Comment Re:The issue is a change in semantics (Score 1) 313
There is more to it than semantics -- my feed of shared items automatically gets subscribed to my friends who use Google Reader, filling up their list of items to read.
So to keep people from getting spammed with all my shares, I have to go to Settings -> Friends -> and click the "Hide" button next to each individual name. Why do I have to do this? Because creating a "Share" button next to each name was far too complicated an engineering challenge for a scrappy little company like Google?
Google could have easily done it either way. But rather than give users the prior choice, they decided to treat Reader as if it were a sleazy Facebook app. Even worse, they led people to believe that it wasn't a sleazy Facebook app, and then one day... surprise! Personally I don't want my feed reader to start running around "biting chumps."
From a privacy perspective, this is dumb but fairly minor. From the perspective of "respect for your users" or "good application design" or "not looking desperate" this is a really stupid move and a very bad sign of things to come.
So to keep people from getting spammed with all my shares, I have to go to Settings -> Friends -> and click the "Hide" button next to each individual name. Why do I have to do this? Because creating a "Share" button next to each name was far too complicated an engineering challenge for a scrappy little company like Google?
Google could have easily done it either way. But rather than give users the prior choice, they decided to treat Reader as if it were a sleazy Facebook app. Even worse, they led people to believe that it wasn't a sleazy Facebook app, and then one day... surprise! Personally I don't want my feed reader to start running around "biting chumps."
From a privacy perspective, this is dumb but fairly minor. From the perspective of "respect for your users" or "good application design" or "not looking desperate" this is a really stupid move and a very bad sign of things to come.
