I didn't sign up with Facebook expecting them to be good at any of these things. I don't care about Facebook privacy: I didn't give them any private data. I don't care if applications can see my private data: my data isn't private and, more importantly, I don't sign up for applications. I don't plan on going into business with Facebook. I don't care how they treat their developer partners. None of this stuff matters to me.
Why am I pointing this out? Because I think my attitude represents a huge chunk of Facebook's users, and I think most of what's left over after you subtract that chunk consists of people who don't care about privacy period.
I use LinkedIn for business. I use Twitter for geeky stuff. I use Facebook for non-geeky stuff and to post pictures of my kids in their halloween costumes. It all seems to be working out OK for me.
A common mistake people make here is to think they represent the majority.
Your statement is true in general. But tptacek (the author of the parent comment to your comment) did not write his comment as one HN insider speaking to others, but as a technically aware Facebook user to others. My personal observation of Facebook user behavior (including my many Facebook friends who are not at all hackers) squares with his. My favorite kind of link to post on Facebook is any well written link about security issues with Facebook. My friends read those, and share them with their friends, and most of the friends are reasonably cautious in how they use Facebook. We still have a good time. I don't see Facebook advertisements because I run a general ad-blocker on my browser. I don't sign up for Facebook applications in general. I just have good conversations (much like this one with you) with friends who know me in real life, about links that we find interesting.
It always astounds me that 30-year-olds or older think they represent the average Facebook user. I have never seen anyone older than 30 write anything intelligent about Facebook. You people are not real users. Please understand this. How you "use" Facebook is so completely different from how people in college and recent grads use Facebook. For you, most of your pictures were what you actually posted yourself. For real Facebook power users, the vast, vast majority of photos come from other people. It's becoming clear that understanding of Facebook is the clearest dividing line between those in their late twenties and beyond and those younger. You pretend users really sound like old men shouting at kids to stay off your lawn. Why don't you at least try to educate yourselves about how Facebook actually works?
I started university when I was 18, and at the same time I joined Facebook. I'm now 22, close to graduating, and Facebook chronicles my last 4 years of misadventure. Yet I have to agree with tptacek, it's not a big deal.
It's not hard to untag yourself from dodgy photos, leave silly groups, clean up your profile and put professional contacts in a restricted list. Most importantly though, I've come to the conclusion most people expect you to have dirt on Facebook. If your boss wants to be your friend on Facebook and doesn't get why you won't actually share any personal info with them... well, good luck to you, but my professional contacts all seem to understand (and often reciprocate for the same reasons).
That photo you untagged yourself from but your friend is in so mutual friends can still see it - I'll agree that's a problem, but not worth throwing a hissy about. We "lost our privacy" the day the camera was invented.
> You people (over 30) are not real users. Please understand this.
Baseless generalization. There's some age correlation there, no doubt, but I know people over 30 who use Facebook as enthusiastically as the most social of high-schoolers, and I know people under 30 who won't touch it. At least among the technically inclined, Facebook usage style is more a matter of personal disposition than age. It's stupid to say nobody over 30 has anything useful to say about the site.
And the over-30-year-olds I know who make minimal use of Facebook? They have plenty clue "about how Facebook actually works", thank you; due to their years of experience I find them often more clueful than the most voracious teenage user. They just choose to use the site differently, or not at all, regardless of their level of understanding.
I myself am well under 30, by the way, lest you accuse me of an age group bias.
The thing getting in the way of understanding each other here is what the average use case is for Facebook. If it's not tricking people into sharing more than they intend to (as seems to the be case for you), then what are we complaining about, right?
I post and upvote links to these kinds of stories because I believe my family and friends do not use Facebook like you do, and are being tricked into sharing more than they mean to.
Most users of most websites probably fall into both - they neither understand nor care about the privacy implications, nor would they even if they were explained to them, as long as the site keeps them "in touch" with a lot of their friends.
I think it would be more accurate to say that they don't care about privacy "at that moment". In my experience many will later care about it, and regret the convenience trade off they made at that time.
