Facebook Changes Provoke Uproar Among Users

coastal984 writes, "Facebook, the college (and now, high school and professional) networking site, launched changes to their web site this morning, provoking a massive and immediate response, and not the one the company had hoped for. Hundreds of protest 'Groups' formed, the largest of which have over 10,000 members, and sites like this student portal sprang up to pour scorn on the recent changes. The biggest gripe is the new "News Feed" on every page that tracks recent changes, activities, and comments made by everyone the user is connected to, such as a change in a user's relationship status." These details were all public previously, but it was only through intentional browsing that they would be discovered. In the words of one user, "Stalking is supposed to be hard."

Don't Put Yourself Online Then

[MankyD]

If you don't want to be stalked, don't put your personal information online. All of the data these "feeds" display can be found through browsing anyways. This just centralizes it. I rather like this feature myself.

Yes

[OverlordQ]

While I do agree this is a bad thing and it should be opt-in rather then opt-out, you can remove all of these notes so other can't see them from your profile page.

Just an update to the article:

[coastal984]

The referenced 10,000 member group now numbers over 47,000 (if you have a facebook login, you can view it at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208288769 [facebook.com]). There is also an online petition now, with more than 3,700 signatures located at [petitiononline.com]http://www.petitiononline.com/faceb00k/petition.ht ml [petitiononline.com]

Re:Yes

[MadJoy]

However, when you opt-out of a particular story, it takes it off your own mini-feed, but not the main feed on each person's homepage.

Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard

[tmjr3353]

Except that it's against the terms of use for facebook to use anything other than your real name as your display name. Quoth the change name bullet:

You have to use your real name. Celebrity names, nicknames, and other fake names are not allowed.

The solution seems fairly easy to me -- there's already a number of privacy options for who gets to see what; all that needs to be added is a check box to enable or disable the feed.

Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard

[rickb928]

Don't want them public? Dont' post relationship info on facebook.

Sheesh. People will read ANYTHING you post.

Don't criticize something you don't understand. Especially other people.

And WHAT privacy does Facebook afford? Apprently that which many do not avail themselves of, what with posting info. If you read the EULA, it says:

"All content on the Web site, including but not limited to design, text, graphics, other files, and their selection and arrangement (the "Content"), are the proprietary property of the Company or its licensors. All rights reserved."

and

"By posting Member Content to any part of the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."

and

"You may remove your Member Content from the Web site at any time. If you choose to remove your Member Content, the license granted above will automatically expire."

and

"You are solely responsible for your interactions with other Facebook Members. We reserve the right, but have no obligation, to monitor disputes between you and other Members."

and

"The Company is not responsible for the conduct, whether online or offline, of any user of the Web site or Member of the Service."

Then the fun begins. In their Privacy Policy:

"Facebook follows two core principles:

1. You should have control over your personal information.
Facebook helps you share information with your friends and people around you. You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups you join. And you control with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the My Privacy page.

2. You should have access to the information others want to share.
There is an increasing amount of information available out there, and you may want to know what relates to you, your friends, and people around you. We want to help you easily get that information."

Yeah, you should have privacy, but Facebook reserves the right to "use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such information" as they see fit, stated in their EULA. I think that means they can in fact publish most anything you provide as 'content'. Personal information should be bound by the Privacy Policy, but sheesh, what ISN'T 'personal'? What you listened to this morning in your shower? The fact that you took a shower? The fact that you're not deaf? Such a slippery slope...

and

"If you post personally identifiable information in areas of the site accessible to other users, you should be aware that such information can be read, collected, or used by other users of these forums, and could be used improperly to send you unsolicited messages."

Darn. and,

"Profile information you submit to Facebook will be available to users of Facebook who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings. This is primarily so your friends at other schools can find you and send a friend request. People who see your name in searches, however, will not be able to access your profile information unless they have a relationship to you (friend, friend of friend, member of your school's network, etc.) that allows such access based on your privacy settings."

Sounds li

Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard

[Sadiekiller]

facebook requires a school/work email account to sign up, therefor, they know if you are using your real name. Most company/school email addresses go along the theme of [e-mail] or [e-mail]

Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard

[TubeSteak]

You're wrong that your info is available to anyone with a .edu e-mail address.

