Facebook privacy settings are about to change again | Hacker News Reader

Facebook privacy settings are about to change again

washingtonpost.com

43 pointsbane35 comments

That's a nice link bait title on the Post's part. I thought it was going to be along the lines of privacy invasion, but it's actually giving the user more granular control over their content. That's good. But I forgot that any kind of change to Facebook is supposed to cause an uproar, so I guess the post is trying to get that crowd going.

Also I love the off screen cellphone picture of the new drop down menu. It really adds to context to the writers commitment to getting a good story.

I edited it to tone down the linkbait. If anyone suggests a better title, I'll change it again.

dang, as per the HN guidelines, I always try and submit with the title of the page I'm submitting...even if it's link baity. Is that still the desired guideline or should we do something else?

Hi bane. The guidelines say "use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" (emphasis added). As far as I know, they've always said that. So yep, delinkbaitification is welcome.

Okay, I'll try and supply some better titles and hopefully make the mods' lives a little easier.

Here are the principles I follow:

1. Make the minimal change necessary;

2. Use language that's already there.

By "already there" I mean not adding words of one's own choosing, but drawing on the existing titles and headings or, if need be, the first sentence of the article.

it's actually giving the user more granular control over their content*

Granular control is used by what % of people? Experience tells me to watch for a bait and switch from Facebook, if not this update, the next one.

Except for this bit:

> Facebook is testing a pop-up notification that asks users who haven't reviewed their settings in a while whether they'd like their posts to be shared publicly by default, to their friends by default or another more specific setting.

I feel this is an attempt to get those of us only sharing with friends to reconsider sharing publicly.

It's possible, but my profile is set to "Share with everyone" and I still got a notification a few weeks ago asking me whether I wanted to change mine back to "Share only with friends", so I wouldn't assume the worst.

Mine was set to public, too, and I didn't actually realize it because it had been so long (a couple years?) since I had posted anything. When I was editing a post, I was prompted to review the settings ... and I changed it to "friends only". I appreciated the notification.

> You might suspect this is actually a clumsy attempt on Facebook’s part to get people to change their settings from “friends” to “public.” But it isn’t, at least for now: A Facebook spokesman told me the only people seeing the pop-up box in the current test are those who are already posting publicly on Facebook.

Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/25/facebook_...

What makes you think that?

The Privacy Dinosaur is only for users who are currently posting to Public by default, it reminds them of that fact and educates them on the different settings. It's been rolling out to select users for a couple of weeks now[1]

[1]: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/25/facebook_...

That being said, I do wonder what has happened to Mark Zuckerberg's opinion on privacy since the early days of Facebook.

There is still no full on private mode

What do you mean by 'full on private mode'?

You can set the privacy for anything you post to 'only me' (which is about as private as it gets, in a way), though I suspect that's not what you have in mind.

FaceDiary?

Friends only.

Not friends of friends for some stuff etc. FB allows you to search for people etc. Realistically, I should just start using something like Path.

It might not be a big deal, but I found this particularly infuriating:

> The graphic comes along with an icon of a little dinosaur. Asked whether Facebook was implying that privacy was an artifact of the past, ...

It was just a cute, irreverent dinosaur icon! Must the press always come up with misleading angles for everything?

Today a dinosaur icon tomorrow a Stalin icon, we must draw the line!

Realistically, regardless of any company's stated policy or array of settings that can be tweaked, if it goes on the internet - it will be available somewhere to someone forever. This is the ideal situation which bars data breach or misconfigured settings which erroneously releases the data to a greater group than specified.

What are people using Facebook for these days? I share images with Dropbox and use WhatsApp to talk with people. I haven't seriously used Facebook in years and when I do log in it's just a bunch of spam. I just don't see myself ever needing to use something like Facebook again. I think maybe there was a time when creating profiles was a thing, but is it still a thing? I don't want to share pictures with a million people anymore, just my family and really close friends.

> I don't want to share pictures with a million people anymore, just my family and really close friends.

You've just described the typical use-case for what most people use FB for. I don't think FB was ever about sharing with a million people, just whoever you friended.

