Facebook Adds Friend Stalker Tool 357
nk497 writes "Facebook has added a new tool that brings together conversations and photos between friends onto a single page, but — as usual — has crossed the creepy line. Not only does clicking the See Friendship tool let users view photos, comments and events shared between themselves and their friend, it also offers a search tool to do the same between any two mutual friends, making it easy to see everything any two people have ever said to each other Facebook. As usual, the site should have tested the function out on their users first, with one saying: 'I've always wanted this! And yes, I'm a creepy stalker.' Also, as usual for Facebook, all users are automatically opted in, and there's currently no obvious way to turn it off."
Put this on the list (Score:2, Insightful)
of reasons not to use Facebook.
As if you needed more.
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Re:Put this on the list (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's not just me i have to make sure that doesn't post idiocy, but everyone that i do anything socially with. Since facebook has no way for me to remove photos of me posted by other users. The best i can do is remove the tag, but not remove me from the photo or my name from the comments, or have the photo taken down entirely.
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Even if you do take the idea of losing a friend lightly - the idea of losing your job over something your asshole friend posted was not at all addressed by your post.
And burning a bridge makes that all the more likely to happen.
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Re:Put this on the list (Score:4, Insightful)
If you lose your job in a manner that makes you say "well I was better off without those jerks", you're still unemployed. Sour grapes don't pay the bills.
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Unless you *sell* the sour grapes....oooo an idea!
1. Find sour grapes
2. ???
3. Profit!
Re:Put this on the list (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I ought to go get that job, it turns out that they're not hiring at this moment. I guess we can't all have the perfect life delivered to us on a silver platter. So you can take your apathy, add it as a bullet point on your resume, and shove it up your ass.
Re:Put this on the list (Score:5, Insightful)
In most states, employment is "at will".
You can be fired for showing up at work early, because you boss doesn't like the color of your shoes, or just for the heck of it.
This is most certainly not the case in the United Kingdom, and if it's true of the US, it makes me think your legal framework is more than a little backward. Here, there's a short list of fair reasons for dismissal (misconduct, inability to do the job, redundancy etc.) and if the employer can't demonstrate one of those, they can't dismiss you.
OTOH I have seen American colleagues have their employment ended on a whim on several occasions, so nothing surprises me.
Still, the answer is to campaign to firm up your employment law, not spend your life trying to hide stuff from your boss.
Re:Put this on the list (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, in most places in America you don't lose your fundamental freedoms just because you become an employer, though we do keep chipping away at that idea.
Re:Put this on the list (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, an at-will employee can be fired for “any reason or no reason at all” – but if you were fired for an illegal reason and you can prove this or at least back it up pretty substantially, then you have a pretty good case for a lawsuit.
It works both ways, though... an at-will employee can also leave for pretty much any reason.
Employees who are contracted in for a longer period of time, on the other hand, will also have terms in their contract that ensure their employer can’t dismiss them for no good reason... but in return for that security, they give up their ability to leave that job whenever they want to find work elsewhere.
It’s a give-and-take, and personally I think it’s better this way than having the government dictate to companies whether they can or can’t hire or fire someone.
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I feel like I'm going crazy re-iterating the same point - sometimes its NOT in your control.
Your friends can post things about you - and your employers can look them up... You can have all the privacy settings on their most restricted settings and it does not change this fact...
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Please tell me, what perfectly innocuous things might your friends take pictures of that would ruin your job/life/whatever.
If you drive a Pepsi truck, and your friend takes a photo of you drinking Coke Zero. (Or the other way around)
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I'm surprised that company was able to stay in business if they're that psychotic about their employees' activities outside of work.
They were incredibly successful [wikipedia.org] for a small company, and grew to dominate their vertical market. They were largely self-insured, and would fire people for doing things likely to make their health insurance rates go up (but also for crazy reasons, but the smoking/motorcycle stuff was at least in the employment agreement).
I'll have to take your word for it that any of this really happened but it makes me wonder how anyone can even work under such conditions. If managers are spending that much time checking up on their employees' leisure activities, who the hell is running the company?
