Not Sharing Is Caring(slate.com)
slate.com
Not Sharing Is Caring
http://www.slate.com/id/2304425/
15 comments
That would be terrible but I blieve it's one of those "what if everyone did x?" situations. The people who refuse to be tracked voluntarily will always be a large enough group for that kind of profiling to be ineffective.
The friend spam fad will recede eventually and become one of those iconic crazy things from the past that everyone shakes their head about. Kind of like the shoe fitting x-ray device: http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/shoexray.htm
The friend spam fad will recede eventually and become one of those iconic crazy things from the past that everyone shakes their head about. Kind of like the shoe fitting x-ray device: http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/shoexray.htm
The author is completely missing the point. Implicit sharing allows for everything to go into the graph in a structured way. This is the most important aspect of implicit sharing and the new Open Graph.
This doesn't mean that you're going to get inundated with meaningless shares. That would be a horrible user experience. In fact, Facebook put a lot of time and effort into making sure that is exactly what didn't happen. It's the very reason why timeline was built. It's why ticker was built. They did this because they want a place for the increased sharing to go, without degrading user experience.
But here's the really exciting part. Once all this data is in the graph, timeline and ticker will pale in comparison to what developers can do with all of this new, structured data. That is the really important thing here.
Implicit sharing is not so that you can get a notification every time someone listens to a song. It's so that a talented young developer can come along and create a beautiful application that visualizes all of your song listens, how it makes you similar or different from your friends.
Don't worry Farhad. Explicit sharing and taste isn't going away. I will still pay more attention to the link you posted of that song you love than the song that blips by in my ticker. I wouldn't criticize the new graph until its matured and we've seen the next generation of amazing apps that are going to be enabled.
This doesn't mean that you're going to get inundated with meaningless shares. That would be a horrible user experience. In fact, Facebook put a lot of time and effort into making sure that is exactly what didn't happen. It's the very reason why timeline was built. It's why ticker was built. They did this because they want a place for the increased sharing to go, without degrading user experience.
But here's the really exciting part. Once all this data is in the graph, timeline and ticker will pale in comparison to what developers can do with all of this new, structured data. That is the really important thing here.
Implicit sharing is not so that you can get a notification every time someone listens to a song. It's so that a talented young developer can come along and create a beautiful application that visualizes all of your song listens, how it makes you similar or different from your friends.
Don't worry Farhad. Explicit sharing and taste isn't going away. I will still pay more attention to the link you posted of that song you love than the song that blips by in my ticker. I wouldn't criticize the new graph until its matured and we've seen the next generation of amazing apps that are going to be enabled.
No Hanibash, you're missing the main point... If FB and their partners want users to share, why not approach the users and ask for permission first? What's the harm? The user will either accept the term or decline it.
What we have here is blatant disregard for user security. Facebook is clearly saying that if you don't like it... you can dig around fb (or the partner site/s) and attempt to find the settings that control these new functions.
If facebook even had the slightest care in the universe about user experience they would at least ask the user to opt-in first to use the features. Since when does one company decide what I want to share, and who I want to share it with?...I do not want every one of my fb friends to see what movie I watched or what music I'm listening to. Nor, would I give permission.
What we have here is blatant disregard for user security. Facebook is clearly saying that if you don't like it... you can dig around fb (or the partner site/s) and attempt to find the settings that control these new functions.
If facebook even had the slightest care in the universe about user experience they would at least ask the user to opt-in first to use the features. Since when does one company decide what I want to share, and who I want to share it with?...I do not want every one of my fb friends to see what movie I watched or what music I'm listening to. Nor, would I give permission.
You're quite right. This is why apps have a new permission dialog to show you exactly what gets shared, which you have to click accept prior to using it. As long as the app isn't facebook only, you can always use it without the facebook integration. and if it is, there will probably A facebook-free competitor you can use.
Well, the fiddly part so far seems to be that's set to a single level (announce/don't announce) and every different app needs its own mute button.
Spotify, for example, will happily announce to the world whatever you happen to be listening to, and there's no simple way to hit "mute". So you're going to need to build a separate "mute" button into every app, on every platform, and have enough trust that it will work ...
Spotify, for example, will happily announce to the world whatever you happen to be listening to, and there's no simple way to hit "mute". So you're going to need to build a separate "mute" button into every app, on every platform, and have enough trust that it will work ...
You can easily shut down any kind of activity. I clicked on the settings for an Rdio song I auto-posted and the option of "Don't show this kind of activity from Rdio" (paraphrasing) showed up.
