Facebook controversy

[theapportioner]

Dunno how many of you are on it, but just yesterday Facebook added a 'newsfeed' feature that allows you to see, in semi-real time, the various updates your facebook friends make, such as the friends they recently added, changes to their profile, changes to relationship status etc. Of course, all your friends also get to see the changes you make in your profile. It's provoked a huge uproar that has gotten even slashdot's attention:

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/09/06/0112231.shtml

I think it's a little weird, too. Thoughts?

[DuFresne]

I actually like it. It'll help me fulfill my violent sexual fantasies.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's made stalking easier.

[Sethomas]

Yeah, I totally agreed with the final statement of the article.

I don't really care either way about it, but it certainly makes things interesting. I don't see why there should be a "controversy" over more easily accessible information that, as was mentioned, was already available. Quick, someone say "Orwellian", I'm sure the word's not been abused enough yet.

My two facebook accounts (IU and UChicago) are in an "It's Complicated" relationship with one another, but that might change soon. :0

[Esuohlim]

My news feed hasn't changed since I first saw the new layout yesterday morning and I am damn pissed that it's not letting me know when my friends are adding "drugs" and "butts" to their interests list. >:

[theapportioner]

Someone else made the quite reasonable point that making something public, and announcing it publicly are two different beasts.

[AChimp]

What's the big deal? If you're putting it on the Internet, you obviously don't give a shit who finds out about it. Jesus.

[mburbank]

Is 'facebook' like 'assbook'? 'Cause I'm on that.

[Gorlack the Destroyer]

kinda like "Big Brother" but being wayched by 40 year old men.

[Tropical]

people like to be stalked, but they at least want the stalker to put a tiny bit of effort to it. That's the conclusion i'm gathering

[ScruU2wice]

how is it stalker friendly I don't understand?

all the people that see your news feed are your friends, as in people you voluntarily added so they can see your profile.

[ScruU2wice]

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 News Feed and Mini-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. Today (Friday, 9/8) at 4pm edt, 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




As long as facebook doesn't start cracking down with my lab report exchange, I don't care.

[Gorlack the Destroyer]

how is it stalker friendly I don't understand?

all the people that see your news feed are your friends, as in people you voluntarily added so they can see your profile.

Actually most are just random people that you added so you could be the first one with 1000 friends. Goddamned attention whore.