From Wikipedia:
Five months after the merger was completed, the new ownership of the company began to make broad changes to the daily operations of the business.[5] As the Houston Business Journal reported, "the blending of the two firms has created a culture clash that's led to the departure of Reynolds employees, from executives to field technicians, both through lay-offs and of their own volition, since last August [2006]. Reynolds' local employee base has shrunk at least 10 percent since January 2006."[5] In October 2007, pre-merger CEO Fin O'Neill left the company.
They had an incredibly high turnover rate, and eventually had to open offices in new cities just because eveyone in Houston had heard of them and they had a hard time hiring.
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Please tell me, what perfectly innocuous things might your friends take pictures of that would ruin your job/life/whatever.
How about a picture of you at a cancer patient support group, which is then discovered by a prospective employer that is concerned about keeping the cost of employee health benefits down? Even if such discrimination is technically illegal, do think such knowledge couldn't affect your ability to get a job?
Re:Put this on the list (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things:
1. If you engage in social activity with the kind of people that would post incriminating photos of you, you need to find a different group of friends.
2. If you engage in incriminating activities in a public place where other people can take photos of you, you need to be smarter about where you engage in incriminating activities.
Re:Put this on the list (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be confused. Just because you'd like to keep something from general knowledge doesn't mean it's incriminating.
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Except that these days going to the pub while on vacation and having a photo show up is enough to get you sacked from your teaching job.
The solution is so simple though - don't use facebook.
Not in any part of the world with reasonable employment laws.
I've seen the story you're referring to, and it seems to me that once it pans out, she should have her job back and some compensation too. Also it seems to me that it's an outlier situation -- if it was common it wouldn't be newsworthy.
The solution to this kind of thing is *not* to start getting furtive about perfectly innocent activities. It's to stand up for our rights. That woman has an absolute right to share pictures of herself with a beer, a
100% dead on (Score:3, Informative)
you don't get to post things on the internet, and then complain when people see it on the internet
if you don't want people to see something DON'T POST IT ON THE INTERNET
because the fine level of control you desire: "only this person, at this time, in this context, can see this piece of info" is a nonstarter, because it takes 10x more time and effort to define the context of the info you are sharing than it takes to post the info. there is no better way to completely and utterly destroy the pleasure of a soc
Re:100% dead on (Score:5, Insightful)
blaming facebook is just shifting responsibility and personal accountability away from you when things go wrong because you weren't discreet
If only the system works like you described. Like someone said earlier, you have more to worry about from OTHER people's posts than you really do your own. Let's say I make a Facebook page - but I don't enter any information but my name and photo. I don't add any of my friends, I basically be a social outcast and hermit on Facebook.
Facebook still allows people to tag "nothings" in photos, so they can tag me in a photo and I won't get ANY notification because the Tag itself won't like to my page - instead it'll just say my name when they hover over it. A potential employer does some research on me - and they find that I have a facebook account but can't see anything but my picture. They then continue their goolge search and see a random picture someone put up of me with my tag on it and know its me because of the photo.
Damn - all I did was enter my name and a good photo of myself - and my reputation got ruined outside of my control.
Re:100% dead on (Score:5, Informative)
any potential employer or significant other that would judge you so harshly for simply having a life is frankly an employer/ S.O. you don't want to have anything to do with
live your life, and stop worrying so much about micromanaging your public image. us who are well-adjusted simply doesn't care as much as you think we do about pictures of you drunk. its just simple not that big of a deal. the misperception is yours: that anyone cares. we don't care
the internet is what it is: it shows more of our lives, longer, as permanent mementos. adapt to that new reality and accept it, because you can't manage or alter it
anyone who would reject you or fire you based on what the internet contains about you is someone without a level of tolerance you don't want to be involved with in the first place. and if you don't want that behavior of yours made a permanent part of your "internet record", then learn the art of discretion
because this is not about other people, or facebook, or the internet affecting your image in ways you don't want. it's about YOU affecting your image in ways you later regret
you have no one to blame if something is out there you don't want to be out there except yourself. take responsibility for your image. or shift blame onto others, and whine about it, to no effect whatsoever, because you can't do anything about it
Re:100% dead on (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, once upon a time a person could make a mistake or do something they regretted that would be forgotten and never become an issue. You really want that pic that some 'friend' took at a college party and posted tagged with your name to still pop up on searches when you're 40 something looking for a new job?
