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."
Karma. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I was hoping for pictures of Mark drunk with writing or Mark doing a keg stand or something.
There's always photoshop.
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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 :)
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At least, that's what he posted after the fact... it's not like he can say "oh, man that was a total accident, this new privacy setting sux0rz". He can say all he wants but I highly doubt he meant to share 300 pictures of his friends and family to the public.
Also, I don't know about anybody else, but as of right now Mark has a total of 31 pictures I can access, including only one profile picture. This would suggest that some 270+ pictures were hidden recently.
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Yup. Number of people dumb enough to believe what he said rather than what he did: one, apparently [slashdot.org].
I'm trying to figure out why he'd post such a ludicrous and trivially disprovable assertion. Either he's trying to own another news cycle, he really is that dumb, or he thinks that his customers really are that dumb [slashdot.org].
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I guess he has the same mentality as someone who felt the need to link to the same post twice within 3 sentences
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Yup, I believe it's zuck [facebook.com] as well. Same statement, different walls.
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My guess is it's fake.
They either had the choice of (A) cleaning up his profile and "accidentily" making it public or (B) setting his profile private by default thereby admitting it's a bad idea to make profiles public by default.
Obviously there's choice (C) of making profiles private by default, but the marketing people probably didn't like people having privacy.
The lesson is simple; never trust any company to keep your stuff private.
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 :)"
Re:From Mark: (Score:5, Insightful)
BULLSHIT.
He set his shit to private, it got exposed, he said "I meant to do that" and then most everything went private again.
Give me a fucking break. He got caught with his pants down and egg on his face.
Re:From Mark: (Score:5, Funny)
He got caught with his pants down and egg on his face
Did anyone save a copy of that photo?
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It is understandable that he set it to private, just imagine if his employer could see him that way!
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Do you really think that the CEO and founder of Facebook, didn't know the implications of what is possibly the biggest feature launch so far this year?
Not to mention, setting 'his shit to private' as you so eloquently put it would contradict the mission statement of Facebook.
Anyway ... them's the facts* FWIW ... you can choose to believe what you'd like.
*Why yes, IAAFbE.
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Well, he originally had hundreds of photos on his public profile, and now there are about a dozen.
So either he was bitten by the profile privacy issue everyone is talking about, or he did it intentionally and then changed his mind. The first means he was confused by it, and the second means he doesn't think the default settings were appropriate after all. Which is is?
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Lets double check your logic Dahamma:
Step 1) Pictures are posted
Step 2) Media makes a big deal out of it
Step 3) Less pictures are posted
Somehow, from this process, you assume step 2, despite occurring before step 3, has no causal relation?
Seriously ... I need to stop feeding the trolls.
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I don't think there was anything trolling about my post - sorry, but you are being a bit defensive.
Anyway, you are saying the media scrutiny made him realize he shouldn't have made everything public, so he made more photos private. Sure, that's a causal relation, which was my second proposed explanation.
In a broader context, you're welcome to argue that changing a user's privacy settings to something more permissive during an upgrade unless specifically overridden was acceptable behavior. But you're not g
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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.
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My mistake, munging the URL reveals his friends, as pointed out in another comment here: http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=zuck [facebook.com]
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Thanks for the pointer. I'd been looking all over for that. I'd also suggest checking out the settings on what your friends' apps can see in your profile; it's very open by default.
too funny (Score:3, Interesting)
I have spent the best part of the week trying to adjust my facebook profile to some level of discreteness that I am comfortable with. Have been very unhappy with the "all or nothing" choices, and have started just simply deleting content. I feel a little better, because now I am sure the settings will get some fine-tuning.
Just for fun:
http://www.facebook.com/pertelote [facebook.com]
And this is after I have locked down as much as I can without insulting my family and classmates.
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Maybe this is just PR for the new privacy controls. Mark Zuckerberg saying its okay for me...
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It's actually possible to hide your friend list from your public profile - but you have to hide it from your profile entirely.
Of course, that doesn't mean that I agree with the "enhanced" privacy settings.
Re:too funny (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it isn't. If you go to the URL of the friends list, you can view anybody's friends list.
See http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=zuck [facebook.com] even though if you go to http://facebook.com/zuck [facebook.com], there's no way to view his friends list.
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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?
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If she has any level of discreteness, then certainly she be divided into a single entity!
Re:too funny (Score:5, Funny)
I am seeing that most of slashdot is now on facebook, which is totally sad. I can't reply to everyone, so I had to pick someone, and that was you, congratulations!. Here it goes:
You use Facebook? What a faggot.