I hate to single you out, but the amount of blatantly unresearched, inaccurate statements in this discussion is really disappointing. This is a powerful, well-implemented (easy to opt-in/opt-out of any broadcasting on an app by app basis) feature.
I hate to single you out, but the amount of blatantly unresearched, inaccurate statements in this discussion is really disappointing. This is a powerful, well-implemented (easy to opt-in/opt-out of any broadcasting on an app by app basis) feature.
So what you are saying is maintenance! maintenance! and more maintenance.
This is no longer a great user experience and it's not longer a social network... No, this is without a doubt a media venture that will do anything to make their advertisers happy... at the expense of the users.
I wonder if you see your own contradiction? You had to go out of your way to make a point that users need to now attend the settings for every single product they use and maintain additional information. It seems that with every year things get more and more out of hand
Today, as an FB user I'm not happy. For one, I had to download a plug in for the new ticker (a news feed with in a news feed?) just to get rid of the annoyance. Tomorrow we will have to deal with a dozen more ticks.
This is no longer a great user experience and it's not longer a social network... No, this is without a doubt a media venture that will do anything to make their advertisers happy... at the expense of the users.
I wonder if you see your own contradiction? You had to go out of your way to make a point that users need to now attend the settings for every single product they use and maintain additional information. It seems that with every year things get more and more out of hand
Today, as an FB user I'm not happy. For one, I had to download a plug in for the new ticker (a news feed with in a news feed?) just to get rid of the annoyance. Tomorrow we will have to deal with a dozen more ticks.
No contradiction: I had to turn on Rdio'd FB app to broadcast my songs to begin with. Everything is opt in, not opt out. If you're not interested in that, you don't maintain anything.
Not sure why this was voted down.
You make a good point about the possibility of mining all this data, but I'm not sure I want to give it away. We (well, some of us), go to lengths to maintain separate online personas. Why do I care if Facebook knows what my most-played songs are? I can get that info from iTunes, etc.
They're going to need a strong pull (killer app, privacy controls, whatever) to get my data.
You make a good point about the possibility of mining all this data, but I'm not sure I want to give it away. We (well, some of us), go to lengths to maintain separate online personas. Why do I care if Facebook knows what my most-played songs are? I can get that info from iTunes, etc.
They're going to need a strong pull (killer app, privacy controls, whatever) to get my data.
So instead of sharing data with your friends, family and a corporation you just want to share it with a corporation? Someone already has your online data the only difference is who that someone is. That someone can still choose to sell your data on to anyone who will buy it in most countries.
I think it was voted down because it reads like marketing copy. (I didn't downvote it)
Don't confuse sharing with data collection. Data about a user's activities can be collected without sharing that data with the user's friends.
Yes, by having sites incentivized to include a Facebook Like iframe everywhere you visit, by example. If you're logged into Facebook, then you are already sharing your online habits with them.
The first time I noticed that I logged out of facebook, I haven't been back since. Way too creepy.
That's cool if you need an app to help you figure out how you are like or different from your friends, I guess. For me, it's just confirmation that Facebook offers nothing I want, and I'm glad I never created an account there.
I don't think I want 'everything to go into the graph in a structured way'. Name, rank and serialnumber should be enough. Anything more and you should ask for permission first.
I agree with a lot of what this article is saying. Sharing everything by default is pointless and misses the point of sharing.
I want to share something with my friends because I think it might inspire them or make them happy. Or, in the case of news, let them know about important stuff that's happening in the world. They do the same thing when they share with me.
So to blindly share everything just creates a lot of noise. If everything is shared by default, you'll need to start sifting out the signal from the noise. Which is annoying because I trust my friends to only share stuff that's relevant.
We all love lolcats but know how to find them on our own.
I want to share something with my friends because I think it might inspire them or make them happy. Or, in the case of news, let them know about important stuff that's happening in the world. They do the same thing when they share with me.
So to blindly share everything just creates a lot of noise. If everything is shared by default, you'll need to start sifting out the signal from the noise. Which is annoying because I trust my friends to only share stuff that's relevant.
We all love lolcats but know how to find them on our own.
I disagree. I feel we shouldn't have to have an extra step to share what we search for. The act of searching can be sharing and also in itself what people search. I do agree facebook is the wrong medium to achieve this though, google maybe; it needs to be at the browser level and open sourced as much as possible.
I don't know. I mean imagine google sharing a post in google+ whenever you run a search query on their search engine? Perhaps, you would like to qualify the type of search? There are various levels of specificity of searches and you refer to those deep,precise levels? In that case, i can see the point.
