That'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.
I 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.
You 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.
Has 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.
Even 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.
I 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.
Mark 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.
I 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.
What 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.
You really think a huge company full of lawyers and an entire office in DC dedicated to privacy & policy messed up because they were in a hurry? Trust me, there's not a single setting in the old design that wasn't vetted by a pile of lawyers and policy wonks.
What I don't have to assume is that FaceBook has repeatedly made big privacy-impacting changes without consulting its users. This is the third major overreach/retreat. Three incidents is enough to realize that taking privacy seriously is not part of the company's DNA.
Their 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?
Facebook 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
So, are you saying that instant personalization was adding no value to their revenues? Making status updates public was in no-way an answer to twitter and generate a real-time news source? Linking interests to direct pages otherwise blank pages was making them no money? I know you work for FB, and it seems a lot of fb employees are following this thread and trying to generate a positive vibe. I am not against FB, but the way they have done things lately, it is almost impossible for me to believe that they wont do it again. I was one of those people who used to post things without thinking much on fb, and now I have completely stopped. Hopefully, every user will understand and would start treating it as a public forum.
Of course the things you're suggesting will allow Facebook to add features to the product, and indirectly perhaps add revenue.
That is very different from this: "The only way they can do it is by selling users data one way or another.". People often claim that Facebook wants to "sell" your data to advertisers, and I'm simply saying that claim is wrong.
(I've never been secretive about the fact that I worked at Facebook, it's on my profile. )
The problem here is that FB makes more money by making user profiles more public. They have shown it already. And, I doubt you will disagree with me on this fact.
Now, you can argue that making private information public to generate revenues is not selling, however, IMO, it is, given the fact that they started out as a completely private social network.
Basically, if your profile picture were private, it would be hard for someone (who is your friend/acquaintance in real life) who isn't friends with you (on Facebook) already to find you on the site.
"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
Absolutely 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.
"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.
From 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!"
Wrong. If you deactivate your account, you can bring it back. If you request it to be deleted, you have 14 days to cancel that request (by simply logging in) before it's deleted. Once it's deleted, that's the end -- you can't bring it back.
(edited to make clear which part of your comment is wrong)
Ah, you are correct. I just tried it (with a dummy account). Apologies. I work at FB but don't delete my account often. :)
It looks like you will be asked to confirm deletion if you log in during the waiting period. Simply logging back in will not cancel the deletion request.
"Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. If you log into your account within the next 14 days, your account will be reactivated and you will have the option to cancel your request."
This 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.
There's a 14 day delay between the delete request and the profile actually being deleted. I'd wager that many folks can reclaim their profiles with sufficient ease.
I doubt it. The cat is out of the bag... Facebook can at a whim change the privacy of your personal data. Sure they caved under pressure and took a step backwards, but whose to say things might not change again in the future?
Some people are totally comfortable with the risk, but frankly I think it would be good for everybody that the "social networking infrastructure" is not owned by one company. Then... like email, ISPs, IM, mobile phone providers... everyone would have a choice and companies could compete for their customers.
Facebook has kept taking two steps forward and one step backwards for the last years. The direction has stayed the same however. On the Washington Post article Mark said: "Sometimes we move too fast", which is totally different than saying "we went to a wrong direction".
To 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.
Sure - these are issues which need to be sorted out. But it's not the end of the world if the average user doesn't completely understand the system as long as it works.
"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).
From a more thorough read of the policy, III. 3. looks like it means that you're ok to use "basic information" from someone who connects to your service however you like, as long as you don't go selling it to ad networks/third parties. That means that you can store one person's first name, last name, email address, profile pic, FB ids of friends - but not any of their friend's details other than their id.
It's not much, but it's enough to help create someone's account on your competing social network. Whether you'd be able to store/export their posts/other people's comments is a different question - it depends on the definition of application, but FriendFeed seemed to be able to do it, so why can't someone else?
You might be able to take a user's data to establish their profile, they consented by using your application after all. But I don't think you can export their friend list and use it to invite them to your new social network.
Either way, I think Facebook could find something in their ToS to shut you down if they feel like you're stealing their users away. There was a recent article about a tool from Power Ventures that allowed you to login to multiple social networks and aggregate the messages, friends lists and what not. Facebook seemed to claim it was a violation of the ToS because they were accessing account data using "automated means."
It's generally within FB's terms of service to store Facebook ids, but unless you're a larger company like Yahoo, I don't think you're allowed to do much else other than use the data for your app.
I'd wager than any such app that could help users migrate to a competing social network would be shutdown extremely fast.
Most users migrating their emails to another provider can do it through a desktop email client. At most it might require learning how to download an mbox file or some such. Pretty hard stuff for an average user, but not impossible.
Try telling a user that they'd have to program their own app on a proprietary third-party API and host it on their own servers and go through some sort of vetting process just to get a backup of their emails and... well I hope you can see where I am going.
Someone mentioned the other day about the need for a standard file for exporting social networks, like there already is for email. Perhaps this is an idea for a startup, unless it already exists. It's obviously not going to be easy, but it's definitely something that's needed.
I'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)
Eww, 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.
This 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.
Since 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.
Man 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).
I had no choice but to upvote this, possibly the most categorical, flat-out statement that diaspora deserves more scrutiny than they're getting.
It's certainly possible they'll build a solid product, but for something of this magnitude, and with the amount of audacity they have within their ranks to accomplish something this monumental (especially coming close on $200,00), they haven't particularly sold their case to the technical crowd that what they're going to build wont turn into vaporware.
More pointedly, they haven't sold their case that diaspora will even be worth checking out.
Researching 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.
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.