Is it no longer OK to make mistakes and have them forgotten?
The number of posts in this thread that are basically saying 'be perfect all the time and you'll have nothing to worry about, or else suck up the consequences' is absolutely shocking.
Sure, if _I_ choose to post something online about myself then I will live with the consequences of doing so. But that is not what this is about. Not even a little bit. (Is it just me or is this thread getting very Orwellian?)
Problem here specifically is that there is this online social community out there that a ton of people use. A lot of people carry out all forms of conversations on it. Sometimes two people will even have a conversation between themselves discussing someone else with the intent that the someone else won't be able to see it, at least that's the way it was the other day when they had the conversation. Now lo and behold, for example, your SO knows all about the exciting trip you have planned as a surprise for the weekend! (See, doesn't have to be about getting fired over some drunken party pic now does it?)
Kids today, so used to their freedoms being given away by the powers that be that they take it for the norm and now are totally willing, or worse, expect that, privacy is to be given away or be non existent as well!
Anyways, for my own self, just another tick on the reasons not to Facebook list.
Re:100% dead on (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you mind people seeing those?
Because not everyone has the same values as you and your friends. I know that may come as a shocker, but different people have different deeply-held beliefs about what is moral and what is not. You may not even know what your employer (or potantial employer) considers deeply wrong/offensive until it's too late.
I keep my private and professional lives as separate as I an. That includes not having a Facebok account, and never posting anything, really, under my own name on the internet. There's just no need for it.
Re:Put this on the list (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because its "on the Internet" doesn't mean its viewable for anybody, my whole mail is "on the internet" after all and that is only viewable by me (and google). The problem with Facebook and social networking in general is that they are all extremely bad at telling the user what information is making it to the public or to the friends, so you end up with a lot of involuntary information leaks.
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Why should there ever be a law? Facebook is doing nothing wrong.
There needs to be user education. There needs to be an instilled sense of distrust, scepticism and paranoia.
If the users weren't that fucking stupid as to trust Facebook, there would be no issue.
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Hang on, what happened to the Geek's warcry of "Information wants to be free"?
So the big problem here is that if you have ever been an idiot or done something you'd rather forget then either you or one of your friends will purposely or accidentally post it on the internet in a way that can be linked back to you.
I think like the record companies cannot put the genie of digital music/mp3s/filesharing back ion the bottle we as a society can't put all of personal privacy back in the bottle without also losing p
RAWK (Score:5, Funny)
Nonissue (Score:3, Insightful)
If this information was already extant, and this functionality is just an aggregation and compilation of said extant data, then there is no problem. No new information is being provided: public information has simply been correlated, something any person could do on their own at any point prior.
Making already legally accessible data more readable is not in any way wrong. Anyone who fears or is angry about this is in for a shock over the next decade or so as technology reveals all sorts of already public things about them, and younger generations simply won't care.
Re:Nonissue (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems a bit like saying that because a computer is just a really fast abacus, there's really no difference between them or their effects.
At some point, mere quantitative increase becomes a qualitative difference.
If it now takes 2 seconds to do with Facebook's new tool what used to take 2 days, that's a qualitative difference (degradation of privacy) that people might reasonably be concerned about.
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Ahh, but our entire society's expectations of privacy have been unreasonable for the better part of the last several decades. This false sense of privacy has existed solely due to the inefficiency of access to public data, much in the same manner that entire localized business models disappeared with the advent of national television and freeways.
It's a nonissue only because the work, both in law and expectations, to actually address the fact that we're finally having to come to terms with the fact that th
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The point is moot. If Facebook didn't do it themselves, someone with a screenscraper and a database would.
Quite correct. And it would be even simpler than that. It's Web site. At the end of the day, Facebook presents your browser with HTML and JavaScript. A competent individual could write a script to do this in very little time with any modern scripting language -- Python, Perl, Ruby, or [insert your favorite here]. Or they could create a mashup with Google Web Toolkit. In any respect, HTML is, more or less, easily parseable programmatically.
