Facebook Changes Provoke Uproar Among Users 426
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."
Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard (Score:5, Funny)
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An' boy, I tell you what, we had to plant the gawdern tree 'an wait thirty years, all the while nurtirn 'an prunin' it all sneaky like 'fer we could even think about salkin'
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That IS funny. Facebook users wanting privacy.
I wonder how the commentator came to the conclusion *this* facebook user is 'intelligent'.
Bahahaha..
You can't make this stuff up.
rick
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And yes, we do not want our breakups made public. Don't criticize what you don't understand.
Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard (Score:5, Insightful)
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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/phot
Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard (Score:5, Insightful)
You are the webmaster of CyberNexus.
You can be contacted at webmaster@cybernexus.net.
This was all public information. Now it's been announced. See the difference?
Let's say I break up with my girlfriend. Previously, I would simply change my relationship status to "single." Eventually, my closer friends would notice that my relationship status changed.
Now, it is announced to the world as soon as it would happen. There's a difference between publicly available and publicly announced. As an analogy: the former is adding a line in your slashdot personal profile that you had a divorce. The latter is having a story greenlighted on slashdot, that you just had a divorce. Both are public information, but would you really want it announced?
Just because we choose to disclose something does not mean we wish to draw attention to it when the situation changes. Even something as innocuous as an invitation to a party shows up; if I decline the invitation, everyone knows I just declined.
You are not a college student, and you do not live in the same sort of social environment where it is encouraged to share contact information publicly to be included in events and meet new people. We knowingly give up some of our privacy when we do so, but there is a limit.
I'm sure if I dug around your website or google, I could find your (real) email address, so why don't you post it on slashdot? It's public information, after all? What about your phone number? Knowing your name and city, I could easily find it, so why isn't it in your slashdot profile? It's not in your profile because you don't want to call attention to it.
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No, it doesn't. That's like saying that if you do something in public, you want everyone there to see it. This is just false. Facebook only has two options: you're friends with someone or you're not. I'm friends with people that I want to keep track of because I knew them 10 years ago in high school. I'm also friends with, among others, my best friend, my wife, and one of
Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, stalking IS supposed to be hard (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand either. You document your "being in a relationship" on a website, change it later, and are surprised that anyone notices. Everyone who you would want to know about this would know from real life (or a personal communication), not a website. Anyone who's "stalking" you online would have noticed the change anyway. So what's different?
Putting your romantic life on a website is an extraordinarily bad and naive idea. Put stuff online, the world knows, forever. Learn that now.
Re:Bottom line (Score:5, Insightful)
PEOPLE DON'T LIKE IT. That's really all that matters. Either Facebook can listen to a little more than their market droids before making such lame changes, or face the consequences.
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People will cope alright. They'll cope right out your front door and leave you twisting in the wind. You sound like people HAVE to use Facebook. Feel free to have this epiphany: they DON'T.
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Then again, I guess most people here would never have that problem...
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Get a tattoo instead. At least you can get rid of that if you really want to.
Then again, I guess most people here would never have that problem
I'm married. With a kid. So I can't back out of that by changing a web profile.
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Except now they don't h
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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.
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"Stalking is supposed to be hard" (Score:5, Insightful)
WHOOSH
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what sites like Facebook are.
That's public information, folks!
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Re:"Stalking is supposed to be hard" (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you're going to post information about yourself to the public, then don't bitch and moan when the public finds out about it. "Security through obscurity" doesn't apply to social networks and doesn't really work anyways.
Re:"Stalking is supposed to be hard" (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, there isn't actually and it's beliefs like this that scare me. Anyone who believes they led a more private social-networking life before was living under a false pretense. I can't say it enough times: all of this information could quickly and easily be found in one location before - facebook.com. That has not changed.
Furthermore, if you don't want this information announced to the facebook.com world, don't put it on faceboo
Re:"Stalking is supposed to be hard" (Score:4, Insightful)
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There's a little less privacy as a result, in the sense that more people will know more about you, but not in the sense that the information available to
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You're still so damn sure that publicly available and publicly announced are the same thing? There IS a difference, and you're just too damn dense to see it.
