But on another level, no.
If a person has decided their connections are private information, then the implication is pretty strong that they could expect that to be private completely. Otherwise I would expect a warning of some-kind on my "private" connections that are actually public because the other end is public. They are completely violating the user's expectation and the described functionality of that option.
Also privacy is like a thermodynamic arrow. You can't unspread a secret or make public information private. So you shouldn't treat the decision to go public lightly.
Running off on a tangent, that's a really interesting analogy. I wonder how much could be done with the notion that privacy is the opposite of entropy: that is, privacy is about minimizing the arrangements of how your information is formed, and there's a universal, inevitable trend towards maximizing those arrangements. Differently, privacy as the predictability of how a piece of information moves: as entropy, or publicity, increases the predictability of the information becomes less as its possibility space increases.
There is an interesting tension between the benefits of collaboration and the benefits of individuality. John Lennon and Paul McCartney playing off each other, or Andrew Wiles working alone in obscurity.
Surprise and disruption are closely linked to privacy in my mind. Not necessarily by launch time. But the groundwork for originality to me is laid in the soil of a rich inner life.
There is a cost to always protecting the person who cares, which is that people may self-modify to care more, making cooperation harder. (Or just pretend to care more than they actually do.)
It's not necessarily a worry in this particular case, but it's worth considering in the general case.
Hmm, no, it doesn't? Your analogy makes absolutely no sense.
If a party wants to make its connections private, then make it private from both sides of the connection. All Facebook has to do is fix this.
I think it's actually a rather sophisticated algorithm. For example, if you own multiple Facebook accounts, it uses what is likely a combination of IP history and persistent cookies to suggest friends no matter what account you are logged into, or what computer you're accessing it from.
My guess is that Security brought this up with management, management consulted business analysts, analysts said fixing this will cripple the accuracy of "Suggest a Friend", and Security has no other recourse. So it stays.
There is a possibility that if you have multiple Facebook accounts and use the same browser for each, a cookie could be used to link the two. Just because two people use the same computer and the same browser to login to Facebook does not mean they are friends. You might be using a public terminal.
Facebook could match a specific browser session with user visits to other sites that have Facebook features. Your digital fingerprint could be determined through your browsing habits. You don't need to be logged in for that. That would be pretty insidious of Facebook. I'm not a fan of 3rd party JS scripts in that respect.
I've seen friend suggestions that are linked to my email account that I've signed up with. I think this is an email address book leak. Perhaps it's possible to discover someone's work contacts say by just signing up with that someones email address (say a work address). I'm not sure if the email needs to be verified before this information is leaked.
1. Allow my friend list to be seen 2. Allow me to be seen on other peoples friends lists
Given Facebook wants users to be as discoverable as possible to form easy relationships, I can see how (1) is generally less damaging to that requirement.
Its a pity since many legacy services allow for (2), e.g. Unlisted phone numbers.
In the same way, if you're trying to keep yourself incognito...well, don't use Facebook. And, if you must use Facebook, then make friends with great discretion. Just like it's a good policy to only create emails/nude-selfies sparingly, and only when the occasion demands it.
Though I agree there is a two sided ownership (both friends own a 'side') why the privacy policy stinks to me is that it does not seem to me that Facebook really cares about this 'ownership'. They really only want more data and to make their site more valuable. Is it unfair of me to attribute a rationale to Facebook's decision without cold-hard-facts, perhaps.
However, lets look at the took cases 1) They actually care about this 'ownership' 2) They do not care.
In case 1), they are afraid to violate a person's privacy choice of having a friendship be public. There is essentially a tension between their privacy choices and their 'friends'. It seems to me that when two choices are odds like this, caution is the best route. For instance, when two people know a secret that relates to both of them, and one feels uncomfortable about revealing it, the general rule of thumb is that you do not reveal (unless its like murder 0.o). Overall, I guess it seems like if you do make it 'public' it makes someone uncomfortable. While if you do not, it makes someone not get something 'they want'. In this situation, just err towards caution and make it private. What does everyone else think?
In case 2), they just want more data. Well I understand it, but I do not really respect it. I think this is easy. Make it private.
What do other people think? I am open to any logically flaws you find with the above statements.
The same logic means that all of Mark's posts should be public, if his friends check a box saying "publicize my news feed".
"A friend connection is two-way - you friend someone, then they approve the friend request. In essence, a friend connection means both "Philippe considers John a friend" and "John considers Philippe a friend". In other words, both people involved have some ownership over this claim - which means the privacy isn't always as simple as with other content."
"Let me use the third example in your screenshots to illustrate. Mark Zuckerberg's friend list is not public. But Greg Golkin's friend list is public - meaning if you pull up Greg's friends, you can see Mark in the list. You can also see Kevin Scott is in the list. Kevin's friend list isn't public... but Stuart Gillette's is, so you can see Kevin show up there. Consequently, using fb:degrees hasn't shown you any information you couldn't theoretically figure out by looking at public friend lists - it's just made it easier to find that info."
"Now I that at first glance this might appear to be inconsistent or a privacy violation. But remember what I said earlier about the two parties involved in a friendship connection. Essentially, you're free to hide the fact that you consider John a friend, but it's also John's choice to publicize that he counts you as a friend - and hiding connections he's publicized would essentially override his privacy wishes. In some cases, such as with fb:degrees, we show connections if they're visible to you on at least one side of the friendship."
"Now, if Mark's list is private and all of his friends set their lists to private too, you should never get a result using fb:degrees. In that case, any final link in the chain connecting you to Mark would involve a friendship that was hidden to you from both sides of the connection, so we wouldn't display it to you."
"A common case where we get similar reports is the "friendship page" between two people - we show mutual friends of the two people if each of the two friend connections is visible to you on at least one side, but we hide any mutual friends where one of the connections is hidden on both sides. To help clarify some of these situations, we added this description to the friend list privacy setting: "Remember: Your friends control who can see their friendships on their own timelines. If people can see your friendship on another timeline, they'll be able to see it in news feed, search and other places on Facebook. They'll also be able to see mutual friends on your timeline."
This is a case where privacy can get complicated, but we think the way we've chosen to operate is a good balance of the competing priorities involved. We've also chosen to focus more on privacy controls around your content and personal information, since trying to maintain privacy by limiting discoverability is often an illusion. Since Facebook is a network designed for social participation, it's nearly impossible for it to work properly and let people stay completely hidden - there are many ways to discover a profile or friendship beyond friend lists or searches. But even if someone discovers your profile, you have a great degree of control about what they can then access.
I hope that helps clarify what you were observing here. Emrakul was also correct that we have rate limiting to prevent brute-forcing at scale, and given the above controls, even building up a list through iterations would never allow you to know for sure if you'd acquired the entire hidden friend list. I think our current setup is working as intended here, but definitely let us know if you think the controls I described can be overridden somehow."