Comments on: Putting Privacy Settings in the Context of Use (in Facebook and elsewhere)

By: What Google Could Learn From Goffman « Fred Stutzman

What Google Could Learn From Goffman « Fred Stutzman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:33:53 +0000

[...] seen time and time again in Facebook, we run into problems when identities collide during “context collapse” – when people from a different segment of your life view an identity you’ve [...]

By: G

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:52:49 +0000

Thanks for the article! I’ve changed my privacy settings on Facebook! It is a great feature. I am a teen writer at RadicalParenting.com which is a parenting blog from the kid’s perspective there are 60 teen and tween writers run by teen author, Vanessa Van Petten. We just posted a video of “How to set Privacy Settings in Social Networks” here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weM8rcAhAw8

and would love for you to check it out and tell us what you think or repost if you like it,

Cheers, thanks for checking it out!

G and the Teen Team
http://radicalparenting.com

By: kraft

kraft — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:59:52 +0000

I have a small observation!
“Thus, if I posted a photo and saw that it was visible to 100 people, I could manually go through and remove 10 of those people without having to create a specific group that is everyone but the unwanted people.”

It’s almost imposible to make new friends in this way and this is not the scope of social network! What you propose assumed you have just a small group of friends and that’s all!

Photos in social networks like Facebook or MySpace have a great role for a proper functioning. Without them all the things can change!
The photos in such networks is an important criteria when choose new friends! This is the reality in many cases!

In terms of profit the network must grow! Privacy falls to second place! The network is important not the person! You must connect with as many people as possible not just with ten closely friends! The network must be attractive for anyone to grow! How you make that?

The rules cannot be done like in real world because in real world you have another methods to make new friends which in online doesn’t exist. In the Internet must be found new methods.

I write recently an article about Facebook transformation! Facebook will become a comercial network! You can easily see that!

“Facebook’s privacy settings are the most flexible and the most confusing privacy settings in the industry.” Totally agree! It was designed in such way! I’m programmer!

I try to understand a real semnification of the “friend” term in social networks! Is very confusing! In many case of new friends nobody talks to anybody not even a “hello”! Anyway, I’m stooping here!

I read many articles from your blog! Very interesting!

By: FG

FG — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:16:39 +0000

Just to mention that I’ve translated your article in Italian and published on my blog.

By: Suzanne Aurilio

Suzanne Aurilio — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:02:03 +0000

We had discovered this too last month with faculty interested in using FB with students and experimenting with various settings.

Even when you spend time trying decipher the logic and functionality behind the privacy controls you’re left baffled. For example, there’s include and exclude functions with no explanation of why or what.

I don’t know if it’s negligence or carelessness on the part of FB developers but it’s the worse interface of a major app I’ve ever encountered (OK I’m not on MySpace, so I can’t compare there).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:23:59 +0000

“Frankly… I don’t understand why tech companies aren’t doing this. Is it because you don’t want users to realize how visible their content is?”

I’m a developer and I think Facebook is a privacy disaster. And I think it’s frightening. Personally I quit my Facebook account more than a year ago due to this reason.

And yes, I believe that the main reason is because they don’t want user to realize how visible their content is. And they don’t want to lock down the user generated content for the user at the users own premise. Because they fear that users will make the content private. And the less public the content is the less exposure the site will have to search hits on indexing sites like Google or Yahoo.

By: Jonathan E. Tarr

Jonathan E. Tarr — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:27:17 +0000

Facebook has no easy answers for privacy partially because it’s based on the “networks” model. Back in 2004 when Facebook was only open to a handful of universities (being open to everyone was a long way off), I would have felt less uneasy about keeping all of my information open to everyone in my network (Duke) because almost everyone in it was a fellow undergrad. Nevermind for a moment that FB didn’t even have photo capability at that point. Now, with 4.5 years of expansion, that same network includes lots of alumni, current undergrads, grad/prof students, faculty, staff, etc. Particularly of concern are alumni that may happen to work for an employer that may be thinking of hiring me (hypothetically); would that employer use access to the Duke network to check on my profile, the photos I’m tagged in, etc.? And there are now regional networks, so that if I want to declare that I live in Raleigh/Durham on FB, by default that means anyone else who was declared the same can see my info unless I choose otherwise. By contrast, on Livejournal there is no such comparable feature, so I can limit the content I produce there to either “public,” “friends only” (or a filtered subset of friends), or “private.” I don’t envy FB because it’s very complex to manage, but I also salute you for pointing this out.

By: Jonathan E. Tarr

Jonathan E. Tarr — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:27:10 +0000

By: Kevin Cantu

Kevin Cantu — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:51:35 +0000

In this panel discussion, Zoe Margolis argued that given time, nothing is private on the internet. (Listen here: http://violetblue.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=350906 ) As bleak a view as that may be, it is a fair warning to people posting content. After all, no matter securely your private content seems to be locked up, there’s always some employee of the host company who can see all your private stuff.

Somewhere in this, I know there’s a market for anonymously co-located hardware using encrypted disks and connections, but I can imagine few companies who would abide by that kind of customer…

Also, there’s ongoing debate over who owns the content on these social networks, anyways. (Subscription required: https://www.technologyreview.com/communications/20920/ ) It is in Zuckerberg’s best interest for more people to be able to see more about me, because that increased visibility will pull in more users who will spend more time seeing more advertising. That is not my best interest, but it is the advertisers who are forking over the cash.

By: Scott D

Scott D — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:38:15 +0000

Intelligent “privacy” conversation. As a social “neighbor” network developer (NeighborPal.com) we encourage individual privacy.

User’s have varied levels of privacy needs and wants. Similar to social norms that exist offline, users should be able to control what they share and with whom. Privacy settings are a reasonable mechanism (today) to support user communication within the social network environment. If a user could easily control the rate of information being exchanged with other users, similar to an offline exchange, online networks could live up to their potential.

The education and usability of privacy settings is an ongoing evolution and will hopefully serve the user’s needs as it develops.