"We all love lolcats but know how to find them on our own"
Lol, I really like your comment! It sounds like it could be a great tagline for my web app, http://handpick.me
Just curious, how are you and your friends updating each other on what's big in the world today?
Lol, I really like your comment! It sounds like it could be a great tagline for my web app, http://handpick.me
Just curious, how are you and your friends updating each other on what's big in the world today?
I don't agree with everything the author says but I think I agree with the sentiment. I think frictionless sharing is a departure from how people express themselves in real life. During real world interactions we present our carefully tailored selves to the rest of the world. We don't tell everyone everything we are doing for a reason.
One positive with reducing friction is that it might be easier to find common ground with someone. But overall im not sure I like it- social grooming is a good thing
One positive with reducing friction is that it might be easier to find common ground with someone. But overall im not sure I like it- social grooming is a good thing
I've personally had this play out with a number of services. LastFM comes to mind.
I really enjoyed having a persistent record of what I listened to for my own use and for finding new music.
However, I stopped using the service because, honestly, I'm not exactly proud of every song that makes it to my most-played list. LastFM let's you remove a song from your profile if I remember correctly, but it was easier to not share at all than to remove specific types of sharing.
Facebook has this problem times 100. I try and tell everyone I know that isn't technical that Facebook knows every website they've been on that has a like button on it (and then I make a serious face and say evverry site) most people have no idea. The idea that Facebook has this kind of info and is going to start "autosharing" makes me uncomfortable.
I really enjoyed having a persistent record of what I listened to for my own use and for finding new music.
However, I stopped using the service because, honestly, I'm not exactly proud of every song that makes it to my most-played list. LastFM let's you remove a song from your profile if I remember correctly, but it was easier to not share at all than to remove specific types of sharing.
Facebook has this problem times 100. I try and tell everyone I know that isn't technical that Facebook knows every website they've been on that has a like button on it (and then I make a serious face and say evverry site) most people have no idea. The idea that Facebook has this kind of info and is going to start "autosharing" makes me uncomfortable.
The "so-and-so read site X" thing will make this really transparent to people, really quickly. Its creepy how much "Friend X has read article Y on the Guardian" is happening.
Hold on, can you expand on that? I am reading that you are suggesting that facebook would just make public your (like-enabled) entire web history, whether you clicked like or not.
"I'm not exactly proud of every song that makes it to my most-played list."
It would be very interesting for me if you might write up a few lines on "why", if you can.
It would be very interesting for me if you might write up a few lines on "why", if you can.
For me, it goes to the fact that I'm not the same person to different people. The fact that I'm willing to share some things with certain people does not imply that I'm willing to share everything with those people.
Very few systems make it easy to manage multiple (and shifting) sharing relationships, so not sharing by default is the easiest thing to manage.
Very few systems make it easy to manage multiple (and shifting) sharing relationships, so not sharing by default is the easiest thing to manage.
Another closet ABBA fan?
[deleted]
"During real world interactions we present our carefully tailored selves to the rest of the world. We don't tell everyone everything we are doing for a reason."
Nicely put, just like how we behave differently in front of our parents as compared to our peers.
Nicely put, just like how we behave differently in front of our parents as compared to our peers.
Google wants to keep real names (just like Facebook) and they get scolded for it, because some people say they really care about their privacy, and they want to be able to use a different name than their real one.
Now Facebook wants to automatically share everything about you, essentially killing whatever privacy you had left on Facebook, and people applaud it.
Maybe not related (yet), but it does remind me of this quote:
"Freedom is lost to the sound of thunderous applause."
This is a great opportunity for Google put a spin on what Facebook is doing with all this, and say they are going the opposite direction, and instead of auto-sharing everything about you like Facebook does, Google+ allows you to choose exactly what you share and to who.
Facebook's features may seem cool today, but they have the potential to turn into the biggest PR disaster for Facebook, bigger than their "privacy settings" issue from last year.
Now Facebook wants to automatically share everything about you, essentially killing whatever privacy you had left on Facebook, and people applaud it.
Maybe not related (yet), but it does remind me of this quote:
"Freedom is lost to the sound of thunderous applause."
This is a great opportunity for Google put a spin on what Facebook is doing with all this, and say they are going the opposite direction, and instead of auto-sharing everything about you like Facebook does, Google+ allows you to choose exactly what you share and to who.
Facebook's features may seem cool today, but they have the potential to turn into the biggest PR disaster for Facebook, bigger than their "privacy settings" issue from last year.
