User protests have forced social network site Facebook to radically re-design its controversial News Feed feature, which critics argue is a Godsend for stalkers. As originally launched earlier this week, News Feed appears automatically on every user's home page, updating members about recent Facebook activities by that person's friends. For example, Facebook would automatically notify users whenever a photo is posted by friends or they split up with their boyfriend or girlfriend. The feature is designed to make it easier for friends to keep up to date with each other. But many users are unhappy that the feature was pushed upon them. At the heart of the controversy was the idea that casual acquaintances, maintained through the Facebook network, would find out about changes to user's circumstances indiscriminately.
Facebook has expanded beyond its college student base to rack up 9.5m members, mainly in the US, leaving it second behind only MySpace in the social network site market. More than 500,000 of these users signed an online petition calling on Facebook to scrap News Feed. Faceback has responded to this welter of criticism by giving users far more control over the information they share, something it now admits it ought to have done in the first place.
View: The full story
News source: The Reg
Facebook has expanded beyond its college student base to rack up 9.5m members, mainly in the US, leaving it second behind only MySpace in the social network site market. More than 500,000 of these users signed an online petition calling on Facebook to scrap News Feed. Faceback has responded to this welter of criticism by giving users far more control over the information they share, something it now admits it ought to have done in the first place.
View: The full story News source: The Reg
In todays age, the only way you can't have someone see you is to go into a closet and live until you die from lack of food and water.
I wonder if people realize the phone companies can get information just like Facebook -- and if you look at your bill, you may see it -- and not many complain over that. It's just about the same way, only more informative, and you'll actually look at it. Or would. Facebook is lame again, because my News Feed shows new friend adds and that's about it.
Why should this independent website be swayed by a privacy group? Me think its because minors are using the site. Whenever minors get involved with anything, you'll have a government agency knocking at the door eventually trying to regulate crap.
I think the whole petition and complaining in and of itself is stupid. The news feed only made public the same information that was already submitted by the person to the site. That information was already made public. So they were only making it easier to look at information that was already voluntarily submitted and knowingly public.
In my honest opinion, if people care about their privacy then they should be taking the common sense action of withholding private information from public places.
The only thing that made me furious was the quick and large outpouring from the student community. The same community that is silent while things like our constitution is being trampled on by our government. While we have an army deployed in a "war" that has no clear definition of its enemy and no definition of an ending. There are far more important issues that desire student and citizen action than complaining that a private company is making it easier to access then information you have already allowed them, knowingly, to make public.
Sometimes people really disgust me.
I think the whole petition and complaining in and of itself is stupid. The news feed only made public the same information that was already submitted by the person to the site. That information was already made public. So they were only making it easier to look at information that was already voluntarily submitted and knowingly public.
In my honest opinion, if people care about their privacy then they should be taking the common sense action of withholding private information from public places.
The only thing that made me furious was the quick and large outpouring from the student community. The same community that is silent while things like our constitution is being trampled on by our government. While we have an army deployed in a "war" that has no clear definition of its enemy and no definition of an ending. There are far more important issues that desire student and citizen action than complaining that a private company is making it easier to access then information you have already allowed them, knowingly, to make public.
Sometimes people really disgust me.
Get over youself. This was apparently wanted by a good amount of people. And no minors are not a part of this site. The feature was not removed, actually the feature of choice was ADDED. You can choose to enable/disable/customize it even. So quit your bitching, it doesn't really affect you pretty much. If you want to enable it go ahead, but not everybody is like you and all they wanted was a choice. That is a good thing.
Also grow up. You don't know everything or see everything. Yea a good amount of student's do protest this war and raise attention to other political issues. Myself included! And youself as well buddy apparently.
Last edited by Cierro on 10 Sep 2006 - 11:30
OT:
To further your education without insulting your intelligence....
The war against terrorism has NO definition. Terrorists come out of the walls from every angle, for many of their own reasons. The war against terrorism will never end as along as any country has enemies simply because they don't believe in another country's right to exist as they see fit. Good or bad.
OT:
To further your education without insulting your intelligence....
The war against terrorism has NO definition. Terrorists come out of the walls from every angle, for many of their own reasons. The war against terrorism will never end as along as any country has enemies simply because they don't believe in another country's right to exist as they see fit. Good or bad.
What about the terror in a little kid before daddy goes to beat him? What about the terror a person goes thru when raped? I could go on and on here.
Point is, terror is everywhere and in everyone. Because all human beings hurt each other. We all simply don't get along and we all have enemies and we all try to scare/terrorize our enemeies or the enemies of our loved ones.
Fundamentally this war could only end if we nuked this earth. Well at least for humans that is but there still will be animals somewhere so terror still would exist.
Get over youself. This was apparently wanted by a good amount of people. And no minors are not a part of this site. The feature was not removed, actually the feature of choice was ADDED. You can choose to enable/disable/customize it even. So quit your bitching, it doesn't really affect you pretty much. If you want to enable it go ahead, but not everybody is like you and all they wanted was a choice. That is a good thing.
Also grow up. You don't know everything or see everything. Yea a good amount of student's do protest this war and raise attention to other political issues. Myself included! And youself as well buddy apparently.
The point i was making as simply the fact that there was a large outcry about information being made public on a website that is already publicly accessible. It would be the equivalent of posting your phone number on a bulletin board in your local grocery store, then getting mad at them for putting that same bulletin board's content online. It doesn't make much sense at all and really is a stupid complaint. The fact that the student body in our universities are quick to jump up and down about a feature of that type, but not about more important issues is no less than sad and disturbing.
Also, I never claimed minors could access facebook... Nor did i say there needs to be protection for minors, but I'll assume that part of your comment was for someone else?
People were never without a choice. They always had the simple choice of not putting the information on Facebook in the first place. That choice is the smartest one if you "don't want everyone knowing". I can't really see the privacy problem here.
OT:
To further your education without insulting your intelligence....
The war against terrorism has NO definition. Terrorists come out of the walls from every angle, for many of their own reasons. The war against terrorism will never end as along as any country has enemies simply because they don't believe in another country's right to exist as they see fit. Good or bad.
You quoted me, but I'm really not sure you were meaning to?
If you want to "further your education" i said the war has no clear definition, because our government does have a definition for terrorism, as loose as it may be. But the definition or not is pretty much irrelevant. The point i was making was there is not enough people, university students or not (although i wasn't focusing on the non-university crowd in this context due to the topic of this discussion), complaining about this "war". Terrorism in itself will always exist, of course, so what i gather you are saying is simply, "Terrorism will always exist so we should always be at war!", or am i missing something?
This topic isn't one about the "War on terrorism" so i don't want to stray too far off topic...
Secondly it wasn't "some privacy group" it was their own members who created a Group which grew to 700,000 in
a something like a day after the new changes were made. Facebook listened to its members and made changes, people don't want to stop using the site because it serves its purpose 100x better than all the other social networking sites and its highly addictive.
And I personally like the new feature
If you have different levels of friends, use private messages, or God forbid, talk to them in real life about stuff you want them knowing.
Ya think?
All the experience out there from the past 15 years development of online apps, communities and even home use software titles, with controversy over that very subject having been debated in the past so much...this conclusion was found by just about everyone else except Faceback? What, are they programming their stuff from a cave on a deserted island?
User friendly features are a must in every aspect of software, whether it's a spreadsheet program or online community.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.