I agree - I never post private data to Facebook. But now it doesn't matter if I post private data to Facebook or not. They can start hoarding data from my visits to yelp or pandora or whatever else in the future if I merely forgot to log out of Facebook before going to yelp.
And yes, I can change my privacy settings to make them not, but today, I missed the tiny blue banner in Yelp that gave me the option to opt-out, and then it was kind of a pain to figure out how to opt out of whatever I just accidentally opted into. It's turning into a real hassle for me to keep facebook from creeping into the non-facebook parts of my internet experience.
I think you share more private data then you realize. Now that everybody is embedding iframes with Like buttons Facebook can keep a record of all the sites you visit. Are you ready to share this information with the world? What about the videos you watch? Sites like Pandora already know who you are when you arrive at their site, do you trust them as much as Facebook?
"I didn't give them any private data. I don't care if applications can see my private data: my data isn't private and, more importantly, I don't sign up for applications. I don't plan on going into business with Facebook. I don't care how they treat their developer partners. None of this stuff matters to me."
I am sure that this is not the average user experience!
Maybe, but your interactions are still inferable. If you have friends their interactions with you are also inferable. Anyone or any group you associate with in Fb has the same problem. In some ways what Fb can infer is just as much a problem. So the question remains, "how useful is inference of data to Fb really going to be?"
This was the problem of Livejournal, altho' you could set your journal to be friends-only, your profile page was not. So who you were friends with, what your interests were, what communities you were a member of were completely public. Your only privacy option was hoping that no-one you didn't want to knew your username. Interests you could skip, obv, but because of the way the security model works, the world knew who had permission to read your journal and whose journals you read. So you were only ever as secure as the least-discreet person you knew. And I have some very indiscreet friends...
Exactly. See my recent 50+ point comment [1] that says basically the same thing.
I really think that the vast majority of Facebook's users just don't care. Remember the Beacon debacle? That big group had what, 300k people or something? A tiny part of the userbase. I could be remembering these details wrong, though.
edit: I bring up the score because there's obviously a lot of "OMG FACEBOOK SUCKS" posts going around. But obviously there's a lot of people that also disagree. It's not all just Facebook hate, or my comment wouldn't have gotten voted up in the first place.
I have plenty of non-geeky friends and acquaintances who expected the same thing. This isn't something that only us (some of us, I should say) HNers care about: this is a gross violation of trust.
Excellent compendium of reasons to quit: thanks for the article!
And speaking of which - I just tried to opt out of their instant personalization "feature" for Yelp. I missed the blue banner initially, so now I'm trying to change things the very hard way. I get the message on top of yelp that says "Yelp is using Facebook to personalize your experience." I click on Options next to it and then go to "How to turn this off". There, I click the big red button that says "Disconnect Yelp and Facebook". This button tells me I have to do more at my privacy page at facebook and links me to http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/connect.php . At this page, I hunt for the link to the actual Privacy settings. I click on this link and then click "Edit Setting next to "Instant Personalization Pilot Program." I then uncheck "Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites." I go back to Yelp and I see "Yelp is using Facebook to personalize your experience" still at the top of Yelp. Why was this so hard to do, and how come after all that, I can't even opt out?
I view it this way as well. There is a tipping point, a critical mass, where everything after will be viewed in terms of this dominant product/organization.
Google, World of Warcraft, Facebook, Windows... all of these things conquered their respective markets in such a massive way that every direct competitor is playing catch-up or giving up on reaching the same goals.
MySpace, like pre-Google search sites, was an obvious stepping stone on the path of social networking applications' evolution. It was terribly bad at almost everything and succeeded for a time purely due to demand for something of its general taxonomy.
Facebook, however, is a very thoughtfully realized effort that is largely an agreeable experience for users. As long as they continue to avoid introducing negative changes slowly and with minimal exposure to users, those users will continue to stick around and bring in others. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog]
And the big problem, one that I haven't seen addressed yet, is where people should go when they leave Facebook. There is no comparably-featured competitor, nor one even close. And of course, social networking applications are worthless without the people you want to interact with using them with you.
