Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky?

Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by paul on Sunday December 13, 2009 @09:11PM (#993440)

In addition to being somewhat trollish, this article is inaccurate. The change doesn't make everything public -- the settings vary by type of info and also I think it tries to preserve customizations (I'm not completely sure how that aspect works, but different people get different defaults as I understand it). A quick search turned up this screen-shot: http://images.smh.com.au/2009/12/10/960612/420-facebook-priv...

Also, I'm pretty sure his "search" theory is mostly nonsense. From what I can tell, the change is driven by a genuine belief that these settings provide greater utility for users. This has certainly been my experience sharing on FriendFeed (which is more public) vs sharing on Facebook, so I tend to think it's correct.

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by ivankirigin on Sunday December 13, 2009 @09:56PM (#993500)

Indeed. Evidence shows that users understood the changes - 50% of users select something besides the defaults, and Facebook has been open with those numbers. This is after millions of users in countries like Turkey already had effectively public profiles.

  An average user, certainly, has no idea what is going on by these changes.

He ignored the public stats in order to make a point.

Further, this change is important, and there was a lot of work and testing to make sure people understood the results. Jason assumes his intuition about what users understand is more accurate than this research.

In other words, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by zmimon on Sunday December 13, 2009 @10:42PM (#993557)

50% of users selecting something other than defaults tells me that Facebook did act against the vast majority of it's users wishes and choose default settings that were not appropriate. Considering a substantial percentage would have just clicked through you probably have 2/3 of people NOT wanting the changes they made. How is that ethical?

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by gloob on Sunday December 13, 2009 @11:11PM (#993592)

Calling "suggesting a change and asking users up front to confirm or correct it" unethical strikes me as sensationalistic. The fact that a large percentage of users didn't just click through the thing (i.e. it wasn't some stealth decision forced on users) doesn't make it less ethical - if anything, it makes it more so.

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by jkincaid on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:51AM (#993796)

I don't know if unethical is the right word. Maybe "shady" would be better?

If Facebook wanted to stay on the safe side of things, they'd have kept the default as the more private setting and then show some kind of prompt saying "Hey, this is a new Everyone setting. This is what it does. Would you like to try it?"

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by jkincaid on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:49AM (#993793)

That stat does not convince me that users actually know what they're doing. Maybe you're privy to more research about this, but I suspect the majority of users who select something besides the default change everything to 'old setting' because they don't know what the hell this stuff is and just want to get back to Farmville.

I seriously doubt most people know what 'Everyone' means. Or what can happen to data that's syndicated to search engines and is no longer in Facebook's control.

I'm currently in the process of reaching out to my friends who don't follow tech news to make sure they know what they've signed up for with the new settings. After explaining the 'Everyone' setting, responses are usually along the lines of "Facebook is turning evil."

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by whyenot on Sunday December 13, 2009 @10:46PM (#993561)

Where are you getting the 50% number from?

How do you know "there was a lot of work and testing to make sure people understood the results"?

Why is this change "important?"

IOW, how do I know you know what you're talking about. Based on your profile, it doesn't look like you have any official connection to Facebook.

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by indigoviolet on Sunday December 13, 2009 @11:00PM (#993577)

ivankirigin works at facebook.

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by whyenot on Sunday December 13, 2009 @11:11PM (#993591)

I suspected as much, and I don't think there is anything wrong with using facts to defend your employer, but he should follow your example and disclose his affiliation when making comments like the one above.

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by indigoviolet on Sunday December 13, 2009 @11:42PM (#993628)

ivan has been around this community for quite a while- he was one of the people who built tipjoy, and his move to facebook was much discussed. perhaps he assumed people would know.

Also, clicking on his username indicates this clearly (at least now).

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Re:Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? by ivankirigin on Monday December 14, 2009 @06:38PM (#995431)

I didn't think I was expressing opinions about facebook, just bringing up things that others have brought up.

I probably should have mentioned I work at facebook and all comments are my own - mainly to insulate myself. I just added this to my news.yc profile "[every comment on this site is my own opinion, and not that of current or past employers]"

I think it is silly to suggest as some have that every comment requires a caveat. The comment replied to Paul Buchheit, also at facebook, who made no caveat. My profile is a click away, as is google http://www.google.com/search?q=ivankirigin

People get overly sensitive about this. I don't think my employment changes my original comment at all.

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