Facebook and Privacy
"Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you"
Or is it? Welcome to the ludicrous world of Facebook where my girlfriend can join up and her sister is already my friend but try as we might it appears there's no way for my girlfriend to actually attempt to add her sister as a friend. The best they can do is see the other's posts on the wall of my page and various mutual friends' pages.
I quite liked MySpace's old comment on this sort of thing when people were deliberately putting their age as under 16 to gain privacy, that why would you join a 'social networking' site and then not 'network', yet even they've been upping the 'privacy' settings. However, Facebook's default seems to discourage you from being noticed or spoken to at all. Fair enough, it's supposed to connect you to friends and not encourage you to add people you don't know to your friends list, but the current settings seem to take things altogether too far.
There are people on my friends list that don't even show up when my girlfriend browses the list and she knows these people too. And it seems like with her default settings they won't be able to see her looking through my list too, so two people can simply miss each other totally on the site. None of this, it seems, stops Facebook's real issue: that people from school will still attempt to add you as friends, even though there's probably a damn good reason you're no longer in touch with them. But you can still choose not to add them...which is why I can't begin to understand why Facebook makes it possible to not even 'add' people. Are they somehow thinking the site will get as bad as MySpace was for spurious friend adds? Isn't that their problem to solve cleverly in any case, rather than with some hammer-to-nut techniques?
I have a feeling that the 'poke' is the way round the dilemma of my girlfriend and her sister but who wants to 'poke' someone? In this case they can be fairly sure who's who but I've certainly gone through friend lists before and been utterly unsure if someone's who I think they are, and I'd rather not do something as unsavoury sounding as to 'poke' them. Facebook needs to get a hold of the difference between stuff that must be private (birthdate, emails, credit card numbers) and stuff that's the bedrock of what they're seeking to provide.
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there's also the possibility
there's also the possibility to use a slightly bogus surname to stop those pesky people from school ever finding you. But you may find, your ego won't take that for too long (mine didn't!), and it's much more fun to press the 'ignore' button instead!
Julia
x
Everyone at school
knew me by a slightly different name. I'm just pointing out an issue with it that I've noticed. It's a weird site. Generally it's gash.
TheoGB
http://theogb.com
Sorry Theo
...but if your girlfriend and your sister can't 'see' each other, they both need to fiddle with their privacy settings. If they've set that they don't want to be seen by people who aren't their friends, then that's what will happen. That's not Facebook's fault!
And as far as I know, those are not the default settings (though I accept they may have changed over the last 9 months since I joined up). The default settings are/used to be that you can look at the profile of anyone in any of your networks, add them as friends, message them etc. Even if they have been changed though, the ladies in your life simply need to update them (their settings), which every user should be doing/have done as appropriate to their own preferences anyway. With great power comes great responsibility etc.
Or, alternatively, one can invite the other to be their friend, using the option in the friends menu, and putting in the other's e-mail address, which will send a friend request to them, and away they go...
If Facebook were to change their settings now to *allow* everyone to put in a friend request to anyone they wanted, going against the requestee's privacy settings... there'd be a huge uproar, and rightly so.
They've changed in those few months.
Mine was on a more 'normal' security level.
I'm not remotely suggesting that. I'm saying that given what the site is, there shouldn't be a situation where your privacy settings can be so high. Moreover, it should not be possible for what happened to happen at the 'default' level. I don't give a fuck what you can change, I'm telling you right now that Facebook is hideously un-userfriendly for those settings because there are too many of them and that it's a massive pain in the arse to sort out.
You join facebook to keep in touch and be part of a social site, ergo, you shouldn't have the ability to block yourself to the point where you can't be added as a friend at all.
By the way, I'm glad you live in a utopia of only having one possible email address to use. I have about 8 I think.
TheoGB
http://theogb.com
Eh, so now you're saying
Eh, so now you're saying that Facebook shouldn't allow users complete privacy?!
And having lots of options make something user-unfriendly? There's nothing friendly about being restricted.
Yes, you should have the option to make yourself un-findable on it if you want. Not everyone wants to be found (celebrities, for instance). Or what if your name is Robbie Williams (a pretty common name) and you get random old women requesting your friendship all the time because they think you're the bloke who used to be in Take That? It definitely has its uses, hence Facebook giving you the option. Do you really want them to force everyone to have the same settings, just to suit the lowest common denominator? Next you'll be saying I can't call my teddy bear 'Mohammed'...
8 e-mail addresses? Ouch. I have a selection but made sure to start using the same primary one 10 years ago. It's rather handy. Life is a lot easier when you only 'live' in one place, as I'm sure kids of divorced parents will tell you. 8 is ridiculous.
Y'see, when you buy domain
Y'see, when you buy domain names for things you get an email address out of it. I've been buying domains for the best part of 8 years so they add up. I have different addresses for different parts of what I do. It's just a fact of how life works. Most people I know have at least two possible addresses.
You seem to be using hyperbole to miss my point. I'm not saying 'no privacy'. I'm just saying it seems ludicrous to join the site to be 'unfindable' to that degree. Why bother being on there at all? What does it offer that a gmail account all your mates know doesn't?
There's a world of difference between reasonable privacy and lunacy.
TheoGB
http://theogb.com