Thursday, December 27, 2012

I'm sorry that your Facebook photo was shared publicly, Randi Zuckerberg – but ... - Telegraph.co.uk (blog)

Randi Zuckerberg takes to Twitter to protest

Many people have felt the awful sensation of something they thought was private on a social networking site going public â€" or even viral, as countless letters from boyfriends or mothers-in-law show. However, this time, Zuckerberg's own family has been affected. Some of his sister Randi Zuckerberg's photos were shared publicly.

Randi's response is to say: "Always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency." But actually, Ms Zuckerberg, it absolutely is about privacy settings. Facebook's privacy settings are pretty arcane, and frequently shift without notice. When you try to set things below the absolute maximum, it becomes difficult to work what is or isn't private. Can friends see it? Can friends of friends see it?

What I may have wanted to share as a 19-year-old student (Wahey! Lads on tour!) I may not want to have seen as a 24-year-old accountant. Without extreme, painstaking vigilance, it's very hard for long term users to clean their timelines of potentially embarrassing posts; indeed, the recent flap about private messages being shown online publicly was all traceable to old but very private posts that older users couldn't believe they had shared openly five or six years ago.

It's especially difficult around photos, especially photos of you that are taken and uploaded by others and that you are then tagged in. In addition to that one friend who always tags the photos they've snapped of you looking your drunkest, fattest and baldest, there is a smart underworld of people stealing pictures to construct false identities, as this fascinating but chilling post on dating blog 52 First Dates makes clear.

That's in addition to the constant search to monetise every aspect of the platform, with the new Instagram terms of service merely indicating the direction of travel. The two things are linked: the higher your privacy settings, the less money Facebook can make from you by selling your data or advertising to you. That's what's behind the constant drive to force people to use their real identities â€" problematic for anyone in the public eye, or for anyone with legitimate reasons to hide, such as victims of domestic violence.

This, and other concerns around what access advertisers are getting, and the use of profiles by unscrupulous HR departments, are causing a slow but steady haemorrhage of the crucial millennial users who made the platform the behemoth it is today. Increasingly, people feel that the only way Zuckerberg will listen to people's concerns is if there is a mass exodus.

Of course, it's (intentionally) incredibly hard to delete your account: the "deactivate" option (which immobilises the account but lets Facebook keep your data) is fairly easy to find, but the delete option is buried in the online help, behind six separate links (you can follow the process here if I've convinced you).

So, Ms Zuckerberg, I'm sorry that your photo was shared without your permission â€" but the person who is responsible is your brother. Don't worry, though, I'm sure he made a fraction of a cent from your sense of pain and betrayal. If you want to stop it happening again, how about closing your account?

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