I agree with you generally, but the most damning information about me that's on Facebook was posted by other people.

I had a fraternity brother in college who was gay. At some point in time, he realized that he was gay, but didn't want to come out.

An incriminating picture was posted on facebook and he was forced to reveal his sexual orientation to all of us (well we kinda suspected anyway) before he was ready in a pretty awkward way. He had to do the same not that long after with his family and it didn't go well at all.

All because someone posted a picture on facebook that was up for less than 30 minutes. I put the blame mainly on the person who put up the picture, but still, he should have had control over this kind of thing.

> I put the blame mainly on the person who put up the picture, but still, he should have had control over this kind of thing.

Facebook isn't special; it's just a subset of the Internet. If the people at your college had had, say, a mailing list instead, and someone had sent that picture to it (thereby putting a separate, cacheable copy in every person's inbox), would you reason similarly that "he should have had control over this kind of thing"? Just because it's one website, not millions, doesn't mean that anything put onto it won't be leaked back out by bullies, trolls, rumor-mongers or busybodies. There's no such thing as privacy in a network where even a single person is less than 100% trustworthy, no matter the medium.

In theory, yes; but in practice, Facebook seems to be the main nexus of these sorts of things. There are things that people will post "publicly" on Facebook that they would never dream of making a separate website for to post publicly. You might assume that nobody would post Photo X on Facebook if they wouldn't also be willing to make www.hereisphotox.com, but it's certainly not the case in practice.

> There's no such thing as privacy in a network where even a single person is less than 100% trustworthy, no matter the medium.

Agreed. The issue w/ Facebook is that these "identity collisions" (when an aspect of your identity is exposed to a group of your friends that formerly didn't know, i.e. parents find out you're gay) can happen accidentally far too easily.

In other words, it's not about maliciousness... and even if someone did want to spread information about you maliciously, it'd be a hell of a lot more challenging to do so over a mailing list (finding your boss', former co-workers', parents', siblings', friends', etc's email addresses vs tagging a photo or note).

The problem is that nothing he could have done could have stopped the picture being posted Even if he had no account it wouldn't have stopped people he knows posting and seeing pictures of him.

I put the blame on narrow minded family members.

You should be able to 'come out' if you are gay without that kind of nonsense, presumably you have enough to deal with in a situation like that and your family should be supportive.

Especially your family.

And me leaving Facebook solves that problem how? At least now I see when that kind of stuff happens.

It's a good point - leaving Facebook won't solve things like drunken pictures posted by your friends. It will, however, stop things like "Yooooo, did you hit that last night? Wasssuppp!" on your Wall that your family, colleagues and potential employers can see.

You can choose to make your wall read only.

I always thought the best solution to all this is if we had multiple Facebook accounts, e.g. "Bob Smith (1)", "Bob Smith (2)", etc, and then invited family only to (1), close friends to (2), old high school classmates to (3), etc.

This way, if any of them posts something stupid on your wall, only that subgroup will know about it.

Then, of course, you'd need an app that lets you post the same status update on all your accounts.

If you have friends like that it is your own fault. Expect duche friends to pull duche moves.

Ditto. I created an account because people kept sharing family photos, etc. with me. For the most part I've set my profile private.

However, when my sister started scanning pictures of our childhood and posting them tagged as me, public for the world to see I started get uneasy. Nothing compromising or unusual in them but there's that part of me that wants a say as to when crap like that is posted online.

It turns out of course I can "hide" photos tagged of me by other people - but still... Despite having my account private, other people can post pictures and tag them as having me in them. Frustrating.

Hear hear to that! I'm always puzzled by all these privacy nuts that go on and on about privacy problems with social media sites like Facebook. If something is absolutely private and you do not want to share it outside of one or two people, DO NOT put it on a social media site! Period.

In fact, I would go as far as to say never put any critically sensitive information on the web.

The sum total of a bunch of innocent stuff posted about you by others can add up to a lot more than the parts if someone decides to put it together.

I read this a few days ago:

http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/

Privacy is even more dead than I ever suspected.

Absolutely. I sum it up as: "What happens on the internet, stays on the internet".

"What happens on the internet, sprays on the internet. Fast. And Forever."

So in your view, people should just have "one or two" friends on Facebook? How many people do you know who actually use Facebook like that? Do you really think that is the intended purpose of Facebook?

well sometimes its your friends.. that will put pictures up of you without knowing, or will tag you in and can't remove it yourself

"well sometimes its your friends.. that will put pictures up of you without knowing, or will tag you in and can't remove it yourself"

As many have pointed out, this happens already in blogs and email, on twitter, in various forums, etc., and not joining facebook will do nothing to prevent it from happening on facebook.

But more importantly, if you don't want your friends doing X or Y to you on facebook, you have a very powerful method of ensuring that at your disposal: make it clear that you find this unacceptable when it happens. Over time, people get the message before making the mistake, and these expectations harden into social norms. Ultimately, relying on these social norms is much more robust than relying on technological solutions, in my opinion.

Not having a Facebook account will not prevent people from posting pictures of you on their own, and even including your name in the picture description (thereby "tagging" you in every way except the notification.)

Not having Facebook will not prevent people from posting pictures of you on the web. The horse is pretty far out of the barn on that one.

I thought that one could now veto tags for yourself in pictures? Doesn't prevent you being named in the description.

Are you ready to share your online behavior with everyone, including all the sites you visit and videos you watch? Are you ready to have your picture used in ads your friends see? Because that's where this is going.

Seriously. I can't believe how differently others view facebook compared to me. I log in every now and then and talk to some old friends who I wouldn't be able to contact otherwise. What info is everyone so scared of getting out? What's the harm in targeted ads? Not like most of us are going to see them anyway.

Dear god, a post about Facebook's privacy change that's logical, non-extremist and generally makes sense. Thank you.

It sounds pretty extremist to me. This person is apparently so paranoid they will not use any form of hosted service, email, etc, or if they do, they only put things in there that they trust the entire universe to see. I would say that puts them in a tiny minority of people - ie. quite extreme.

I wonder how many of the hackers here who want to remain private take chances and look to create innovative things that are out of the normal(i.e.Twitter/Blippy)? They seem adverse to change.