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View Full Version : Facebook users: How do you feel about the new "Stalker-friendly" layout?



TeeAhr1
September 6th, 2006, 02:23 PM
Yeah, I'm aware that this post totally dates me. Whatever.

I'm appalled. Yes, it's a public website, your information is public knowledge. But this is just creepy. As someone smarter than me said, there's a huge difference between "publicly available" and "publicly broadcast." And besides, it just looks hideous. It's just a fullscreen vomit of infotainment.

I'm drawing my line here. If this isn't dealt with within a week, I'm taking my ball and going home. Facebook was a little on the creepy side already, it's now officially crossed my "Hey little boy, do you like candy?" threshold.

Facebook users, your thoughts?

Brunellus
September 6th, 2006, 02:53 PM
And thus is the lesson of life taught again: publish nothing that you don't want to make public.

TeeAhr1
September 6th, 2006, 02:58 PM
Not the point at all, as I said in my first post.

Half-assed analogy: In America, if you get arrested for driving drunk, that's public knowledge, and I can go to the courthouse and find out, or maybe look it up on the intarwubs. But I don't get a memo in my mailbox saying "Hi! Your neighbor got a DUI last night at 02:43 on the corner of Broad and Third!"

As I said in the original post, this is about the difference between "publicly available" and "publicly broadcast."

hizaguchi
September 6th, 2006, 03:08 PM
I don't see the problem. Most blogs have feeds built in, so if I were going to stalk someone I could just subscribe. It's been that way for a long time and nobody's made a stink about it, so why should Facebook be any different? Maybe because most people are about as internet-literate as they are computer-literate? Maybe they'd never heard of RSS or an aggregator? Sounds to me like alot of people just came to the realization that the stuff they put online is public information.

I like the new Facebook. I go on the site about once a month to see what's going on with my friends who have scattered across the country going to college, and now I can see what's new much more easily. Hey, it's almost like reading my other friends' blogs with Akregator! ](*,)

Brunellus
September 6th, 2006, 03:08 PM
Not the point at all, as I said in my first post.

Half-assed analogy: In America, if you get arrested for driving drunk, that's public knowledge, and I can go to the courthouse and find out, or maybe look it up on the intarwubs. But I don't get a memo in my mailbox saying "Hi! Your neighbor got a DUI last night at 02:43 on the corner of Broad and Third!"

As I said in the original post, this is about the difference between "publicly available" and "publicly broadcast."
When you're on the internet, you're publishing. And worse, you're publishing subject not to YOUR terms, necessarily, but to the terms of whosever servers and services you're using. So again, the maxim holds: if you don't feel comfortable with your information out there....don't put it there in the first place.

hizaguchi
September 6th, 2006, 03:11 PM
Not the point at all, as I said in my first post.

Half-assed analogy: In America, if you get arrested for driving drunk, that's public knowledge, and I can go to the courthouse and find out, or maybe look it up on the intarwubs. But I don't get a memo in my mailbox saying "Hi! Your neighbor got a DUI last night at 02:43 on the corner of Broad and Third!"

As I said in the original post, this is about the difference between "publicly available" and "publicly broadcast."

Don't you read the paper? DUI's are generally reported unless there's enough other crime to take up the space in the "Crime Beat" section.

TeeAhr1
September 6th, 2006, 03:19 PM
Yes, but you have to buy the paper, and look to the Crime Blotter section. They don't highlight the relevent section for you and put it on your doorstep.

hizaguchi
September 6th, 2006, 03:57 PM
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the point then. The title and your original post point to the "stalker" potential of the new layout. My stance on this is that picking up the paper and turning the page, or running with the metaphor, going to a page and clicking the "subscribe" button once, is not going to deter even the most hopelessly lazy stalker/pedophile/terrorist. Those creepy people out there on the interwebs are going to be creepy, even if it means they have to click a button to get your personal information delivered directly to their desktop. So the only difference in the normal way of dealing with internet content and the new Facebook way is that the new Facebook format makes it more obvious to the non-stalkers that their information is public. It doesn't make information any more accessible than it was before, it just makes people realize how accessible it is. How can that be bad?

