[IxDA Discuss] Changes to Facebook (Perceived Privacy)

[Nasir Barday]

Mark, thanks for making this a thread! Last night, I was thinking about the
ruckus this new feature has caused in the Facebook community, and I thought
to myself "wow, what a great study in social interac--- nahhhh..."

Anyway, all of a sudden, information that was already there has been
combined in an easy-to-digest format. But while it also makes explicit what
was before intrinsic (is there a term for this?).

Before, if "Eva Green" and I became friends, people would only know that if
they were constantly watching my friends list for differences (a la
"stalking" behavior). In that same vein, things like relationship changes
("Nasir is now in an open relationship with Natlie Portman! Whoo!") and
comments on photos and other people's profiles become obvious too. More
stalking fodder, some might say.

But some info is arguably useful to announce to friends, e.g. added photos,
newly joined groups, maybe even events people plan to attend.

To Facebook's credit, they do allow you to hide stories from your mini-feed,
one of the "evil info-rolls" in question. Though you have to do this
manually for each entry you want to hide. They also only show people
information that they have the original rights to see. Unfortunately,
Facebook hasn't made this policy very obvious.

I wonder if there's a clean design solution around this? Maybe somehow
annotating each entry with an icon that conveys "you're only seeing this
because you're close friends with Eva." Maybe this is an IA problem: while
the IxD is clean, and the feature seems to fit the "keep track of my
friends" goal of a social network, there is still clearly some info that
people clearly don't want made obvious, violating the "keep people
up-to-date, but don't put my bidness in tha streets" goal.

Thoughts?

- Nasir


On 9/7/06, Mark Canlas <mark at htmlism.com> wrote:
>
> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted
> material.]
>
> Among the college age crowd, there's an online hoopla going abouts, and I
> thought it would be a great time to discuss it from an interaction
> designer's point of view.
>
>
>
> Facebook is an online community, centered around college and high school
> students. It's like Myspace, in that it's extremely popular, but it's also
> unlike Myspace in that it's clean, organized, and doesn't cause seizures
> on
> page load.
>
>
>
> Earlier this week or last, Facebook added a feature called the "News Feed"
> which aggregates to the user's homepage all of the changes that other,
> relevant users ("friends") made on their profiles, be it the change of
> interests (yesterday I liked green eggs, today I liked ham), or the
> announcement of a new party (IxDA party at my house!).
>
>
>
> The reception for the News Feed as been overwhelmingly negative. Or at
> least
> the most vocal of users on Facebook have made it a point to share their
> dissatisfaction with the feed. It has been described as annoying, "where
> did
> my front page go?", intrusive, creepy, and extremely stalker-friendly.
>
>
>
> Allegedly, the creators of Facebook, and users like myself, maintain that
> all of the things the feed shows you are things that one could have
> gathered
> normally, by surfing Facebook "the old way". Instead of surfing through 30
> friends to find who has new pictures, the feed just tells me so.
>
>
>
> At first, it was awkard to see certain messages. "Jimmy is attending
> Beer-a-palooza." // "Tanya added photos about Las Vegas Summer 2006" //
> "Sharon and Johnny are no longer in a relationship [broken heart icon]" //
> "Elizabeth changed her status from 'in a relationship' to 'married'"
>
>
>
> Elizabeth's personal page is now filled with comments such as
> "congratulations on your marriage". Would the amount of comments have been
> less had the feed not been there? I.e. only Elizabeth's most personal
> friends, or those who check her page most often, or those who interact
> with
> her in person, would know that she got married, without the assistance of
> the News Feed. But everyone Elizabeth has chosen to be friends with, even
> your not-so-close friends (as it is a binary condition, there are no
> degrees
> of friendship), knows that she is married.
>
>
>
> The ability to broadcast your profile changes to other people's feeds is
> currently turned on by default, and is "opt out" by choice.
>
>
>
> Various Facebook groups are being created along the lines of "Say No to
> Stalkers" or "Bring Back the Old Facebook" or "Unite and Boycott
> Facebook!".
>
>
>
> So. To round it all up. How does the aggregation of already available
> (easy
> or hard via the "manual" way?) information effect users in social
> contexts?
> Are Facebook users justified in being concerned over "stalker-like
> features"? Or should they have already been aware of the consequences of
> sharing information in a virtually public space?
>
>
>
> How does Facebook's experience relate to future scenarios, where normally
> disparate, even "private", bits of information are now readily available
> in
> one, easy-to-read location?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> "Mark"
>
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