Facebook's move ain't about changes in privacy norms

zephoria.org

18 points·bootload··6 comments

"... Bob trust Alice. Bob tells Alice something that he doesn't want anyone else to know and he tells her not to tell anyone. Alice tells everyone at school because she believes she can gain social stature from it. Bob is hurt and embarrassed. His trust in Alice diminishes. Bob now has two choices. He can break up with Alice, tell the world that Alice is evil, and be perpetually horribly hurt. Or he can take what he learned and manipulate Alice. Next time something bugs him, he'll tell Alice precisely because he wants everyone to know. And if he wants to guarantee that it'll spread, he'll tell her not to tell anyone.

... Facebook is perfectly content to break Bob's trust because it knows that Bob can't totally run away from it. They're still stuck in the same school together. But, more importantly, Facebook WANTS* Bob to twist Facebook around and tell it stuff that it'll spread to everyone ..."*

The most articulate version of what kinds of problems your average facebook users now faces. A slime-bag move, but what do you expect for nothing?

"... The best way to maintain privacy as a public figure is to give folks the impression that everything about you is in public ..."

Damn, somebody is on to me.

yea, that's why I "always" use my name as my internet handle.

I just stay in touch with my friends via phone calls. Keeps things between me, them and the NSA.

And AT&T and possibly China...

For anyone who can't read the "x-small" font in the main body, Readability is your friend (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability)

Since it seems like the writer's first language is English, I feel comfortable pointing out that this is poorly written to the point of incoherence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com