Comments on: Facebook Freak-Out! http://www.kassblog.com/2010/05/facebook-freak-out/ Teaching, Learning, and Technology Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:03:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=363 By: Teach With Video » Facebook Privacy http://www.kassblog.com/2010/05/facebook-freak-out/comment-page-1/#comment-1043 Teach With Video » Facebook Privacy Tue, 18 May 2010 19:38:55 +0000 http://www.kassblog.com/?p=775#comment-1043 [...] Facebook Freak-Out! by Richard Kassissieh [...] [...] Facebook Freak-Out! by Richard Kassissieh [...]

]]> By: admin http://www.kassblog.com/2010/05/facebook-freak-out/comment-page-1/#comment-1040 admin Mon, 17 May 2010 14:07:44 +0000 http://www.kassblog.com/?p=775#comment-1040 I agree with all of this, but I don't understand why people took the original sales pitch at face value or expected Facebook to be forthcoming about policy changes. U.S. companies, especially in technology, have repeatedly demonstrated that their priority is to serve themselves, and that the concerns of their customers mostly don't matter (see Apple, Google, Microsoft). I'd add that making the service free only exacerbates this dynamic. Not only are you just the customer, you're not even a paying customer. I agree with all of this, but I don’t understand why people took the original sales pitch at face value or expected Facebook to be forthcoming about policy changes. U.S. companies, especially in technology, have repeatedly demonstrated that their priority is to serve themselves, and that the concerns of their customers mostly don’t matter (see Apple, Google, Microsoft). I’d add that making the service free only exacerbates this dynamic. Not only are you just the customer, you’re not even a paying customer.

]]> By: Tweets that mention Facebook Freak-Out! « Kassblog -- Topsy.com http://www.kassblog.com/2010/05/facebook-freak-out/comment-page-1/#comment-1039 Tweets that mention Facebook Freak-Out! « Kassblog -- Topsy.com Mon, 17 May 2010 11:23:56 +0000 http://www.kassblog.com/?p=775#comment-1039 [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Richard Kassissieh, Stephen Rahn. Stephen Rahn said: RT @kassissieh: New blog post: Facebook Freak-Out! http://www.kassblog.com/2010/05/facebook-freak-out/ [...] [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Richard Kassissieh, Stephen Rahn. Stephen Rahn said: RT @kassissieh: New blog post: Facebook Freak-Out! http://www.kassblog.com/2010/05/facebook-freak-out/ [...]

]]> By: Colin http://www.kassblog.com/2010/05/facebook-freak-out/comment-page-1/#comment-1038 Colin Mon, 17 May 2010 09:18:30 +0000 http://www.kassblog.com/?p=775#comment-1038 Regardless of whether Facebook shares more or less information than other sites, there are two reasons why people are "freaking out." First, Facebook's initial draw for many people was that it was a safe place to socially connect with friends. I could decide who got to see the personal information I shared. I wanted friends to know my favorite music, television shows, movies, and books so that we could discover common interests. Now that Facebook has made so much of the profile public, that privacy is gone. I originally had my hometown listed in my profile. With these latest changes, the name of my hometown became a link to a page about my hometown. What freaked me out was when I went to that new page, there was a "news feed" that automatically posted everyone's status any time they mentioned the name of that town. That was a step too far for me, as I have no desire for my status updates to be broadcast to random pages all over Facebook. I don't want the producers of my favorite TV shows to start adding updates to my newsfeed (which began to happen), and I don't want advertisers to know all of the things I'm interested in, so I've deleted all of my interests as well as my hometown and current location. That's a shame that I can't share that information with my friends any more without commercial parties and random strangers getting that information too. The second thing that has people upset is the way Facebook has gone about making changes. The changes in December and April were touted by FB as making things more flexible for people to adjust their privacy; in reality, their benefit was to make things more public and open. Facebook has deliberately downplayed their real intent while highlighting the relatively minor additional privacy settings. They're counting on the fact that most people won't notice or understand the changes to do anything about them. Why wouldn't that cause people to get upset? I agree with you that there isn't an alternative to FB and that it is still the best way to keep in touch with friends. But that doesn't mean that people should get scolded for objecting to these latest changes and how they have been implemented and explained (or not) by Facebook. The EFF has two good articles to help people understand the most recent changes: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-translator/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/how-opt-out-facebook-s-instant-personalization A great graphical representation of how Facebook privacy has eroded over time is here: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ Regardless of whether Facebook shares more or less information than other sites, there are two reasons why people are “freaking out.”

First, Facebook’s initial draw for many people was that it was a safe place to socially connect with friends. I could decide who got to see the personal information I shared. I wanted friends to know my favorite music, television shows, movies, and books so that we could discover common interests. Now that Facebook has made so much of the profile public, that privacy is gone. I originally had my hometown listed in my profile. With these latest changes, the name of my hometown became a link to a page about my hometown. What freaked me out was when I went to that new page, there was a “news feed” that automatically posted everyone’s status any time they mentioned the name of that town. That was a step too far for me, as I have no desire for my status updates to be broadcast to random pages all over Facebook. I don’t want the producers of my favorite TV shows to start adding updates to my newsfeed (which began to happen), and I don’t want advertisers to know all of the things I’m interested in, so I’ve deleted all of my interests as well as my hometown and current location. That’s a shame that I can’t share that information with my friends any more without commercial parties and random strangers getting that information too.

The second thing that has people upset is the way Facebook has gone about making changes. The changes in December and April were touted by FB as making things more flexible for people to adjust their privacy; in reality, their benefit was to make things more public and open. Facebook has deliberately downplayed their real intent while highlighting the relatively minor additional privacy settings. They’re counting on the fact that most people won’t notice or understand the changes to do anything about them. Why wouldn’t that cause people to get upset?

I agree with you that there isn’t an alternative to FB and that it is still the best way to keep in touch with friends. But that doesn’t mean that people should get scolded for objecting to these latest changes and how they have been implemented and explained (or not) by Facebook.

The EFF has two good articles to help people understand the most recent changes:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-translator/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/how-opt-out-facebook-s-instant-personalization

A great graphical representation of how Facebook privacy has eroded over time is here: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

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