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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

> "Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency," Randi said in a tweet.

Schadenfreude and just desserts aside, Randi has a good point here. So much of the talk about privacy on social networks overlooks the problem of human nature. Most people won't have their privacy most painfully violated by a service, but by those in their network who carelessly forward their digital communications.

(to clarify: I'm not absolving FB of blame...I'm assuming that just about everyone here agrees that FB's privacy implementation is not great. I'm just saying that Randi's point, even if it was said to deflect responsibility, is true in the larger sense. As we'll find out as Poke w/ pics becomes more popular)

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The interface led Callie Schweitzer to think the photo was public. Instead of criticizing the interface, Randi pretends that "human decency" is the issue. What a crock.

Indeed, this also highlights that most of your 'Facebook friends' aren't really friends or people who would care or think twice about making sure your actions would fit with the person/people who'd be affected.

I hate to sound so negative, but that tweet just reeked of wanting attention. If you are genuinely upset your friend posted a photo, CONTACT THEM, don't make a fucking public reply at someone and start a dialogue that gets this on some blog. Seemed like of the ways to handle this, her chosen method was very near the bottom.

Indeed. On a pedantic side note, the correct phrase is perhaps surprisingly "just deserts", not "just desserts" (it has to do with things that are deserved, not with after dinner treats).

Wow, that's overturned decades of mental imagery for me. Now I know what it feels like to discover the actual meaning of "begs the question" and other such idioms.

But people can't be expected to ask before hitting "share" on a public post, can they?

According to the article the post wasn't public -- it was viewable only to friends of those tagged in the post (as far I as I understood).

Now if only facebook would tell people it wasn't public. It's a post by someone you don't know showing up, how subtle is the marking that it's not actually public, if any?

People can't be expected to ask before hitting "share" on a post shown as public, can they?

There is an icon attached to every post that indicates its privacy setting. That icon is in fact in the same row of actions as the "share" link.

Common geek UI philosophy: "There's a cryptic symbol! What could be clearer?"

(Not to imply the parent thinks this way. Just that this seems to be yet another example of important information obscured by too-clever UI.)

an icon on a gray background, colored a very-slightly darker grey.

Right. She should have seen an icon that showed "friends" rather than public. I think the "share" button remains and (if I'm not mistaken) only people within the original permission will be shown your "share" in their feed. This could, however, give the impression that you could just pop the photo into Twitter, however. There is "download" right in that "options" menu.

There's also the ol' right-click/save.

Yeah she was not friends with Randi but apparently friends with one of Randi's friends. Agreed -- it is very confusing. G+ gives you a nice big warning before resharing something within G+. But of course we know that this was shared in a completely different social network (twitter), Callie obviously saved the pic and then reuploaded to twitpic (automatically or manually). Which imho isn't very classy no matter the original privacy settings.

It was showing up for Callie, who was not friends with Randi. I think most people would assume that means it's public, when it fact it's just an example of the fact that privacy on Facebook is really confusing.

I have seen posts where the "share" button was not available. Is there a separate setting for that?

From eyeballing my feed just now it looks as though any post that's a link can be shared. Then, the link is shared "via X." But only a public status itself gets the share button.

If it's an image it can be shared AFAIK. Check this screen shot from my feed: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j779fmt85cb9mq6/Screen%20Shot%2020...

When clicking on "Share" I can share it to all my friends on my time line (or if my default were public, it would share to everyone).

It would be nice if we could expect people to always do the right thing (even in the face of confusion over what that is due to poor UX), but ultimately you have to deal with the reality that humans are flawed and the more humans you add to the mix, the more likely one bad (or confused) apple will do the wrong thing.

If your platform exists to form links between these (billions of) people, you have to either be extremely proactive with user's privacy (which Facebook clearly isn't), or you have to educate them to accept that anything they post should be treated as if it were public to the world, because basically it is (via 6 degrees of separation combined with Facebook sharing rules).

Human decency also includes not making it easy to publicize private photos.

I can only imagine the outcry that will occur when Facebook blocks right click, save image.

Actually, I think that would be a business opportunity for a startup, only I can't figure out the tech you'd need to do it. There are shops (like, for wedding dresses) that disallow you from taking pictures of their stuff because you might share it online; they'd make good customers.

If the image can be shown, it can be copied and sent to anyone.

Even the recent article about switching two images very quickly can not solve this issue.

Believe that was sarcasm.

That horse left the barn long ago; it's a good point that was requested of services and publications years and years ago, contrary to policies and practices she has steadfastly supported the entire time. Now that the blade is cutting the other way, she cries foul. We've adapted, but apparently she didn't.

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