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I'm not the guy you're abusing, but anyway: the difference between "anounced" and "available" in this case is whether someone bothers to mine the "available" data and make it "announced". That can happen at any time, and it's actually fortunate that it happened in this case in the open, and made everyone aware of it. Lots of your data is "announced"
Good thing Facebook made the new changes (Score:5, Interesting)
It's actually a good thing for Facebook to do this, especially for college kids, since it does teach them about the need for privacy when dealing with the public internet. I hope they keep this feature, since it will help these kids to be more aware of the fact that, yes, data is public on the internet, and that this information is actually pretty easily accessible to ACTUAL stalkers/spammers/scammers/etc..
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No kidding. I mean, it would be almost trivial to put together a script which would achieve what Facebook's new feature does. Really, all the new feature does is making it more obvious to people what sorts of information they're putting up on the site.
I'm
"public information" (Score:2)
Go figure.
We need a DMCA for personal information. But that won't happen as long as the Corporate State and its Republican lackeys are running the show.
Don't Put Yourself Online Then (Score:5, Informative)
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Stalking is supposed to be hard? (Score:4, Funny)
Facebook (Score:2, Interesting)
facebook changes (Score:4, Interesting)
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Assuming you had something like 500 friends you wouldn't have an entry on Facebook. You'd be too busy maintaining real relationships, and not the HTML and PHP that passes for "relationships" in social networking sites.
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Problem is, since the word was co-opted for use in social networking sites, the users have actively climbed onboard and start complaining about how they don't want to hear about everything their 500 friends have done, forgetting that they never had 500 friends to begin with.
What's so bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Wake up call (Score:2)
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It doesn't bother me that this information is available. I put it out there, and I have to suffer the consequences of my actions for it. But at the same time, I don't want to be bombarded with information about people on my "friends" list. I would either like to disable the list completely, or create a filter where I see information from specific friends only.
Likewise, I should be able to opt out of other frie
I almost failed a class today because of this (Score:5, Funny)
difference between "not private" and "announced" (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it shows things that you might not really feel like broadcasting to the world, even if you don't feel like it needs to be a secret. For example, when a couple splits up, everyone in your network now gets a message saying "John Smith has changed his status from 'In a relationship' to 'Single'." Not really private information, and obviously having that on your profile at all means your comfortable with other people knowing your relationship status, but there's such a lack of respect or discretion for the real world situation that it's just incredibly dehumanizing.
Another example: my friend is vacationing in Europe right now, and she just posted a message to her boyfriend's wall about wishing he was there and related sappy whatnot. Sure the wall was already the most public way someone could post a message, but it was just a message on that person's page, not a message that gets broadcasted to everyone else in either person's network, front and center.
The point here is that there's a big difference between simply not hiding information and blasting that information through a loudspeaker.
Re:difference between "not private" and "announced (Score:2)
Re:difference between "not private" and "announced (Score:5, Interesting)
And furthermore, if you really have to tell people but don't want to tell people, you can delete "events" from showing up in the feed by clicking the little x. (Yes, that interjection I added there confuses me too.)
Re:difference between "not private" and "announced (Score:5, Insightful)
When you break up, you tell your friends, eventually. You might ring them and let them know, they might ring you and ask how things are and you tell them.
However, you don't get all your friends on a Telephone conference call and say "My girlfriend and I broke up, thanks!", or take out an ad in the local paper saying "Attn to all my friends: I broke up!"
That's the situation here. Yes, it's public info. People want it to be public (so I don't think your arguement stands up) They would just rather people find things out because they want to find out, not because it's flashed in front of them.
Seriously, this is not that hard of a concept. (Said only because you said it. See how much of it a dick it makes you sound?)
Re:difference between "not private" and "announced (Score:5, Insightful)
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Anyway, I realise I was wrong, as already pointed out quite cleary by a couple of people.
