Facebook Founder's Pictures Go Public 219
jamie passes along a Newsfactor piece that begins "In a not-uncommon development for the social-networking leader, Facebook's recently released privacy controls are leaving the company a bit red-faced. As a result of a new policy that by default makes users' profiles, photos, and friends lists available on the Web, almost 300 personal photos of founder Mark Zuckerberg became publicly available, a development that had gossip sites like Gawker yukking it up."
From Mark: (Score:2, Informative)
"For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"
Ok so where are the pictures? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'll never use Facebook (Score:5, Informative)
I am really worried about the fact that Facebook has access to data such as people's real name (that's the point of it, right?)
Um, no it doesn't. It has no real name verification mechanism, so if you are like me and you go by a nickname among your friends, you can register using a nickname. I think at some point they changed it so that you couldn't change the name easily once you register ('didn't used to be that way in its first year), but if you start out with a pseudonym, they don't stop you.
As for other infos, well, use TOR and litter your profile (and friend list) with a lot of false information so that they cannot separate the truth from lie.
Or, as you said, don't use Facebook.
Um, he did it ON PURPOSE (Score:4, Informative)
"For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)"
http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg [facebook.com]
Re:Um, he did it ON PURPOSE (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg [facebook.com] is a Facebook Page about Mark, that he runs, which allows people to become "fans" of him. His Profile is at http://www.facebook.com/zuck [facebook.com], although either he removed his photos, or Facebook is glitching again. More damning is the fact that he appears to have hidden his friend's list, unless that is part of the glitch.
Re:Um, he did it ON PURPOSE (Score:5, Informative)
Damnit, s/friend's/friends/.
Also for clarification the reason why the missing friend's list is damning is because hiding the friends list is one of the options that was removed.
Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, this default is even worse than most people could have imagined!
For example, lets say you go to a party and a "friend" of yours takes a picture of you doing something that looks rather scandalous because you are drunk. And then, your friend uploads the pic to Facebook and tags your name to it. You realize you have been tagged in the photo and you don't want other people to see it. So you untag yourself and send a message to your friend to delete it. However, your friend either doesn't go on Facebook very often or doesn't check Facebook messages so the photo is still up there and there is nothing you can really do about it except pray that nobody else stumbles upon it.
And then suddenly Facebook decides to make everybody's photos Public to anybody. Now this bad photo of you is available to everybody and there is nothing you can do about it except call your other friends in order to get the cell phone number of the guy that took your picture.
Yeah, this default sucks real bad.
Re:Karma. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg [facebook.com]
Mark Zuckerberg For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)
Re:You can't see his friend list now either!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Removing your friends from public view is possible. Instead of privacy settings, just go to your profile and click the pencil icon that magically appears next to "Friends" when you mouse-over. Terrible UI to have this stuff split up and not explained.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Informative)
Hey buddy,
I have my account on the highest level of lock-down. However, if you get the URL to my profile, or you're a friend of a friend, you can still see (and I can't block this):
- My friend list, in its entirety
- Pages of which I'm a fan
- Profile photo
- An option to send me a friend request
- Some other stuff
None of which I wanted. My circumstances are somewhat special, because not everyone needs or wants this level of security, but I do, and I used to have it, and now it's gone away.
-P
Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Informative)
Go to your profile and hit the little pencil icon next to it. You can hide your friends list from there. (Thanks to another /. commenter, who pointed this out to me.)
BTW, make sure you lock down the settings on what your friends' apps can see, unless you trust them not to accidentally add malware.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:3, Informative)
I wish people would stop making the assumption that things on the web are private. WORLD WIDE WEB is called that for a reason.
There are no "levels" of privacy on the web. There is only "more or less secure", and Facebook is anything but "secure".
And if you don't directly control it, you don't have control over it.
SO, you see, you're just wrong.
Re:too funny (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, it isn't. If you go to the URL of the friends list, you can view anybody's friends list.
Interesting? -1, Wrong. If your profile is not set to be searchable, that information is unavailable.
Coincidentally, I've taken five minutes to set my privacy settings correctly and have only praise for the increased granularity now available. What percentage of those complaining here have ever used facebook anyway?
Re:Karma. (Score:2, Informative)
just as I've thought:
1) It was intentional.
2) It is his "public" profile.
Re:Karma. (Score:3, Informative)
Yup, I believe it's zuck [facebook.com] as well. Same statement, different walls.