Where did you see automatic sharing of everything. From what I read, you will always have control of what you share. They can't afford to repeat the past mistakes around sharing. It'd be fatal now.
Link to the quote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNAHjsAnTd4
Frictionless sharing without proper curation could kill Facebook. Friction naturally encourages the crowd-sourcing of curation - by having to click a share button or fill out a simple form I'm forced to think about what I'm sharing and the context to present it in. Knowing what songs my friends are listening to right at this moment isn't very useful information. Having a friend reminisce on their wall or tweet about about the one time they heard that song live, in-person and the epic good times that followed - THAT is truly "sharing", that is the "why" and not just the "what" that makes sharing addictive.
Can a bot or algorithm augment or emulate the magic of crowd-sourced sharing? Or will it throw Facebook into a Myspace-esque clusterfuck?
Can a bot or algorithm augment or emulate the magic of crowd-sourced sharing? Or will it throw Facebook into a Myspace-esque clusterfuck?
> Knowing what songs my friends are listening to right at this moment isn't very useful information.
It's even more useless when it's from six hours ago. I just checked FB this morning to see the news that a friend listened to a certain album last night. I'll make sure to block that so it never comes up again.
It's even more useless when it's from six hours ago. I just checked FB this morning to see the news that a friend listened to a certain album last night. I'll make sure to block that so it never comes up again.
It could be that this is just a separate world though. In my world, I wish to opt in and choose what I share. Perhaps in someone else's world, they wouldn't even consider not sharing something. Following what my family on Facebook do certainly convinces me that at least some people think that way.
For me, on the other hand, Facebook has put a ton of friction into sharing. Although I am a normally candid person, I find myself overconsidering whether or not I really, really should post what I'm about to. In the end, I go with self-censorship.
For me, on the other hand, Facebook has put a ton of friction into sharing. Although I am a normally candid person, I find myself overconsidering whether or not I really, really should post what I'm about to. In the end, I go with self-censorship.
I agree, I feel like these days people share much more than what is relevant or necessary. The easier they make it to "share" the more worthless crap were going to see. Do I really care that my buddy is listening to lady gaga? Nope. But I figure if he listens to something good he'll TELL me. That "friction" that Zuckerberg is talking about is the filter that stops worthless information from getting through.
I worry about the extreme fan-out that goes between content producers, datacenters packed with algorithms and content mills packed with hacks, dedicated to rewriting and excerpting that content, and then all these sharing mechanisms broadcasting this massaged crap out to the world. Is the Internet getting better from all this? What is the ratio of thought invested in producing quality content, versus thought invested in simply distributing any content?
Sorry for the rant :|
Sorry for the rant :|
This is true and thanks for the rant. :)
Marco.org just had a post (http://www.marco.org/2011/09/23/business-insider) about how biz insider slices and dices his stories for their benefit. (After reading and thinking about his post, I removed BI from my morning reading list).
Honestly, I don't see this getting any better - and I'm usually an optimist. I think FB will make more of these deals with partners and we'll get more and more of the reactionary media type broadcast. All bites of info, very little substance; ADD to the extreme.
I'm in the middle of the argument that FB is bad and FB is here to stay get over it and assimilate. I developed a few FB apps in 09-10 and at first I thought it was awesome. The last app I did asked for a bunch of permissions because we needed access to someone's feed so we could create/read posts that were specific to our app. That was all good, but then I would look at the logs in our server for the feed updated callback and not only would it never stop (was kinda amazing to watch this), but we had access to all these people's feeds - like everything.
I have to think this is typical now and I know most of my relatives (young and old) grant this type of access and don't really understand what it means. In my mind, they clearly do not grep what is possible. And why should they? They're not programmers, they're just regular people.
This coupled with the FB copyright rules pushed me off the platform. My girlfriend still uses it (too much imo), my family uses it, and I still have my profile on there, but I'm not adding any more content. I think at this point it's more important to me - even as a programmer - to live life and create my own things. That's the only counterpoint I can see to a world where it's garbage in, garbage out.
Marco.org just had a post (http://www.marco.org/2011/09/23/business-insider) about how biz insider slices and dices his stories for their benefit. (After reading and thinking about his post, I removed BI from my morning reading list).
Honestly, I don't see this getting any better - and I'm usually an optimist. I think FB will make more of these deals with partners and we'll get more and more of the reactionary media type broadcast. All bites of info, very little substance; ADD to the extreme.