Those griping have no room to do so. You provided the data to Fac
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I don't think that our desire for privacy is in any way unreasonable. That something can be done does not mean that it should be done.
That someone could track my vehicle (Via license plate recognition software) to the urologist, then to a specific pharmacy. Perhaps a trip to a specific type of physical therapist, and so on...
All of that is 'public' information. And NONE of it should be automatically assumed to be non-private simply because of the inability to avoid touching the public view. We drafted p
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So how do you address this? Is it illegal for me to watch you drive your car to the urologist? Is it illegal to then google for your license plate and/or address to see who you are or where you live? Is it illegal to see you visit the pharmacist, and remember that I'd also seen you at the urologist at some point in the past?
Should it be illegal to say to my one friend "Hey, I saw IndustrialComplex at the urologist, and again at the pharmacist. Funny that! His license place was 'ASSMAN' too!" ?
Should it
Re:Nonissue (Score:4, Insightful)
Stalking can be illegal, even if the individual actions aren't. It's all about the effects you are having on another person.
I don't know about IndustrialComplex's specific example, but his point stands. Privacy is pretty important and shouldn't just be ceded because it's difficult to objectively define where the line should be drawn between invasion of privacy and public knowledge.
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This would be true if it didn't present any new data to any new poeple, but Facebook has a record of totaly fucking up new features. Like the one were you could chat as anyone else, or the one where you could stealth friend people.
Any bet son if you can type in any 2 names and get back more info than the privacy settings would let you see looking at their page.
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Exactly. Often times just because something isn't illegal doesn't mean it should be easily doable. In most cases, the main deterrant is the amount of effort required to preform the action, so no law is really needed.
I also wonder what the GP's thoughts are on Firesheep - I mean sidejacking is considered illegal but when you're doing it over an unsecured WiFi its like the information has become public. But you can do a lot of damage by simply logging in under someone else's Facebook. Most teenagers would lov
Re:Nonissue (Score:4, Funny)
Agreed.
Of course, all this information is already available to me. I could click around the site and find everything said between my mutual friends by sifting through their accounts. But that would take ages, and eventually — hopefully — I’d either get bored or ashamed of creeping on my friends. This makes it possible to stalk in seconds.
“Hopefully”? Bored or ashamed? Seriously?
He greatly underestimates the ability of a bored stalker to be creepy...
Re:Nonissue (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFY
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I disagree. You should still have done it, just get over your shame. Hatera are jealous because they never get invited to orgies involving transvestite strippers and rottweilers.
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You don't mind if details of your sexual encounters were shared with all your friends and family?
Privacy on the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a helpful Venn diagram for people who still aren't sure:
http://graphjam.memebase.com/2010/10/25/funny-graphs-never-forget/ [memebase.com]
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Private communications have been possible on the Internet for a long time now: http://www.gnupg.org/ [gnupg.org]
(Not that anyone can deal with the inconvenience of that sort of thing...)
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It was (somewhat) a joke, but honestly your friends already have access to the conversations on your wall. They're effectively public for your anyone on your friends list. All this does is compile them by participants.
This is just fear mongering. It's the equivalent to an article like, "People you trust to let into your house may be able to compile a list of your valuables to use maliciously!!!" If you have any meth addict/kleptomaniac friends, you don't let them into your house. If you have any creepy/goss
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Privacy on the web: FOAF+SSL [w3.org] on a private server.
"there's currently no obvious way to turn it off." (Score:3, Informative)
Well duh. If you don't want your friends seeing who you're talking to, either don't friend them, or change your privacy settings so that they can't read your wall posts etc. Otherwise they have exactly the same information already available, just in a slightly less convenient format.
Sure it's a little creepy, but you already see a lot of this stuff on the main updates page anyway, this is just making it more comprehensive.
I think Seinfeld says it best... (Score:5, Funny)
GEORGE: Ah you have no idea of the magnitude of this thing. If she is allowed to infiltrate this world, then George Costanza as you know him, Ceases to Exist! You see, right now, I have Relationship George, but there is also Independent George. That’s the George you know, the George you grew up with — Movie George, Coffee shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George.
JERRY: I, I love that George.
