a "seen" message. This kind of thing is a pressure to engage faster since you know when the other person has read something you sent to them in a one-on-one conversation. Then again, as others have mentioned, how can FB know if I've seen something or not. Surely, we'll have eyeball-following cameras in everything soon.

They've already been doing this in chat, I suppose this is a logical extension. That said, is it really necessary to see this or is it a step beyond what is necessary?

They're probably running out of things to implement that people want, so are now trying to shoehorn things in that people probably don't want. Probably as a result of new-found shareholder pressure.

That's a ridiculous theory.

The biggest barrier to using Facebook as a communication tool is not knowing how often other people check their messages or groups. This feature solves that and will increase the usage of messages and groups.

I wonder if they'll start doing this with status updates some time in the future.

Well that sucks.

Too reminiscent of those pesky read email requests. Also, 'Seen by' is not the same thing as 'Really read by'. One reason why I stopped using Messenger (the app and web version)

Favoring the content producer over the consumer won't necessarily lead to less confusion or a better user experience. It's kind of a forced form of social regardless of the group's size.

Perhaps version 2 of this will turn on your mike and web cam to record your reaction to the post?

.aspx? Did not see that coming.

It's no different than a Haskell start-up running their blog on Wordpress or Posterous.

Presumably this site is run by FB's comms department, and could be an off-the-shelf system or developed by an external agency. You don't want to tie up your precious engineers on projects that aren't critical to the mission.

While odd for what has historically been a PHP shop, .aspx shouldn't be too surprising: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21458486/

Stalking - excellent!

where's Facebook going with this, seriously?

I already leave almost every group I'm forced into(cause I can't chose if someone 'invite me' to it), the two I decided to keep I barely ever look and have to change the settings so that shit stops notifying me for stupid shit I'm not interested

Also, I had been aching to silence(unsub) everyone in there because it just feel like a fucking noisy echo chamber with almost nothing that's remotely relevant... So.. I've probably already 'silenced' a big part of them, and then I ended up using a Chrome extension to just hide all that Wall crap out of there, because the chat is the only thing I can take some value of on this site.

But the experience is still pretty bad because I also keep getting notifications for event and game invites I don't want at all and also, for what people post in events I never RSVPed. In fact, I almost never even bother opening the event page. I'm a party dude, but I'll just care about events at the moment I want to go out. I also cannot stop notifications from invites, only for specific people, after I refuse a single invite and then 2 or 3 clicks into it(to stop invites from ONE person)

Facebook, you suck hard and you're going down soon I'm sure. I wish you didn't sucked so much because I'm getting wary I'll have to start untangling my future app from your API sooner than I expected.

I'm sorry you are having a bad experience.

It sounds like you have accepted some friend requests from some noisy/energetic people, and/or from people that you perhaps don't really care about. My experience is that unfriending people I don't actually care about (people I've only interacted with a few times a long time ago, for example), making a close friends list (people I care a lot about), and moving the 25%-ish people I care the least about to the acquaintance list has improved my experience a lot.

There are always some unusual cases - a cousin you mostly want to hear things from/about who loves all sorts of games, maybe. For those special cases, you can also control specifically that you don't want to hear from them about games.

I'm not really familiar with problems with events - I get a few event invites a month, and generally they are things I'm interested in going to. How many events are you being invited to? How many different people are involved in inviting you to them?

If you're using Windows, you could also try out the Facebook Messenger app to keep yourself on chat.

(I work at Facebook, but on infrastructure, not products.)

Facebook is social in the way 'the cable guy' is social

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