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Comment by AlexMuir | Hacker News Reader

If I could short FB I would do so immediately. The fallout from this is going to be immense and long-term. I'd imagine they are facing two choices at FB right now:

1. Take the site down and prevent any further leaks. But accept the absolutely massive flak that would come from that.

2. Continue to let the leaking happen and try to hotfix the bug. Be accused of failing to get a handle on it, but perhaps get away with it if fixed in the next 20 minutes.

I'd bet that it's been like this for ages and only just been noticed. That will make fixing it a bit harder I should think - not simply a rollback to the previous push.

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"Update: Facebook Confirms No Private Messages Appearing On Timeline. They’re Old Wall Posts."

So TC have basically rewritten their entire article rather than add an update but anyway.

It's probably not private messages - but it is messages that people think should be private TODAY. But it doesn't really matter - it's perception that matters here. And also I guess this is an illustration of how people's attitudes to FB have changed over time.

"I would NEVER have shared this publicly." they say. But either they did, and now don't trust FB in the way they used to. Or they didn't and there's a bug. Neither are good for FB's brand.

So TC have basically rewritten their entire article rather than add an update but anyway.

There is no good way to answer "how do we correct a story that was completely wrong," but this seems to be a decent enough way to do it.

The correct way is a rectification. You leave the old story and point prominently to the correction at the top.

When did these people think these messages should become private? Today? Yesterday? Last year? They were never private. Why would you expect them to become private?

If I could short FB I would do so immediately. The fallout from this is going to be immense and long-term

That makes me wonder if there is some malicious self-interest behind this. Here's the formula:

ubiquitous yet misunderstood personal technology + sensationalist media + power of suggestion + deliberate astroturfing campaign = sudden and immense drop in stock price.

Not that I actually think this is the case, but it wouldn't be outside the realm of the possible.

Well, it happened. FB dropped about 15% over the course of one day, probably thanks to this.

Probably the best solution for them at this point would be something in between, like hiding all friend's post on every user's wall instead of letting every user to that manually.

But facebook is about "sharing" with advertisers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfriends. They don't want less "sharing."

Advertisers target to your demographics regardless of privacy settings.

And in case it is true flat out deny it ever happened.

Oh its false and not real, did that even occur to you or is your hate of facebook so intense that this possibility that users could be mistaken is just not possible. You know the very same people who gladly give up a ton of personal information on line to any one in the first place and stupidly trust corporations with personal information. I mean really is it impossible that these very same users could be mistaken with regards to old wall to wall posts?

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