The Facebook Privacy Thread

[Chernabog]

I only post benign stuff on there because if I post anything too risque or bitchy, who knows who is reading that stuff. I'll save that kind of stuff for here.

[Snowflake]

I am the same, but I did hide almost all of my personal info from my profile. Easy enough to find out elsewhere.

Thanks for the tips NA

[innerSpaceman]

When did facebook "pretend" to be private?

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

When did facebook "pretend" to be private?

Each time it allowed users to set privacy functions and then ignored them.

Over the years, Facebook has been the subject of criticism, lawsuits, and threatened federal action over various changes to its privacy policy.

In 2007, Facebook announced its Beacon advertising service, which broadcast member activity on partner sites to their Facebook friends. If you bought a movie ticket on Fandango, for example, all of your Facebook friends would immediately know about it. The Beacon program unleashed a campaign from consumer advocacy groups including MoveOn.org as well as a class action law suit that was settled this September. As part of that settlement, Facebook agreed to shut down Beacon and to donate $9.5 million to an independent foundation to "fund projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security."

In February of this year, Facebook found itself at the center of another privacy storm after it announced a change in its policy that would give the company seemingly perpetual control over user-supplied content. That prompted the Electronic Privacy Information Center to threaten filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and also led to the formation of a Facebook group called People Against the new Terms of Service that attracted nearly 150,000 members protesting the changes. The uproar caused the company to rescind those changes and resulted in CEO Mark Zuckerberg holding a press conference where he announced that the company would create "a new approach to site governance" so that its decisionmaking would be more transparent.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Twitter has a private setting, which only allows people who you've approved to see your tweets. That stuff isn't searchable and won't make it into the Library of Congress.

[Alex]

And I hope that eventually (even if it 100+ years from now that all of the private tweets also end up in a publicly searchable archive, just like I'm glad my university library had that damn fine collection of Civil War era private diaries.

I just assume everything is on the internet forever and unless I'm taking some very extreme steps to avoid it everything I currently think is private, is currently promised to be private is only private through the continued cooperation of third parties and that may change in the future.

[Kevy Baby]

You didn't close your parenthesis. It's making me wonder of the thought was continued somewhere else.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

You didn't close your parenthesis. It's making me wonder of the thought was continued somewhere else.

You're using incorrect grammar. "wonder of" should be "wonder if".

It's making me wonder why.

[Morrigoon]

Part of me likes the idea of becoming a part of history. I do wish that the LoC would keep records like that locked down for, say, 25-30 years until it is actually history.

[Melonballer]

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

Part of me likes the idea of becoming a part of history. I do wish that the LoC would keep records like that locked down for, say, 25-30 years until it is actually history.

Agreed. In 100 years, when the mighty pig has been eaten into extinction, future generations will be able to look back and read all about the wonders of bacon.