It really depends on whether you have an "open" friending policy or not, and if you have family/work friends/etc. who deter real sharing. And then whether you share to public, friends of friends, friends, or subgroups. Doing all this per-post is probably more work than I'd be willing to deal with, so I just set it as "friends", and add people who are interesting on my friends own posts to my fl.

LiveJournal (RIP) is what trained me in all this behavior.

I have 767 friends, mainly from the "hacker scene", YC and startups, Iraq/Afghanistan, diving, shooting sports, and cypherpunks.

I have my FB set to "friends only", so I can make posts which can't be linked from Google results or elsewhere. Generally, anything which is either less-general-interest or more-sensitive than twitter, but which I want to post in general, vs. to a specific crowd. (Even more public/reputational than twitter would be HN submissions; HN comments generally are on-topic, and more on par with Twitter for sensitivity, although down in a conversation not as generally relevant.)

I also have a few "secret fb groups" where we discuss various things.

None of this really requires extreme privacy; it's just "please don't quote this in public yet" or "this might be too boring for the public."

Since I've curated my friends well, I tend to see pretty interesting debates about: 1) guns (which is fun because especially the UK friends are anti-guns, and others are in the industry, and it remains civil)

2) crypto, security, and hardware stuff (including my own startup)

3) political issues (generally "good governance" which tends toward non-partisan, but also generally libertarian stuff)

4) major world events (e.g. I have friends from Ukraine, and when Afghanistan stories come up, I have friends I worked with in Afghanistan, and some who are in Afghanistan now)

FB Messenger isn't secure/is archived by FB for unknown future use, but is remarkably convenient. If nothing else, it is better for "presence" than any of the encrypted chat stuff I use for content, so either non-sensitive discussions there, or "can we talk on OTR/irc/etc.?"

It's also still my favorite photo sharing site for photos restricted to friends. My workflow involves Lightroom and then publishing to Flickr (public), FB (friends), 500px (pro). (although my real workflow is "archive to a drive and sit on them until I have time to edit...I have about a year backlog right now).

I don't use Dropbox or WhatsApp.

Your having to use two apps there, Facebook has it all in one. Your probably seeing spam because you've like some ridiculous Facebook Page or app that posts garbage.

Just add the people you actually talk to on Facebook. Your friends and family, guys from your gym. Create a group with your Chess Club in it so you can discuss chess openings.

I don't think any one apart from my friends can see what I post on Facebook, not sure you can even share your page with millions of people unless millions of people follow you.

Chat. Non-pseudonymous and therefore discoverable, universally available chat with read receipts and delivery confirmation always available. Both synchronous and async conversations are first-class citizens and you can seamlessly transition between smartphone and real keyboard for more involved conversations.

WhatsApp has no penetration in any social group I've ever been part of. I'll be disappointed if it does displace Facebook, because I so much prefer being able to transition a conversation to my laptop.

Mainly chat, increasingly in groups; WhatsApp is good but it's not ubiquitous enough. Otherwise photos and events, but even those are slowly moving into being shared within chat groups. The "scrolling news feed" days are coming to a close, and selective communications and sharing is becoming the norm, because with a decent amount of friends not everyone needs to know about everything (as a point of relevance, less than privacy)

The blurry photo shows that the new redesign features only two privacy settings:

  * Public

  * Friends

Below there is also some tiny blurry text that may stand for "advanced".

I believe that says "More Options" if I'm looking at the image you're referencing.

I really hope that ‘advanced’ button is going to be expanded: if you believe danah boyd’s research on this, most user don't care about public and they tend to be savvier about this that to need an explanation of what ‘Facebook friends’ are. However, their main problem is not filtering friends or not, but between friends.

The hiding old profile picture might be a good thing, based on how often former paramour are featured there.

All of these look like enhancements to me...

So Google+ ?

Meh...already figured out that Facebook and Google will use and sell one way or another everything they know about me. That's how they keep increasing their profits. So, I use several browsers, ad blockers, different services, never logged in...and I watch what I post.

I think it's cool because Facebook does not only connect people but it also works out to help people feel comfortable with the things they post or share..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com