8 ms·
Making Control Simple
- mootothemax 16y agoFair play to Facebook, they've done exactly what they said they would, and to the same timeline. I don't like the long preamble trying to justify themselves, but now that I can turn off Facebook Platform entirely, it's a small price to pay.
- izendejas 16y agowouldn't it be great if instead, you could turn it on and it was turned off by default? give people a compelling reason to use a product (in this case to turn it on), or you have no product--period.
- ryanwaggoner 16y agoThat's true...if only new computers shipped without an operating system, and operating systems didn't come with a browser installed, and you had to turn on every feature in every application or website that you signed up for. If only the world was "off" by default and I had to spend lots of time and energy trying to get things into a usable state, instead of having the settings set to usable levels by default. You might disagree with the defaults they've chosen, but having everything "off" by default isn't a great world.
- izendejas 16y agoI fail to see how the examples you provide have any parallels with the "opt in" by default settings in a social application. Having everything by default is the very reason people chose to use this application in the first place. That's the product people bought into--with their data and attention--and now that product is getting changed, in many cases, without their knowledge and/or without their understanding of what's at stake.
- Hexstream 16y agoYou get raped by default unless you "opt-out". It's become a tradition. Because after all, where's the wrongdoing if you can opt-out, eh? Sometimes I hate the world.
- noelchurchill 16y agoI wonder if anyone who deleted their profiles now want them back?
- stanleydrew 16y agoThis doesn't really change much for me. I'm very happy to have given up my Facebook account. It's more a matter of trust for me, and Facebook ruined that. Their brand is forever tarnished in my eyes.
- nano81 16y agoI doubt many people followed through and deleted their accounts entirely. Marks says at http://www.businessinsider.com/live-facebook-rolls-out-new-privacy-options-2010-5#ixzz0p3reQ3DA http://www.businessinsider.com/live-facebook-rolls-out-new-p... : On quitting the site: "We've seen no meaningful change on the stats on any of that stuff."
- mootothemax 16y agoFrom what I understand, if you log back in to your account within 14 days* then the delete request is cancelled and everything goes back to normal. It makes me wonder if Facebook had a bad couple of days of people deleting their accounts and Mark Zuckerberg thought "Right, we've got 7 days to fix this and get them logging in again, let's get to it!" * I could have the precise timeframe wrong
- aristus 16y agoThis is unfortunately a common misperception. If you deactivate your account you can bring it back. If you delete it the data is deleted.
- mootothemax 16y agoOk, I'm confused. I've just taken a look at the WikiHow page, and that says there's a delay of 14 days before the account's actually deleted: http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account Who's right?
- singer 16y agoI suppose this might put an end to the Diaspora dream.
- kilps 16y agoI sure hope not - decentralised social networking (whoever makes it) is the only logical way forward. Imagine email was controlled by one company.
- mootothemax 16y agoTo most non-technical people, email is tied to one company; their ISP or one of the free Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo-style providers. Changing a personal email address can be a huge hassle. Now, I can see ISPs setting up social network nodes for their users, I just wonder if there won't be some similar pain if/when one changes provider.
- agentultra 16y agoEven if it's a pain, it's possible and they cannot actively take steps to prevent you from backing up your email. Not true for all the contacts in your fb profile.
- singer 16y agoCreating an app to extract Facebook contacts would be a piece of cake.
- what 16y agoI don't think that's allowed. "III. Storing and Using Data You Receive From Us ... 7. You must not use user data you receive from us or collect through running an ad, including information you derive from your targeting criteria, for any purpose off of Facebook, without user consent." [1] I suspect that means you need consent from every user whose information you collected (your own list of contacts is made up of other peoples' basic information). [1] http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies http://developers.facebook.com/policy/#policies
- expertcs 16y agoI don't understand why people are jumping back in the band-wagon. Facebook has shown its intention, clearly. Reverting back is only a temporary solution.
- singer 16y agoWhat were their intentions... to trick people with their security settings? Perhaps they just didn't take enough time to plan out the settings the first time around.
- expertcs 16y agoTheir intentions are to make butt load of money. The only way they can do it is by selling users data one way or another. One of the main reasons I user facebook is to keep in touch with my friends and know what they are doing without having to do much. Big announcements or happenings are also passed on through facebook, nowadays, which is fine. However, this information is just between friends. Unless, they somehow make most of this information public, I dont see a way for them to make loads of money. They have a funding of $716M and a lot of it at $12B evaluation. What else are they going to do?
- indigoviolet 16y agoFacebook doesn't require you to make your data public to target ads to you. Advertisers don't ever see your actual data -- they target to demographics, and Facebook acts as the intermediary, displaying those ads to the appropriate users. Here's a related FAQ: http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=privacyupdate http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=privacyupdate
- marltod 16y agoThe more content is private the fewer pages of targeted advertising Facebook will serve. So if everything was private facebook would make less money. By tricking users into making more information public they get more hits and get more opportunities to 'share' your data with 3rd parties.