There, I feel much better now.
Someone's totally going to troll you on usenet for having an account on /.
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It seems that you, Lisa, are a bit of a paradox. I see by your facebook profile that you're a fan of Malwarebytes, suggesting you must be pretty proficient with a computer. At the same time, you seem to be unaware that FB provides you with a tool to see what your profile looks like to other users - suggesting you're *NOT* that computer proficient!
"Wait til I get going! Now, where was I? " (Bensafrickingenius proves his mettle by quoting The Princess
Ok so where are the pictures? (Score:5, Informative)
He should've left them public (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh, they're out there... So far I've just seen the highlights, but I'm sure people have them all.
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]
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Regardless of if he did it on purpose, those pictures tell me that he is basically a regular dude, or at least plays one on the Intertron. I don't find any of those pictures even remotely embarrassing or controversial. Not that I'm supporting the recent privacy policy changes.
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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.
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Reply to myself again. It looks like the frien hiding is possible, but it reqwuires removing them from your profile entirely, but it is still possible for anybody to see the list using a URL like http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=zuck [facebook.com]. Thanks to gleffler for this info.
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I agree. It in fact seems probable that the photos were inadvertant, although I'm no sure about the rest. Some of the rest may have been intentional or it all amy have been unintentional. His removal of the images strongly implies it was unintentional.
he meant to do it, then had the pictures removed (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it says a lot about his personality that he posted to his newsfeed that he meant to post the pictures, then somehow the pictures mysteriously disappear. Kind of scary with an ego that he can't admit to a mistake that small. If there ever was a security breach would facebook ever admit to it?
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Not unless they were legally liable for it and also had a decent chance of being sued at that. But that's pretty much standard operating procedure for any IT company.
I would not be surprised if PR suggested he take the pictures down just because people THOUGHT there was a security problem because some of them were available to the public. I would also not be surprised if there was a problem and he lied to make Facebook look better so as to try to keep their reputation (read: investors) looking good. I'm not
Re:he meant to do it, then had the pictures remove (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that's par for the course, isn't it? Naive "I have nothing to hide" never lasts long when the attention comes. Even people who are in the showbiz don't want everybody rummaging around in their private lives. Can you imagine how Zuckerberg's friends reacted to that kind of scrutiny?
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There's been no major hack and subsequent large data leak AFAIK, but Facebook has had countless vulnerabilities, one of which has gone unfixed that allows you to grab someone's private photos, messages and other private information that I discovered and reported over 2 years ago.
I gather many other people who have discovered and reported vulnerabilities have seen a similar story.
DID NOT WANT (Score:5, Funny)
Note to self: think before clicking links to private pictures of nerd.
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Aren't you a nerd/geek yourself? [grin]
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No problem, just click the "Unlike" link.
my facebook status this past thursday reads (Score:3, Funny)
[name] dislikes facebook's new privacy alert that by default would have made my facebook LESS secure... *rolleyes*
Today's status update is a link to this article with my comment "Oh, the irony!"
Poor choice of defaults (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:4, Insightful)
Any system wherein you upload pictures for the world to see is fail for not assuming that's what you want to do? We're not talking an OS or web server here; it's a social site.
I have to ask: if you have private pictures, why are they online?
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Have you ever told a friend something you wouldn't tell your boss?
Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish people would stop making the assumption that because someone shares something on facebook they want to share it with the world.
There are levels of privacy and sharing between telling everyone everything and hiding in a secure lead lined bunker somewhere. I might want to share pictures of my kid with my friends and family who live in other states and other countries without wanting to share that photo with the entire rest of the world.
The reason for using a social site is to allow you to exchange information in a controlled way. If I wanted to just share information with the world I'd stick it up on a public facing web page and let google find it. The problem is that Mark Zuckerberg is an idiot and presumes exactly like you do, that because I want to show my mother her grandchild that I want to share that same information with him and everyone else. Guess what I don't.
I know that the social networking evangalists seem to think that everyone should be metaphorically naked for the world to see and we'd all get along better, and the tin foil hat brigade thinks we should never give our real names even to our spouses, but a lot of times, people want somewhere in the middle.
Re:Poor choice of defaults (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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There are different levels of privacy -- for instance I'm fine with shari
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Easy, you're convinced it's "easier" and "More convenient" that way, so that "the cloud" can be forced on you. Then, when everyone is completely dependent on it, they'll start charging (and by "they", I am referring to the entire IT industry).
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It's not just my private pictures I'm concerned about.