I don't think that is likely. It would be extremely difficult to be more innovative and more competent than Facebook. That's like saying you should worry about a company that could outmaneuver Apple. Sure, it's possible, but it's extremely unlikely.
Say what you will about Facebook's policies, the company is run extremely well.
I'm pretty convinced MySpace will have a non-trivial comeback. They've made exceptional non-technical hiring decisions of late (Tony Adam, Sean Percival, etc.) and if they have any technical capabilities left, they're going to be OK.
They have been stuck with a low-end image for a very long time and will not be able to take back the lost momentum from Facebook. Add this to the fact that it has been bought out by Murdock, which means there is very little incentive money-wise for those employees to put in the same amount of effort that went into pre-sale Myspace and Facebook.
If history is any indication, history isn't any indication. (E.g., Apple is always the niche player, right?)
Just because the previous top social network eventually faded away doesn't mean we should expect the current one to do the same in any similar manner or time frame. There's quite a lot that differentiates today's Facebook and the MySpace of old. For one thing, how many third parties ever built on MySpace as an application platform, to the extent that they are today with Farmville and Microsoft Docs and the like?
I'd like to bet against that opinion. I suggest this metric: on May 3, 2015, Facebook will still be listed in the top five websites in the world by Alexa traffic ranking (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/Facebook.com), and it will be the most popular social networking website in the world, again as measured by Alexa traffic rankings.
USD$200, proceeds go to winner's favorite charity? This bet is open to ams6110 or anyone else. Feel free to suggest different terms, metrics, betting amounts, or to make it a personal bet, not a charitable bet.
Not sure about that myself. I think over time as any class of service matures and becomes widely used the waining fad effect becomes longer. Early social networking sites were small and died off easily. Myspace was larger and is dying a slow death (still a top 20 site) Facebook is even larger and still growing. I do think going forward people will interact with it less directly. Going to Facebook.com may be old fashion in 5 years but I suspect they'll still be the clogs behind the scene making the machine work.
I don't think that Facebook per se is a fad, but you're probably right that it will be gone or irrelevant in five years, because the aspects of its service that Facebook is trying to build its revenue model around are almost certainly a fad.
Facebook to me is an enhanced contact list. Most of the people I know treat it the same way. The ability to stay in contact and re-connect with friends, contacts, and acquaintances who you no longer interact with on a daily basis is its main feature.
But the "social" aspect of the games and apps available on Facebook's platform is a novelty, and once that novelty wears off, what's the attraction? Facebook as a layer on top of the open internet to signal what I "like"? What's the point?
I think that Facebook are scrambling now to try to find a viable business model, and trying to establish themselves as a _platform_, broadly defined, because they realize that there are severe limits to how far you can monetize social networks, but they haven't really figured out how to leverage their success as a social network to expand into something that can sustainably generate revenue.
Maybe, maybe not. People may have so much data invested in Facebook, like photos, friends, that it is hard to move away. With the integration we see now, on mobile phones, facebook may be the one way we end up maintaining our contacts list.
When you get a new phone, put in your facebook details, it will pull down all the info you need to phone your friends, email, etc.
You get access to all your photos, games, etc...
Maybe even your web bookmarks with the latest facebook effort.
You no longer need an email address, you just use facebook - this cuts out so much spam.
Facebook could become the internet for a lot of people.
So yesterday I said, "who cares" about these articles. But today, I deleted my account.
The main reason is that I don't use it, and people that friend me might feel bad because I never reply. Now that won't be a problem -- I won't even exist there. Follow me on Twitter instead.
>> 10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided
No they aren't. In return for accepting them, you get to use the site. See? Two-sided.
>> 9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior
Then he proceeds to list one unproven allegation, and one lawsuit settlement. We sometimes settle lawsuits where the negative outcome, although unjust, is likely enough that the settlement is probably cheaper. These points so laughably fail the "documented" standard that I should just stop reading now, but I can't.