GEORGE: Me Too! And he’s Dying Jerry! If Relationship George walks through this door, he will Kill Independent George! A George, divided against itself, Cannot Stand!
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As somebody who wears a lot of masks, I defend my internet from my RL and my RL from my internet as best I can. Heck, I try to keep my various internets from each other and my various RLs from each other too. Divisions are important for sanity, to be sure, George was right.
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Hehe. From the very beginning, I used Facebook only for stalking my friends. I have only the barest minimum of contact information on my profile, and nothing else. And the people I don't want to share my barest minimum of contact information with? I don't friend them, whee!
I for one, love any new features that let me stalk people easier. People who are concerned about this sort of thing lost all their privacy years ago anyway, because they're dumb.
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People who are concerned about this sort of thing lost all their privacy years ago anyway, because they're dumb.
I think you have just hit the nail on the head. The thing that's been annoying me whenever people whine about this stuff, yet they are the ones who have shared all this information in the first place, and continue to do so, then get affronted when everyone else can see it. I find it really hard to put into words sometimes how stupid it all is, but you have said it perfectly.
I've even traced the life story of an AC on Slashdot (who jeered my "easily trackable" Slashdot account, despite me not using this nick
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. It's the only option available to be able to communicate with all of my family members on a frequent basis due to some of them being in different countries.
Which is clearly utter bullshit.
Use email. Use online forums. Use the phone. Use a fucking boat, your legs and your physical presence.
There have never in human history been a broader set of options and opportunities to communicate with geographically dispersed people, so pretending you absolutely must use Facebook or you'll be cut off forever (and lose your inheritance) stands out as being the complete tosh it clearly is.
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You can't block people from seeing what you comment about on other people's walls without preventing people from commenting on your own wall.
Actually I completely agree about that being annoying. The way the privacy settings are worded is rather poor. I thought I had simply disabled people from seeing my posts to friends' walls (ie the friends that they aren't friends with), but I think it just disabled people from being able to post on my wall.
You could create a private group for only your family and post all your pics etc up there?
If people seem stalkerish.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If people seem stalkerish.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the #1 problem with Facebook (and almost all other social networking sites): You only get a binary setting.
I have a few close friends, who by all means could see whatever they want to, if they'd ask I would tell them anyways.
But I also have a lot of not-so-close friends, acquaintances, people I'm friendly with. Whatever you want to call it, there are degrees of friendship. And Facebook doesn't recognize that.
Re:If people seem stalkerish.. (Score:5, Interesting)
But I also have a lot of not-so-close friends, acquaintances, people I'm friendly with. Whatever you want to call it, there are degrees of friendship. And Facebook doesn't recognize that.
Yeah it does, if you can be bothered with the admin.
You can create groups, and categorise your contacts into them. Then you can specify how much of your profile and your activity can be seen by each group.
I have a "limited profile" group, into which I place people who ask to be a "friend", when I feel it would be rude to ignore them, but don't really want them to see everything.
You can also choose to prevent friends-of-friends from seeing your stuff.
At worst, the defaults are possibly a bit too open.
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Not to mention, if that all seems like too much hassle (to people who will happily spend hours configuring their own machines just so?), just don't post the more private stuff on Facebook.
I have some friends I'll tell anything to, and do, and others I'd rather not know that sort of thing. Guess what - that sort of stuff doesn't end up in my Facebook status. Duh. Worried about photos? Don't do it in public. (And to fend off the obvious retorts, hell yes I get drunk, and any employer/future partner/etc who wo
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I have about 20 different lists of people on Facebook. Some things I post, I post for everyone. Other things, only a select group can see them. It really isn't that difficult to manage.
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Yes, I'm not afraid about this, what I'm afraid that one of my friends uses a silly app like FarmVille or whatever that demands access to "friend info" and then FarmVille will know all my discussions with my friend and by FarmVille I mean the entire world.
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Advertise carpet cleaning products and offer discounts on Doritos from a specific online retailer.
Who in turn will seek to leverage their relationship, selling your vetinary services and cheap student loans for your child.
Information is valuable.
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Advertise carpet cleaning products and offer discounts on Doritos from a specific online retailer.
Crap! I'd better cancel my Facebook account; someone might target some ads at me...
