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Comment by kylelibra | Hacker News Reader

Every once in a while Facebook does the right thing. Is there any sort of self-motivating factor that I'm missing here? (other than good PR)

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I guess it's in Facebook's interest to get users to share without the fear of a future employer looking into it.

I interpreted this two ways:

1. Facebook gets more of people's personal info.

2. Only Facebook gets this info.

This is it right here.

Their only asset is their users' data, and they don't want anyone else getting at it for free?

/cynicism

"Facebook Introductions™, coming this spring 2014, gives employers a unique way to get to know candidates before hiring them. Don't worry, we don't share anything private – Introductions just allows subscribing businesses to see your Timeline as a friend would.

It's the perfect way for employers to find the best cultural fit quickly, and can even be a great conversation starter for interviews."

I really doubt it. This kinda of thing would be received very, very poorly costing Facebook users. Furthermore I don't think Facebook is in the market of selling individuals personal information, they sell aggregate information, and provide targeted ads.

People like to paint Facebook as an antagonist who is working to degrade personal privacy, but really they are acting in their own interest of making money by providing a service that people want to use. Facebook is not working against you, it also isn't working for you.

Yes, but it is in Facebook's best interest to ablate your instinct to privacy; the more you share online, the greater value Facebook is to you, and the more value you are to Facebook.

They're only doing the right thing for them, this move seems to incidentally benefits users too but not really. it prevent outcomes such as users 1) closing their account / switching to another website 2) creating an additional fake profile only for work.

This article [1] is imho quite right, this is mostly a non-issue turned into PR.

1:http://rexriepe.com/2012/clever-pr-facebook-bends-a-non-stor...

Is good PR not enough? I'd say that bad reputation is actually one of the biggest threats to Facebook in the long term. If they could reinvent themselves as an organization as trustworthy as a bank with your private information, a big reason for going elsewhere would be eliminated.

In the short term, the network effect holds their site together, unless they mess up really bad. In the long term, however, these things do matter and Facebook knows that.

I would think the fear of current or potential employers using your data against you is just one more thing to add to any unease people may already have about sharing more and more of their personal information with Facebook. These things add up, and I'm sure FB have seen at least a small bump in account deactivations coinciding with the recent spate of articles on this subject.

It is good PR for Facebook, they get to build upon their walled garden in the name of protecting your privacy so there's no downside to them taking a stance on this at all.

It just so happens that "the right thing" happens to line up with Facebook's self-interest this time but I would not couch it as FB doing the right thing because it was the primary reason to do so.

"... Is there any sort of self-motivating factor that I'm missing here? (other than good PR) ..."

Exposure to litigation, PR is a positive side effect.

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