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Jesus Christ...
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When I break up, I tell my friends privately on the phone. I don't take an ad out in the public notices for my friends to check on when they want to...
I was wrong!
Tim
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If it got broken off at the last second, I don't think the fact that I told the world I was engaged means that the world should automatically get a notice that she dumped me or whatever.
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I will concede that it may be that, if she says you're not going out anymore, it takes it off and announces it. I have no idea. This is the consequence assumed responsibility of the user, however, when they put that information in a public space online. If you didn't want people to find out, you shouldn't have put it in a place where they could have.
Perhaps, assuming that this is a problem, face book can institute some level of privacy filtering, i.e. not announc
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You know how you clip funny cartoons out and stick them on your cubicle wall, if you have an office job? Suddenly, little elves are sneaking around and Xeeroxing those cartoons and handing them out to every single one of your friends. You didn't want them to see it that badly. But the elves think it's of incredible importance, and everyone needs to know you got a chuckle out of that Dilbert with the joke about the obnoxious co-worker ha
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In any case, Facebook should immediately make this an opt-in feature, with control over which
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However, I can see some reasons why people would be concerned.
My biggest concern is that there are plenty of things on Facebook that I can choose to opt out of. I can choose who can see my photos, who can see my online status, who can see my wall, and plenty of other options. I don't see any option to hide or opt out of the log of my events being posted on my profile page. I am very capable of manually deleting ev
Re:difference between "not private" and "announced (Score:2)
This facebook kerfluffle will reach an equilibrium. People will either migrate to Myspace (eeew) or simply put less informatio
Yes (Score:3, Informative)
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The new changes create a Big Brother-like record. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The new changes create a Big Brother-like recor (Score:2, Insightful)
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Clearly you see no such distinction. Obviously, a sufficiently motivated monitor could discover the exact same data by running an automated polling script and monitoring for changes. H
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hear hear (Score:2)
Actually, funny story: I asked a colleague of mine at KUOI [kuoi.org] if he'd heard of the Silversun
Re:The new changes create a Big Brother-like recor (Score:2)
Here's the question you should be asking yourself:
Since all this information is public on facebook, is it better that facebook provide the "big brother" tools to everyone, or is it better that someone else put together the equivalent "big brother" tools?
Either way you are just as vulnerable, just when facebook provides the tools everyone is made aware that they are vulnerable, when someone else puts the tools together and publishes [fbstalker.com]
Re:The new changes create a Big Brother-like recor (Score:2)
Assume that anything posted to the internet is both permanent and
Information Overload. (Score:5, Interesting)
The site design of Facebook is getting closer and closer to being as ugly as myspace/youtube.
Just an update to the article: (Score:4, Informative)
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For the people who don't have a facebook user ID to protest services they can't use or even see and how they might affect people who voluntarily and constantly update their status in the belief that it's a surrogate social life?
`scuse me if I don't forward this petition to everyone in my address book.
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facebook's "new coke" (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal, unrealized gripe... (Score:2)
kids today (Score:5, Funny)
So it's gotten to the point now where even stalking is automated. Kids today have it so easy. When I was their age, I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid for breakfast, work twenty-nine hours a day down at the mill, and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work. When we got home, our Dad would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
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Not so much the lack of "privacy"... (Score:2, Interesting)
History (Score:2)
ironic... (Score:5, Funny)
6 of your friends joined the group This New Facebook Is Creepy. 9:49pm
6 of your friends joined the group the "news feed" on facebook is creepy and i hate it. 9:11pm
* joined the group People Against the Face Book News Feed. 6:38pm
* joined the group Facebook: Data Mining Since 2004. 5:14pm
* and * joined the group Facebook Sucks Now. 3:46pm
These changes will not last (Score:2)
Yes. (Score:2)
These changes are stupid. They make the site's appearance less attractive, and announce information that really shouldn't be announced. Do I care that my friend removed "running" from his Interests? Not really.