10 years ago the most anyone could do with an embarrassing photo of me was to show it to my friends. Today they can show it to the entire world and because of Facebook's tagging system, the entire world can find it very easily indeed.
What am I missing? (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I can tell there are two options for privacy on Facebook
(1) Be 'searchable' which means some information about yourself should be included otherwise the search is useless
(2) Not be 'searchable'. Everything you have is private and between you and the friends you have
I have option (1) and I haven't had any problems with it yet.
Please tell me specifically what it is about Facebook that is violating your privacy?
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You have to be like 20 and want to share all your drinking pics with all your loser friends but your boss is like 30 and he's not into that shit, so he'll fire ya if he ever found all those drinking pics.
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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.
Mod parent up informative (Score:2)
That's a little counterintuitive, thanks for pointing that out.
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Well, what is even WORSE than this is that the "upgrade" involved a very vague and midleading page that by default encouraged users to CHANGE the privacy settings for many things that weren't necessarily public by default - like all of your photos.
Some of those things were possible to continue restricting, but they should have kept the same permissions during the "upgrade". IMO anything else is just dishonest.
Things I love... (Score:5, Funny)
I love it when I read a story about another story that is all about photos, yet neither story contains or links to any.
problem with your post (Score:3, Funny)
I love that too! But I can't find the link to become a fan of things like this?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Click (Score:2)
OverflowingBitBucket likes this.
Google Wave (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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I have a ton of fake information in my profile. I make a point every year of celebrating my "fake Internet birthday".
You can still change your name anytime you want. I gave myself the middle name "Hussein" last year for a while. And a number of my friends have changed their names upon getting married.
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They are nowhere near on the ball.
Sadly my hypercube got its profile deleted.
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Cheers
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Same here. Contact information is true enough, as in email sent to the email address listed in my Facebook profile will reach me. Other information are mostly lies and jokes, but my friends should know (and I tell them in person) which ones are lies and which ones aren't.
I should make my profile a little more professionally acceptable, though, in case a future employer f
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Not having a Facebook profile also has some privacy concerns. Someone can tag you in an image even if you aren't on Facebook. The only differences are that it's obviously not linked to your profile, and you cannot untag yourself from it.
Wouldn't that be a moot point? Couldn't you tag a picture of someone on facebook and use a bogus tag,like notizomiac or something like that? They couldn't delete that could they? I have no idea as I am one of the paranoid without facebook,twitter,etc.
Re:I'll never use Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook is the government database the government never had but wishes they did.
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True that. Imagine knowing my personal friend network, something that is unattainable to discover without Facebook, and most importantly, that I enjoy Buffy and is looking forward to Guild Wars 2, and make subtle sex jokes in my log when I'm sexually frustrated from having a distance relationship. This is like a new golden age of useful information.
Re:I'll never use Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't even need Facebook for that, I can get it from your Slashdot profile now!
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They do now.
SB
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The difference is, contrary to a government database I can decide to instead give them a digital 4 instead of my data.
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That's MySpace, and it wasn't CEO of MySpace you were friends with.
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Facebook might be the social network giant but it's a really pointless site. It's more about showing off how many friends you have who most of you probably haven't met.
I have noticed from personal experience that time spent on facebook is inversely proportional to how involved one is in a relationship with a human of the opposite sex. For some reason all those people that I know that spend 10+ hours a day on facebook, informing the world minute-by-minute what they are up to, have invar
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I have noticed from personal experience that time spent on facebook is inversely proportional to how involved one is in a relationship with a human of the opposite sex.
There may be something to that. I don't have any facebook presence, and have been married for almost 30 years.
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Because the sample of everyone that you know clearly represents the entirety of society.
I am married, happily, with children. I have a healthy circle of Actual Real Life Friends. I also have a healthy circle of online friends, with whom I converse frequently (usually daily), share parenthood stories, exchange photos, and generally have a Gay Old Time(tm). And that's not even including the overlap between those Real Life Friends and the Online friends.
The Internet is many different things to many different p
Re:It's too hard to manage privacy on Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, there's a "Preview my profile" in the privacy settings - it shows you what the general public sees and you can modify it so that it shows you what any specific person sees.
Not sure how long they've had that, but I got a nasty surprise the first time I used that, having previously thought my profile was locked down pretty tightly.
This last debacle was pretty disgraceful, though - sending out a message telling everyone they should change to the "recommended" setting of making everything public by default and even calling private settings "old facebook" rather than actually describing them as what they were. For some reason they still don't realise they're not Twitter.
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