And this is why competition is a good thing. If you read between the lines, it's clear a lot of these features are motivated by Google+'s privacy controls. Facebook has even exceeded Google+ in a few areas like tag approval. What's interesting here is that people have been asking for features like tag approval for several years. Honestly, it's a no-brainer feature that has had widespread support. But it took the entrance of a serious competitor into the market to force Facebook to respond to user demands.
And it hopefully also means that Google will feel some more urgency about iterating, too. And maybe even some incentive to figure out a better way to deal with pseudonyms. They seem to have lost plenty of good will and not a small number of users over the issue. And, I'm sure everyone has a list of features they want in G+.
Ultimately, I'm still hoping for a Wave-style open standards/federation based interoperability for G+. I can imagine what a struggle it is to decide on a final feature set to actually release openly, though. And some features just seem impossible. Like tag-approval. In an open, distributed system, can you stop someone from, essentially, linking to you? That's like trying to stop someone from posting your email address, right?
Part of the problem I think is that when you got tagged, it showed up in your stream. If it were federated, their server could say "hey, I tagged you in this picture", and then it wouldn't show up in your stream, or when you look for photos with your tag since arguably, you would be the one serving that information.
Absolutely agree - this is proof-positive that some hard competition drives quick improvements across an entire industry. We'll end up with two excellent social services, rather than just one large, mediocre one.
Changing "Everybody" to "Public" is smart. I can see how "Everybody" could be interpreted as "Every one of my friends" - and it could definitely be interpreted as "Everyone who is signed in to Facebook, but not the Web as a whole".
I finally deleted my FaceBook account. After having some friend of a friend tag a photo of me from 12 years ago with an ex, that came up into my feed causing my wife to bitch at me for a week about I finally had enough.
Weird thing is I remember setting it so only friends could tag me but some how my privacy settings were changed again.
Never mind the week before that I was auto logged into FB chat when I always stay logged off. Just too much abuse for me to continue to give my privacy over to people who do not respect it.
What would be more impressive; Facebook having had these changes in the works before anyone thought they were a good idea or that they pivoted and did a major revamp to their #1 feature (user data) in a month?
Considering that tag approval has been a popular user-request for years, I don't think their holding back those changes looks good for them... consequently, I doubt they've had it in the works.
They did move fast to "pivot", however, and I applaud their recognition that finer-grained privacy is an important user "feature/requirement".
Suggestion for FB (in case anyone's listening): The privacy setting for "Your status, photos, and posts" is overloaded, as it means two things:
1. The default privacy state for new content posted to your wall
2. The privacy state for accessing that area of your page on FB
I like to keep my default sharing state to a small group of people, and optionally expand the group of people I share to (e.g., create a new post and mark it "Friends of Friends"). I can't do that currently.
The only way to do this right now is keep my default state to a wide set of people, and frequently narrow down the group of people I share with. For me, it's backwards.
This is probably by design, but it'd help if "Posts by me" and "Default setting for posts, including status updates and photos" were not conflated into a single privacy setting.
From what I can see (I didn't work on this, so it is still a bit new to me as well), the settings revamp should resolve this conflict for you.
The default sharing state for new content remains for applications that don't implement the privacy controls, but content you post through the web site and the iPhone app will default to the privacy settings you last used and this is displayed more prominently so you know what it is before you post.
I may be missing something, but once it rolls out to you (starting soon), I think you will find that you will not need to manage a second global control about who can see your content - from then on the individual content item describes who should see it.
Tag approval should have been there from the start. Instead they decided the growth of the site was more important than respecting the preferences of individual users.
They rather hoped that tagging would be handled by the social understanding, which it has for the most part.
These products are something that are out for the first time. No one can predict and expect all, right in the beginning. For a new product, even the entry barrier has to be lower. One has to learn from the feedback. They did.
Has someone got one of those tools that goes in and puts everything to 'most paranoid' and then I can set things down as needed? I'm starting to feel that all the opt-out non-privacy on FB is overwhelming.
If it were opt-in, I could breath a sigh of relief that things are still at least as private as I last set them.
Did you read the post? Assuming they're not lying, there are no changes to your existing settings for existing things, but for future posts you'll have better and/or easier control over your privacy settings. This is not FB's usual opt-out fuckup.
Yes, I did. I was specifically referencing that you can now opt-out of auto-tagging.
You see, they opted me in. Long ago. With no option to opt-out. Now they provide the option, but it is, by default, on the wrong setting for privacy. Just like every other update they've ever rolled out.
Ah, I see. I don't think it's quite the same thing, though, because their previous opt-out problems have been when they actually create a new feature, make it public, and make you opt out to make it less public. This situation is, while not ideal, maintaining the status quo (relative to auto-tagging) but giving you extra controls to make some things less public.
Actually, I had thought you could opt out of auto-tagging (but you had to opt out of it), because I remember doing so. Can't find the control right now, though.
Something I've been thinking about: at what point does the pain of maintenance of a service outweigh its usefulness?
Between Facebook's new privacy settings, Google+ Circles, etc, these services have become much more about protecting and curating who sees what I do rather than doing anything with them.
Twitter I get much more utility out of with much less maintenance.
nonsense. on both Google+ and Facebook you can quite easily lump everyone into one group/circle and leave your default posting level set Public.
just because a service provides more options doesn't mean you have to use them if you don't want to.
edit:
granted, twitter's culture is more open to following strangers than facebook. my experience on Google+ has been a nice blend of the two extremes, so far.
I don't think it nonsense. I think there is a threshold where the maintenance/anxiety from the provided options exceeds the value of the service. I think its a sweetspot for any service actually (not just Google+ and Facebook).
OT: To anyone from Facebook (particularly authentication/security)
I've recently (last few days) encountered a problem with your email (as user ID) authentication process. You're associating email addresses that have not been authenticated and that appear to be mis-intepretations of the email address actually submitted for authentication.
Take a look at my HN profile here, and decide whether I have sufficient credence to warrant a follow up via email (also in my profile; note the instructions for bypassing spam filtering).
I tried reporting this via your public interfaces, but that's like, well, choose your own simile. (I.e., zero response.)
as the URL to use to report security problems. I don't believe I used that in my initial efforts, but I will keep it under advisement. For the moment, I'll see whether this direct contact can provide resolution (including calling me an idiot, if that's called for ;-).
Thanks once again for and to the community and HN. I'm grateful to be a part and to be allowed to play my own limited role here.
How so? I'm interested in what you have to say, as I'm currently considering rejoining facebook after leaving it a while ago. Is this something I should know about?
I officially have lost interest in tracking Facebook's nth iteration on privacy controls. Maybe they're good, maybe bad; but my attitude toward the news is: not interested any more. maybe I'll check back in, two or three iterations down the road.
In Other News: Facebook users driven to apathy can now be royally reamed by advertisers!