To shit me even more, when I went to add other people as admins in groups I own, I kept getting an error stating that the group had more than 25 admins. Unfortunately, this was not correct, as I was the only admin in a large number of groups.
I thought Faceboo
Screw your customers (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe they'll learn something about running a business. We'll see. They'd better learn fast. I reckon facebook users can switch to myspace in about 1
Largest protest group (Score:2)
Oh, and the creator of this is a CMU grad, and I happen to have a mutual friend with her. She's actually logged into her AIM SN, but I don't feel like messaging her.
Lack of privacy (Score:2)
vBuddy.com is the only one I'd visit, because they actually let you group your friends into separate groups, and assign permissions to what they
Good for privacy (Score:2)
I don't use facebook much, but this feature helps me know what's been going on since I've visited, so I love it.
Facebook's reply (Score:4, Informative)
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
why i don't like the new facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
i want to wish her. in the past i would not have hesitated to write a short and sweet note on her wall. since we now live halfway across the world from each other, a phone call is unreasonably complicated (especially given our acrimonious breakup). an email is too personal (i don't really want her to respond). so the wall is an ideal private/public combo. A personalized message in a public setting.
unfortunately, the new facebook *news feed* would, without my explicit permission, broadcast my post to EVERYONE we know in common, along with the ENTIRE TEXT. At least half of them would have a chuckle at my expense, or at least that's the way I feel. So, before posting, I hesitate. And send an email instead.
Facebook has lost a significant utility for me. Similar public/private conundrums are going to result when somebody invites me to RSVP for a party via Facebook, wants me to join a group, etc. Updating my profile is now difficult because each change i make will be publicly broadcast to all my Facebook "friends" (some of whom I don't even know). And I don't want that.
The illusion of privacy that facebook gave -- that it was a reasonably intimate network of peers -- is now destroyed.
Calm down kids (Score:3, Informative)
FREE service, PRIVATE profiles (Score:3, Interesting)
1. I don't like how about a week's worth of recent events were already on our newsfeeds before we had a chance to approve it. Some people who still have not logged into their Facebook accounts for a couple of days have recent activities being broadcast to their friends list because of a feature they never approved.
2. I don't like how we don't have any control over what is automatically fed to our feed. We should be able to work through a series of checkboxes to determine what we do and do not want on our own mini-feed (while, of course, maintaining the ability to delete something from the feed).
3. I don't like the feed now lets people know about changes to NON-FRIENDS' profiles, specifically in the form of wall comments. For instance, if someone makes a comment on my wall, that other person's friends shouldn't see it in their feed unless that person is also MY friend. Friends of friends don't need to know about changes to my wall. The reason: that information was NOT available to them before, so it shouldn't be now.
4. The feed takes away some of the mystery of poking around on Facebook to find information the good old-fashioned way. Then again, I don't have that kind of time on my hands, so the new feature makes it much easier for me to keep track of profile changes people want me to see. This is not a problem for me; I just understand how some of you feel about the stalking-made-easy impression some of you get. But, well, the information was already out there.
5. I don't like how Facebook has been reduced to a mob mentality with an average IQ less than my shoesize. Facebook has fairly extensive privacy options (click the "My Privacy" link at left and look around). Every user's profile is PRIVATE to begin with, and every user can control what others can see. You can edit the default settings for each network of which you're a member, and for everyone. You can also set up your "Limited Profile" and select certain friends to see only that restricted view of your profile.
But, seriously, if you don't want someone to see something you're doing on Facebook, then why are they on your friends list (or not on your Limited Profile list)?
I love the new features. Keeping track of updates people want me to see is now much easier!
I love you, Facebook.
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News Feed highlights what's going on in and around your Facebook network by listing the latest stories about your friends on your Facebook home page. You will only be notified of actions that you would have been able to see by clicking around the site. We also display external news articles that might be of interest to you. It's like we started delivering the mail to you instead of forcing you to pick it up on your own.
So, yeah, they're out to make more money
Already there (Score:2)
Help page motherfucker, do you read it?
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