TeeAhr1
September 6th, 2006, 04:27 PM
hizaguchi: That's a very interesting point, and one I hadn't considered fully before. It does have a conciousness-raising aspect to it as far as "this is what you put on the internet, sucker!" And I agree that that cannot help but be a social good.

I guess, though, I was really being facetious about the whole "stalker" aspect of this, because yes, I know that the information is out there for the asking already. Let me give an example of what I'm talking about (this is a true story):

My friend broke up with her boyfriend this week, and boy, did she ever pick the wrong week to update her Facebook profile. Before, she would have changed her status to "single," and that would be that. Eventually, sooner or later, people would notice, but really, it'd mostly be the people who already knew anyway, her IRL friends, y'know? Now, it's on everyone's welcome page that are marked as her friends (sorry about the grammar mangling there). Guess how many messages she's gotten in the last 48 hours?

And I think that's just a wee bit obscene. (Brunellus, I'm addressing your last post here too...) It's not a privacy issue, because, as discussed, it's on facebook already, it's not private anymore. It's just a...decency issue, I guess. We all know that they have the information, yes. It's how it is now being presented that a lot of people seem to be upset about.

Here's another way of looking at it. We (college students, etc.) are, in a sense, Facebook's customers. We don't give them money, but we do give them our data (which is an advertising goldmine, that's money right there, baby). In return we get a service. Up until this week, I was pretty content with that exchange, I felt I was getting decent value for what I was giving them. I'm not sure I feel that way now. I do think that they'll have to respond to this outcry in some way at Facebook. This layout idea can't last, there'll be an exodus. People are pissed.

Tomosaur
September 6th, 2006, 04:36 PM
Are people pissed? Or is it just you? It just seems odd that I haven't heard anything about this at all. A lot of my friends use facebook and none of them have mentioned it at all. I personally don't use it and I can't be bothered registering to check it out, but it sounds like much ado about nothing. If you don't want people knowing something, don't put it on the internet, basically. Obviously, not having witnessed what you're talking about for myself, I may be getting the wrong end of the stick, but surely the whole point of Facebook is to broadcast yourself to other people? If you have some objection to this, then the solution is simple: don't use such websites.

TeeAhr1
September 6th, 2006, 04:49 PM
When Facebook groups start popping up with names like "I Want The Old Facebook Back" (membership: 2434, be aware that this change happened Monday, so that's two days) I'd say people are definitely pissed. And just as an anecdotal piece of non-evidence, I have yet to talk to anyone who actually likes it. And I, as you may imagine, know a fair number of college students.

hizaguchi
September 6th, 2006, 04:57 PM
I have heard about this before, and it does seem to be a big issue, whether I agree with it or not. http://campusprogress.org/features/1138/big-brother-is-poking-you

So it does seem to be a big deal and not just one person's opinion. I still don't think it's a problem, but enough people do that it's worth talking about.

Ok, so ruling out stalkers and Osama bin Laden, the problem remains that it puts the personal information that Facebook members have voluntarily posted in public directly on their friends' login pages. So I guess the uproar is because the information was supposed to be public, but people thought that the stuff they put out there would get less attention than it does now. That seems odd to me, because most people who maintain these kinds of blogs do so because they want attention, but as far as I understand it, that's the main problem, right? Am I on the right page?

hizaguchi
September 6th, 2006, 05:08 PM
I'm reading what I've said, and I think I might sound harsh toward the wrong ideas here. Let me try to clarify where I'm going with this.

Though I do not agree that there is a problem with the new Facebook layout, I'm glad to see people standing up for what they think. I wish it would happen over other issues, but still, this is a good thing. I'm not trying to be condescending toward anybody for expressing their ideas.