The privacy settings do a decent job of giving you control over who can and cannot see your profile.

Of the people who aren't friends, you can control which parts are hidden from them, assuming you let them see anything at all. You can limit things to:

Everyone from [Your School]
Friends of your friends from [Your School]
Only your friends
No one from [Your School]
Don't show anyone on Facebook my [Online Status/courses/groups/wall/photos tagged of me]

Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard

[Psykosys]

They don't seem to have any mechanism in place to actually monitor this, however. My school and I'm sure many others give users aliases to their email addresses, so they can be both [e-mail] and [e-mail], and many people use their aliases for joke accounts. I'm pretty sure this is only in the ToS because they're worried about the system being totally saturated with fake accounts, and they don't care about a few "Karl Marx"es here and there.

Facebook's reply

[master811]

This is a reply facebook have been sending out to people had you moaned at them about these new changes.

Hey,

We understand that some people are unhappy or
concerned about the recent changes to Facebook.
Your feedback is welcome and appreciated because our
goal is to make a website that is in line with our
users' expectations. As we consider future changes
and modifications, we will certainly keep everyone's
opinions in mind. We think, however, that once you
become familiar with the new layout and features,
you will find these changes just as useful as past
improvements such as Photos, Groups, and the Wall.

We introduced News Feed and Mini-Feed because we
wanted to make it easier than ever before to see
interesting, relevant pieces of information from the
world around you. News Feed automatically generates
the most recent news stories about your friends so
that you have a resource available to guide your
movement throughout the site. Mini-Feed allows you
to quickly and easily see the latest developments in
the lives of people whose profiles you choose to
visit.

What is important to remember with all of these
features is that we are not allowing anyone to see
anything that they wouldn't normally be allowed to
see. For example, if you join a secret group, any
friends that are not members will not receive a News
Feed story about this action. Similarly, when they
look at your Mini-Feed, they will not be able to see
a story about you joining the group. The settings
that are established on the My Privacy page and the
settings that apply to Photo albums, Notes, Groups,
Events, etc. dictate the stories that are displayed
in News Feed and Mini-Feed. Although there is no
option to completely turn off Mini-Feed, all users
have the option to hide individual stories. If you
select the 'X' button to the right of any of your
own stories, that content will no longer be visible
to anyone viewing your Mini-Feed. Facebook prides
itself in giving users complete control over the
information that they share with others. Let us
know if you have any questions about the privacy
settings that we offer.

Thanks for using Facebook!

--

Customer Support Representative
Facebook

Calm down kids

[szembek]

All you kids take this shit too seriously. It's just a website. So is that stupid myspace crap. People are always updating their profiles and shit as if anybody else cares about your profile. The extent of this crap when I was in school was a damn IM profile that said some dumb quotes or something and maybe a link or two to some websites. Now you guys go make these unsightly websites and add your 'friends' to your list and crap. Call me a troll but you people need to get a life outside of the Internet. Those people are not your friends. If you don't want people to know something about you DON'T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET. It's that god damned simple.

Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard

[Oniko]

See, the thing is, people don't care about the information being publicly available. You're right, the whole point of posting it is so that people can see it. If they didn't want people to see it, then they wouldn't put it up.

But, see, here's some examples of differences:

OLD: People look at your profile and see that you're now dating someone (presuming non-slashdot here)
NEW: Anyone connected to you recieves a notice as soon as you change your relationship status

OLD: You write a random note on someone's profile "Wall" that anyone who looks at it can see.
NEW: Your friends get a list of all the walls you've written on

OLD: You upload pictures that anyone who looks at your profile can see
NEW: You recieve notice and thumbnails of any pictures any of your friends post

OLD: Your friend comments on the picture of someone you don't know, and you don't care and will never see it.
NEW: Your friend comments on the picture of someone you don't know, and you are told what they said and the name of the person it was regarding.

OLD: You can look at someone's profile and see what groups they belong to if you care
NEW: A buddy you had in high school starts a random group, and you know instantly

Again, the information itself isn't sensitive or treated as such. But now people can see and analyse your timestamped behavior on the site in addition to whatever you post. And that's what's more of the weirds-people-out thing.