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Or instead of Doritos you're drinking a beer and then you get fired [nowpublic.com].
Re:If people seem stalkerish.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't use Facebook because of the number of people you've added as friends not based on some level of familiarity and/or trust? Seems to be a PEBKAC to me...
Aren't we over Facebook yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I think it jumped the shark about two months ago.
I rarely look at it.
I've filtered out about half my "friends" because if I wanted to know what they had on their toast this morning I'd sign up for twitter and follow their stupid tweets.
Some of us are not on Facebook (Score:3, Insightful)
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For those playing the game, Jumping The Shark is the point at which something has done the best it can ever do and can only go downhill from then on.
I'm not sure Facebook has jumped the shark and if it has, it was way back before all of the recent privacy outcry and probably before it opened its membership to the general public.
Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Delete your Facebook account like I did.
... or you could keep it, and not post anything you consider private on it.
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That doesn't stop random asshats tagging you in photos.
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You can disable that if it really bothers you.
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Or random asshat/friends randomly tagging you in random images that aren't even photos of anything, in some sort of mass campaign of sorts.First time I was tagged in one of those I was like Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?
The AntiSocial Network (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm as big of a facebook hater as the next guy, but it seems like Slashdot's favourite pastime is getting on a social network for being, well, social.
If their inference is that facebook should become an antisocial network, I think Slashdot honestly has that market segment covered pretty well already.
Re: (Score:2)
That is totally correct. By the way, I cannot find the link to 'Browse friendship' anywhere... oh that bitch... thought it would be ok to be 'friends'... eh eh eh... ehheh heh..
Re:The AntiSocial Network (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple solution: email (Score:3, Insightful)
And as usual, Facebook is discussed as if it weren't opt-in. There are plenty of other ways of communicating with people.
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Sadly there are a lot of groups of friends that use Facebook for all of their communication. If you're not on Facebook you can't be in their clique.
"Why didn't you come along? We've been arranging it on Facebook for weeks"
"You looked fantastic in his video. What do you mean, 'What video'?"
I have two lives. One in which I participate, which includes face to face contact, use of online forums, youtube, picasa and email, and one that exists only on Facebook, where I exist but only in a vague form, unsubstantia
Jurassic Park (Score:2)
Facebook == Public Website == Public Billboard (Score:2)
People need to be aware that Facebook is hardly anything more than a modern version of Geocities without the ability for it's users to violate the Geneva Convention with exceptionally bad Webdesign. It adds in a little tools that enable linking and conecting for total webdev-n00bs and makes it attractive to use your real name and real contact data, as it has amassed users in ways never seen before. Mostly due to the aforementioned n00by-friendlyness.
Whenever I search someone online, their Facebook entiry po
Oh, I think I see the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook
ws: Facebook Adds Friend Stalker Tool
Gosh, within one line, asking people to join Facebook and then yet the Xth article about how dangerous facebook is for your privacy.
We know this, but we don't care because we care more about our friend count.
Facebook is a nudist colony. Fine if you want to air your tonker but then don't complain people can see it. You can't share all your personal details withour your personal details ending up shared.
I wonder how people who use Facebook and complain about privacy go through life in general:
Omg! I bought this phone with a subscription, but now I do the math I actually end up paying much more for the phone! How can this be?
Oh no, I bought this gadget with monthy payments and now the payments are more then the original price, why!
I borrowed money for my house, now the bank thinks it owns it. Why didn't anyone tell me!
I streaked naked down the high street, now people are claiming they saw me! I didn't know that what I do in public can be seen by others!
I gave a full confession to a cop and now they using it against me in a court of law! Won't someone safe me!
If you do NOT want everyone on facebook to see what you do, don't use facebook. It ain't hard. It is not an essential product. Billions life happy lives without it. You can too. And the first person to claim that it allows them to keep in touch with friends they never bothered to keep in touch with before I will beat until they learn the difference between a friend, a distant aquintance and a stranger.
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Facebook is a nudist colony. Fine if you want to air your tonker but then don't complain people can see it. You can't share all your personal details withour your personal details ending up shared.