>> 8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy
They are responding to their users' preferences. If anything, users have declared war on privacy. The site is designed to shared information about yourself. If signing up for that site is not an invitation to privacy invasion, what is? And is it surprising that someone who believes most people want to share information about themselves, as the CEO of Facebook surely must, does not care about privacy as much as the author, who is obviously all about it?
>> 7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch
Members, by and large, don't care. It's not Facebook's responsibility to constantly nag people about the privacy implications of setting their privacy settings to "off". It would make the site more difficult and annoying to use, and would likely have immeasurably small impact.
>> 6. Facebook is a bully
Wait, are we complaining about how Facebook fails to protect user privacy, or how Facebook is overzealous in protecting user privacy? It's flat out false that Facebook sued this guy. They did force him to cease and desist by threatening to sue him. Maybe they should update their robots.txt, but that's hardly a reason to stop using them.
>> 5. Even your private data is shared with applications [that you install]
Oh, just like my regular computer. Should I stop using that too? Most Facebook applications rely on some set of private data to make interesting features work. Installing these applications would be a usability nightmare for people who have their privacy shields turned up, which ironically would probably decrease the number of people using those settings. This is because most of Facebook's users, even the ones with privacy settings turned up, only care about privacy when it doesn't get in their way, and when having to choose between privacy and easy functionality, they will take the latter.
>> 4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted
They are dealing with an enormous attack surface and highly motivated attackers. I think what you mean to say is, "Facebook's engineers cannot perfectly cover all possible vulnerabilities that their business requirements expose them to." They are normally quick with responses and fixes, so that's a problem, but not one that any other company doing this would avoid. But the whole "technically competent" thing is BS. They are obviously technically competent based on the various open source projects they have released and which are seeing wide adoption.
>> 3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account
If my friends are any indication, many people who delete their accounts eventually want them back. Keeping those people from making a mistake they will later regret is probably a feature.
As far as making no promises about deleting your data, I can say that especially in a NoSQL environment it's very difficult to track down every little piece of data that belongs to a user. Sometimes this data is in formats that are not mutable on an individual-record basis. At my workplace we sometimes aggregate data in SSTables (see the Bigtable paper for details) that, did they contain user data, would not be immediately modifiable for each user that wanted to delete their account.
>> 2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web
This is not an issue for most normal people. But if it is an issue for you and you want to make a moral statement by closing your Facebook account, by all means, do. Facebook's incentives for maintaining their walled garden to some extent probably outweigh the loss of every user account for every person that even cares an iota about this issue.
>> 1. The Facebook application itself sucks
Seems like a lot of people like it and derive some use out of it. Sorry you don't.
This article is idiotic. Most of the points are flat out false, and the rest are taste issues where the author is out of touch with the zeitgeist.
10. "See? Two-sided." - Ooooh, you mean just like a random guy deciding to beat you up - he trashes your a$$, and you get to see the inside of a trash bin..... also two sided and of equal value of the second party.
9. True.... just as true as the counter-argument. Choosing whether to have a settlement or not is in all cases choosing between having your name cleaned or loosing a substantial amount of money (and that is in case you're actually innocent of the accusations).... when Facebook's CEO decided to go for the settlement he clearly stated he'd rather have the money than the clean name - enough said.
8. "The site is designed to shared information about yourself." ...... with the people in my life(as the slogan says) NOT with the people who'd like to spy on it.
7. "Members, by and large, don't care.".... Yeah, right, and you're basing this on what serious grounds!?!?!? My statistics professor would probably say - if you're not completely sure ...... avoid to assume.
6."Maybe they should update their robots.txt, but that's hardly a reason to stop using them.".... yeah, hey, while we're on it, why not use this old cable wire to tie all the expensive TVs and stereos we have around the house - just because it's old-dated and will potentially fail doesn't mean we shouldn't be using it too.
5."This is because most of Facebook's users, even the ones with privacy settings turned up, only care about privacy when it doesn't get in their way, and when having to choose between privacy and easy functionality, they will take the latter." - Is it just me or you're assuming far too much..... plus if FB's considers most of it's users to be morons, I don't want such a friend, thank you.