- xenophanes 16y agoEww, looks they are bundling photos with status and posts (you can see them grouped in the pic). So, to make your posts world readable, your photos have to be too. That's not very good control.
- nikolayav 16y agoWhich is why you can still also access the granular controls and choose different privacy for those items.
- mortenjorck 16y agoThis should deter Diaspora and other open social networking alternatives exactly as much as a monthly decrease in the price of crude oil should deter alternative energy research.
- singer 16y agoResearching alternative energy and actually getting someone to pay for a product that uses alternative energy are quite different. I'm sure those people who are currently using crude oil products will continue to do so once they see the price difference in the alternative energy products. The same thing goes for Diaspora. It's going to take a miracle to make the majority of Facebook users jump over to a social network that cannot be used for free.
- pavs 16y agoSince when did Diaspora become an alternative to social network or even Facebook? No one knows what the hell it is, other than a few kids drawing some diagrams on a black board.
- hernan7 16y agoLet's be fair here: they also wrote some old Unix jokes on that blackboard too.
- mortenjorck 16y agoPoint taken. But has that stopped fusion researchers?
- pavs 16y agoMan you are way out of your head. You are comparing Fusion research to Diaspora? There has been tangible research done on nuclear fusion, there is a road map, we known how they plan to do it, they are building reactors, they have 100s of scientists employed working on it. They may not be successful, they maybe horrible failures, it might never happen. But they are working on it. Its way way far from the black board and you can actually see the work yourself. What do you have with diaspora? Nothing! Other than some kids notion of what an open social network might look like. No code, no prior reputation, you don't even know if they can make a tic-tac-toe. You know nothing. So please don't compare Diaspora, something that doesn't exist in any form, to something that does (facebook) or something that people are working on (fusion).
- what 16y agoI'm confused did they really change anything? Or just make the controls "simpler"? Are there still "only me" settings? (I got bored after reading the first few paragraphs of the history of Facebook)
- indigoviolet 16y agoHere you go: http://gigaom.com/2010/05/26/facebooks-new-privacy-settings-heres-what-changed/ http://gigaom.com/2010/05/26/facebooks-new-privacy-settings-...
- ashu 16y agoOr this: http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/05/facebook-privacy-must-know/ http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/05/facebook-privacy-must-kno...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- izendejas 16y ago"If you simply want to turn off instant personalization, we've also made that easier" would read a whole lot better if it read: "If you simply want to turn on instant personalization, we've also made that easier." If "personalization" is such a great feature, people will turn it on. "opt in" by default, please! I see absolutely no changes here, except that privacy settings are now tabbed, and that instead of a dropdown, you now have radio buttons. Wow, now this is simpler! /sarcasm
- nano81 16y agoAbsolutely no changes? Seriously? This lets people control their privacy without needing to go through dozens of granular controls, which is a change. It also lets you completely opt out of platform in its entirety, which is a change. It also no longer requires pages and friends to be public, which is a change. If you want to criticize that's cool, but stick to things that aren't completely false.
- izendejas 16y ago"absolutely" is a hyperbole, but you're right, let's not add to the misinformation--it's self-defeating. BTW, are you a facebook employee? I went through your comments and a good 90% (no hyperbole this time) are comments related to Facebook posts, and some looked pro-facebook. Nothing wrong, of course, just curious.
- iamdave 16y agoI want to point out, that this entire blog post is dedicated to being able to manage your profile accessibility in a more simplified manner, yet not a single link in the blog post takes users to the direct page in which they can make the changes being referenced. This matters because non-savvy users don't have the slightest of a clue where to edit their privacy settings. When Facebook rolled out their first major redesign, status posts came in by the numbers that people couldn't figure out where to post new pictures, despite having an icon right under the status box that they could have clicked. Secondly, I just went and checked out the instant personalization feature, which I explicitly opted-out of when it launched, only to find the feature re-enabled. Things have changed, but nothing changed at all.
- indigoviolet 16y agoMark mentioned that they're going to put links to this in messaging on the home page, which is about as in-your-face as possible. Nonsavvy users aren't reading blog posts either.
- whatusername 16y agoAlso - for some of us - the change hasn't been rolled out yet.. I can only see the old privacy page.
- axod 16y agoHas anyone else been caught with random popups on facebook "offering" to link your profile interests to public pages? It's really scammy. Once it pops up, you're trapped. Click on the facebook logo, and it doesn't take you home. There is no way out unless you either agree, or manually go back to facebook.com yourself. What are they thinking doing crap like that...
- jayair 16y agoFound it incredibly annoying. I haven't visited my profile since.
- waterlesscloud 16y agoI changed everything to blatant lies, decreasing the value of the service.
- jacobolus 16y agoEven worse, once you close out of that page a few times and navigate back to facebook manually, at some point they just delete all of your interests, unprompted. Totally obnoxious.
- thedjpetersen 16y agoThis is because they are replacing your interest with a linked page. The offer to link is the prompt.