However, my gag reflex gets triggered whenever anybody tries to weave religion or grotesque sexual offenses into a totally unrelated issue.

So while I totally respect the people saying that they want things to change because of personal preference, I think it's important to thoroughly extinguish any out of place references to emotionally charged issues being used as artillery.

So, now we're talking about preference, and not stalkers, right?

TeeAhr1
September 6th, 2006, 05:22 PM
Correct. I apologize if my facetiousness was misleading in any way. In a nutshell: I think people post things to Facebook assuming that it's "public" but not quite so public that "everyone's going to know about this the very next time they log in." It is just an obscene amount of information. Not only does no one want their information being presented in this way, I can't imagine any normal person wanting even their friends' information brought to them in such a way. I just can't imagine who thought this was going to be a popular idea.

Oh, and before I forget, going back to my last post: "Students Against Facebook Newsfeed" now has 182,790 members. In two days.

raublekick
September 6th, 2006, 05:24 PM
My concern isn't about the information itself, it's that it came unannounced, and there is no way to disable it that I know of. When I logged on yesterday it told me what was new, and all of the help bubbles explained what was going on. But they didn't have "confirm", "ok", or "deny" boxes. Only boxes like "Awesome!" were available to click.

The information itself is of little concern to me. I have nothing on my profile to hide. But, like the OP said, there is a difference between public knowledge and broadcast public knowledge. But I guess this isn't even fully public because access is restricted.

Regardless, I don't like the fact that this just popped up out of nowhere with no warning. If they were smart, the would have mass emailed the members of Facebook with a newsletter saying what was going to be happening. Maybe they did, though, I wouldn't know because Facebook doesn't always email me things when it should.

And yes, there are a massive amount of people against this, it was on both Digg and Slashdot yesterday. I'm with the OP though, if it doesn't get cleaned up in a week, I'm off. Or I'm just gonna completely make up my profile. I'll probably do the same with MySpace, I really don't support either site anymore.

TeeAhr1
September 6th, 2006, 05:39 PM
raublekick: I completely agree, a little warning would have been nice. And I can assure you, having gone through my inbox, that no such message was sent.

Also, just FYI, if you click the X next to one of your newsfeed items, that will remove it not only from your page, but from everyone's feed. There is no way to opt-out altogether, as far as I know.

raublekick
September 6th, 2006, 05:54 PM
Interesting, thanks for the info!

There is a little check box in the privacy options that is pretty ambiguous, and might do the trick, but I haven't tried it yet.

Also, I have a much bigger issue with the pictures they allow on there. After they added that functionality (and before I knew about it) I logged in to find a link under my profile pic that said "See more pictures of (my name) (12)". Gee, I didn't put any of those up. When I checked it out it was pictures that my friend's girlfriend took when I was... not at my best. No confirmation needed from me, just go ahead and post embarrasing pics of me!

hizaguchi
September 6th, 2006, 06:02 PM
Heh, I love the picture feature. It lets me photoshop my friends into interesting scenes and then post them from my account so they show up on their profiles. And there's nothing they can do! BWHAHAH! :twisted:

Tomosaur
September 6th, 2006, 06:40 PM
According to the Facebook blog - the newsfeed thingy still respects your privacy settings, so what exactly is the big deal?

TeeAhr1
September 8th, 2006, 02:37 PM
UPDATE: An open letter from Mark Zuckerberg

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.

When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with.

Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn’t build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it. But apologizing isn’t enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends’ News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.

This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn’t made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.

About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that’s what I believe in – helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I’d encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Tomorrow at 4pm est, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Mark

zachtib
September 8th, 2006, 03:42 PM
It really doesn't bother me, and here's why:

1) Everything I do on the Internet is through feeds, mostly RSS, so it feels natural to me.

2) It's still the same information presented in a different way.

3) If there is something you want to be private, you shouldn't put it on facebook in the first place.