To use your analogy, the problem is that if you go to a nudist colony you have an expectation that nobody will take your pictures and post them on the first page of the newspapers or send them to your coworkers. Sure, you are naked and you are fine with that, but maybe your boss is not fine with it. I am not troubled by this change since I don't have any secret, what's worrying me is that my friends might have intrusive apps that ask for "friend info" and then my info that was supposed to be in a relatively
Re: (Score:2)
what's worrying me is that my friends might have intrusive apps that ask for "friend info" and then my info that was supposed to be in a relatively private circle suddenly become much more public than they were supposed to be.
I seem to be saying this a lot in this discussion - but you can disable that.
There's a privacy setting to control what friends' apps can see about you -- distinct from what friends can see about you.
You might argue that the default is too open. I can sympathise with that -- on the other hand the purpose of the system is to share information with friends, and if everyone had it locked down, it would defeat that purpose.
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I know that, but do you trust Facebook and Facebook apps? I think just recently there was news that Facebook apps didn't follow the privacy rules that they agreed to, or something like that.
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We know this, but we don't care because we care more about our friend count.
I don't give a shit about my friendship count. I do however care about what my friends are doing - those that are overseas (on holiday or permanently), those that I knew from school/college but lost touch with for years, etc.
Seriously, I don't understand the hate that Slashdot pours on social networking sites.
Re:Oh, I think I see the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
At some point you have to say, wow, this is getting out of hand, now I'm paranoid to go out and do things because something might be misinterpreted and come back to haunt me later. When all activity can be recorded and transmitted easily you lose your privacy.
Billions of dollars are being made off your info (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Billions of dollars are not being made off my info. If they're extremely lucky, just enough money is being made off my info to pay for the service.
Given the aggressive AdblockPlus settings and Greasemonkey scripts I have, they sure as hell aren't making much in advertising.
Guess what? Shit ain't free! Don't like it, stfu and don't use it.
Re: (Score:2)
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It's a pain to turn off all the default features that facebook conveniently opts-in for you. By WHY should we have to?
Because Facebook is *for* sharing information. The less you share, the less useful it is. Yes, I am interested in photographs taken of my friends by friends of theirs that I haven't met. Yes, I'm happy for them to see similar photos of me. Yes, I want to converse in comment threads with friends-of-friends.
If the default FB privacy settings were very tight, most people would not find the site useful. Not enough people would delve into the settings and open them up. Most people would try it, find little of in
A step forward (Score:2)
Facebook=FBI Honeypot? (Score:2)
It's starting to look that way.
Remember Wall to Wall? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now we have the See Friendship tool. It does... the same thing, pretty much, perhaps a little more extensively. Essentially you're all complaining about Facebook adding a feature they removed earlier out of redundancy. Do you have a right to complain? Yeah, of course you do. However, if you were fine with that feature before, don't you think it's a little hypocritical to criticize Facebook for putting it back in now, just because it's shiny and "new"?
No surprise there (Score:2)
Wall to Wall? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hasn't this been around the whole time as "Wall to Wall"? I remember there used to be links where you could see a "Wall to Wall" conversation between yourself and your friends, and you could change the PID in the URL to other mutual friends and see conversations between them. I envisioned making an app to basically do the same with an interface....I thought it would help in searching for conversations. There currently is no good search tool for stuff on facebook as far as I know. For example, I'll remember having someone post a link to me, or mentioning something in a comment but I have no way of finding that. If I could view all of the history between them and myself, I could at least ctrl-f for it.
Good to see Facebook making this easier!
"Stalker tool"? (Score:3, Insightful)
This only really a helps stalkers stalking multiple people - that way they can see all the juicy details both stalkees are saying to each other
What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Privacy on the Internet?... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't want something seen on the front page of the newspaper, don't post it online.
I think as long as this tool abides by the privacy settings on your Facebook account, it should be ok. If you don't want people seeing your communications on Facebook, why have them as a friend? Or put them in a group that doesn't have access to certain areas. If you want communication between you and another friend to be private, use a more private means of communication. Secret posts to your mistress don't belong on a Facebook wall post.
The information this tool makes available is already available anyway. If you're concerned about one of your Facebook friends having access to all of that information, why not just remove them as a friend?