4. "They are obviously technically competent based on the various open source projects they have released which are seeing wide adoption." ..... uhm, like which ones!?! Seems to me FB is adopting ALL other open source applications available.(thus becoming increasingly more unusable and annoying but that's a whole other story)
3. "If my friends are any indication, many people who delete their accounts eventually want them back. Keeping those people from making a mistake they will later regret is probably a feature." - Now that's so thoughtful - I do exactly the same when my girl friends want their crappy lame a$$ boyfriends back right after a break-up just because they haven't seen any better..... Now seriously, if only FB admins would do the same as I would with a friend and NOT MESS IN...
2. "Facebook's incentives for maintaining their walled garden to some extent probably outweigh the loss of every user account for every person that even cares an iota about this issue." - maybe if they CARED ENOUGH TO EXPLAIN IT properly to their users, it would bother more of them.
1. "Seems like a lot of people like it and derive some use out of it. Sorry you don't." - HA HA, by "deriving use" you must mean the people all the regular FB users are trying to PROTECT FROM - ad agencies, etc. who derive PROFIT out of the FB platform and the way it's rules are constantly being twisted for legalising spying and obtaining personal information without permission. You actually sound like you're one of these people.... hmmmmm, strange.
All in all – I don’t completely agree with the idea of permanently deleting your FB profile – it can be fun and relaxing and useful, especially for people like me who have friends they can’t visit as often as they’d like. BUT the recent privacy changes and the secrecy (or not so wide publication and promotion) alerted me that something seriously wrong is going on and I know a lot of people harmed by it in one way or another ( their pictures used inappropriately, their job information exploited, etc.). So I’m saying what I’ve always had in mind when using the internet to upload anything – what goes in never comes completely out…. IF YOU DON’T WANT SOMETHING TO BE PUBLICLY KNOWN – DON’T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET.
His first point (10) is flatly contradicted by Facebook's TOS, which was revised 4 days before his blog post. You do own your data, you just grant Facebook the mother of all licenses to it. The license is revoked when you delete your account, except in the case of data you've shared with your friends, which is probably almost everything.
I took a look at it again today and it had been seriously reworked (no more outline layout, revised copy), but the last-revised date hadn't changed. Color me annoyed, but not surprised.
Do you want to go through life scared of everything, hiding in a hole, or do you want to be out there, prone to danger, but in the mix of daily life?
This is just a classic balance between security and openness.
The more secure you try to make things, the less usable things become, and the more you worry about things you don't need to worry about. The more open you make things, the easier and more efficient things become, and life is more enjoyable. You might get bruised and cut every once in a while, but it's the price you pay for a more open, fun, and social life.
I'm in agreement with Zuckerberg on this. Openness is the future, whether we like it or not, and you can either fight it and become a hippie 2.0, or just go with the flow and enjoy the advantages that come with.
The whole facebook thing is just fundamentally wrong. Facebook doesn't have users, it has statistics. Any company that treats its users as just numbers does not have my support.
Like any company, Facebook sells a product to its customers. The product is user data, and the customers are those willing to pay for access to that data. As a result, Facebook is under constant economic pressure to maximize its ability to sell that data to its customers.
Zuckerberg has a huge incentive to promote the idea that privacy is passe or somehow doesn't matter, because the more he can convince his users to accept having their data made public, the more value he can deliver to his customers.
I was more alluding to the deluge of very-similar opinions on a single topic in a finite period. While the iPad is a new thing, Facebook has been around and been engaging in the same behavior that gave rise of these complaints for some time now.
Why am I pointing this out? Because I think my attitude represents a huge chunk of Facebook's users, and I think most of what's left over after you subtract that chunk consists of people who don't care about privacy period.
I use LinkedIn for business. I use Twitter for geeky stuff. I use Facebook for non-geeky stuff and to post pictures of my kids in their halloween costumes. It all seems to be working out OK for me.