I'm in the middle of the argument that FB is bad and FB is here to stay get over it and assimilate. I developed a few FB apps in 09-10 and at first I thought it was awesome. The last app I did asked for a bunch of permissions because we needed access to someone's feed so we could create/read posts that were specific to our app. That was all good, but then I would look at the logs in our server for the feed updated callback and not only would it never stop (was kinda amazing to watch this), but we had access to all these people's feeds - like everything.
I have to think this is typical now and I know most of my relatives (young and old) grant this type of access and don't really understand what it means. In my mind, they clearly do not grep what is possible. And why should they? They're not programmers, they're just regular people.
This coupled with the FB copyright rules pushed me off the platform. My girlfriend still uses it (too much imo), my family uses it, and I still have my profile on there, but I'm not adding any more content. I think at this point it's more important to me - even as a programmer - to live life and create my own things. That's the only counterpoint I can see to a world where it's garbage in, garbage out.
I'm with you. It doesn't seem like people are becoming smarter, not that that's the purpose of Facebook. We're just blurting out interests.
It's like Facebook is testing the limits of human values of sharing ourselves and the things we like. Will we bend to the algorithms or will they bend to us?
It's like Facebook is testing the limits of human values of sharing ourselves and the things we like. Will we bend to the algorithms or will they bend to us?
More than sharing it is closer to broadcasting all my activities to my friends. But I think Facebook is onto something here. What if this broadcast in future can be curated and only interesting things get displayed automatically. What if it looks at what our friends are doing and gets recommendations? Excessive sharing is just the first steps towards this.
Exactly. And this is the scariest part that the author and everyone else in this thread missed.
TL;DR: Facebook is tightening its filter bubble around you and getting more in between you and your friends.
Ignoring the new features that were added, there is one feature that has disappeared -- the full list of your friend updates in the News feed.
Previously you could click on "Most recent" and get a list of all updates. Now they are filtered and it is totally inconvenient to get around this: you must explicitly check "All updates" from every friends context menu (by default it is "Most updates").
It may seem like a feature until you realize that you may miss the news that your friends are OccupyingWallStreet or criticizing Facebook or doing other twoplusbad things.
Now I am not against filtering and ranking most news (as in media) automatically. I think it is a great achievement that we are able to do this. However I am strongly against anyone deciding for me what is important for me and my friends. There is a line that should be drawn somewhere and you should not ignore this.
TL;DR: Facebook is tightening its filter bubble around you and getting more in between you and your friends.
Ignoring the new features that were added, there is one feature that has disappeared -- the full list of your friend updates in the News feed.
Previously you could click on "Most recent" and get a list of all updates. Now they are filtered and it is totally inconvenient to get around this: you must explicitly check "All updates" from every friends context menu (by default it is "Most updates").
It may seem like a feature until you realize that you may miss the news that your friends are OccupyingWallStreet or criticizing Facebook or doing other twoplusbad things.
Now I am not against filtering and ranking most news (as in media) automatically. I think it is a great achievement that we are able to do this. However I am strongly against anyone deciding for me what is important for me and my friends. There is a line that should be drawn somewhere and you should not ignore this.
The full list of updates is still there on the left side where you have a live stream of updates flowing all the time. Of course it fills up real quick but its still there. Also on the left side they have list tabs using which you can go to the old familiar UI. I for one like the newer UI better.
While exposing everything will be noisy, I think facebook wants to collect all your activity so that it can learn and automatically share what you might manually share... It's the hard way of ultimately removing friction from manual sharing.
In other words taking the "you" out of sharing. "You" isn't you, it's facebook.
But it would be influenced by you.
I used to enjoy the way many FriendFeed entries were side-effects of actions friends were taking elsewhere, e.g., adding a movie to their queue on Netflix. And often these would spark interesting conversations.
This man is crazy. He told us about not sharing but you can find like buttons everywhere! Shame on you.
Zuck is simply trying to build a site that improves our ability to be social.
Yes, and to be social, you must. share. everything.
EVERYTHING!
EVERYTHING!
"[...] his suitcase is on its way to Mombasa, where it will probably be pithed and resurrected in the service of some African cyber-Fagin. That's okay by Manfred — it only contains a statistically normal mixture of second hand clothes and toiletries, and he only carries it to convince the airline passenger-profiling expert systems that he isn't some sort of deviant or terrorist"
At what point is it going to be statistically abnormal to not be sharing the minutiae of your life in this way, and what are the consequences to anyone who wants to retain some level of privacy? Will they be required to maintain some sort of statistically-average social network profile, occasionally updating it with something plausible?
[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...