Privacy restrictions on Facebook posts are visible to users
plus.google.com
plus.google.com
A bug in a recent update to our code caused this unintended availability of some metadata about the audience of posts. Keep in mind, the intended audience of the actual posts wasn't affected. So far, this is the only report we've received about the availability of the metadata, and we addressed the situation within a few hours.
As always, developers must abide by our Platform Policies, including obligations that protect the information they access through our APIs. For example, developers may not use someone's information outside of the application without the person's permission. Additionally, people can control whether applications have access to their information and posts through their settings.
Why are people so forgetful about this? Maybe the answer is similar to why some people stay in abusive relationships.
As someone who was in an abusive relationship for a couple years, who found himself giving everything for nothing in return and not understanding why everything sucked: I can sort of see your point. The bits and pieces are there. But it's a really, really stretched metaphor.
Abusive relationships involve deeply personal manipulation and that's why they get such a hold over you. Consumer apathy is not even close to being directly convinced by someone you love - often using your own fears against you - to stop caring about your own needs.
Almost 100% of my posts in past 6 months have custom settings but there is no way I can go through each one of them.
This is HUGE from my perspective. I am typically the guy to tell others constantly bitching about fb's privacy settings to move on. But alas, the day has come when I am officially scared to use facebook.
Um, what kinds of friends do you have on Facebook? Maybe you shouldn't be friending these people in the first place.
For example, when we send an email, we are be pretty confident it only goes to the people we select and not the entire Internet. The vast majority of emails are only read by its intended audience. That's privacy.
These amateur hour type comments which seem to always follow Facebook posts anymore seem to say more about the fact that more and more HN commenters have no experience working in an enterprise environment and believe their 10 instance AWS based startup they are currently involved with somehow is comparable to the Facebook ecosystem.
Also Facebook is slightly more complex than a CRUD app.
Honest question. How many more breaches have to occur before you consider FB reckless? Or is your allegiance unconditional?
There isn't some magic wand that Zuck can somehow wave to prevent software bugs from occurring. That's how things actually work in the real world.
This is especially pathetic considering they're "enterprise". You would think they engineered some kind of security test to check for these things. Why it's not in the build-process points to negligence in my eyes.
If you are blocking posts for Person A, but not Person B, the moment Person A and Person B talk your "privacy settings" are over.
Even without this leaking in the JSON, people can TALK to each other, or show each other their Facebook accounts, and you can't control that. This applies to Facebook, Twitter DMs, Google+ circles, email, and whenever you think you are posting privately over the Internet.
Sure, Person A can always DECIDE to talk to Person B. But that does not mean I voluntarily tell Person B everything that I only want Person A to know. This specific argument of yours doesn't even have much to do with the Internet.
You are basically saying it is useless to ever share anything with only a specific group of people because the specific group of people can always just talk to everyone else you don't wish to share the information with.
"These are other people who can see ----'s post. When you share with a specific set of friends, they can see the audience. However, your friends can't see when you put them on a list like Close Friends or Acquaintances."
This feature makes NO SENSE. Please remove this, facebook.
Because of this, your efforts might be wasted.
If you do this a lot, you will have publicly offended a lot of friends of yours and it will backfire one day. One day someone will know who you are venting about, and copy it and send it to them just for fun.
Just because nobody said anything, doesn't mean that nobody knew.
Don't underestimate what you may consider to be normal or obvious, as it may not be to others.