Aspherical Boundaries

In the last few days, there was a big hoo-haover Facebook’s privacy. Long story short, one of its new revenue generating components is called Beacon. It places ads on Facebook, and if you follow the link to the store site and purchase something, Facebook gets a referral fee. Nothing new there. However, there is an additional feedback in that the store reports back to Facebook what you bought. This is then displayed as part of your newsfeed. As a result, when your friends log in, they can see what you bought.

Now, this caused problems in two major ways: First one is easy: people buying stuff they are a bit embarrassed about (*coughporncough*). Secondly, surprise Christmas presents are disclosed.

It turns out that this feature is supposed to function as something Facebook would like to call “trusted referral”, which makes sense in the context that if you are in the market for something, you can see what your friends bought and use that as a guide for your decision. As most things on Facebook, it could be turned off. However, it was left on by default, which is what actually upset people. Now it’s been left off be default.

Ok. This is now. I don’t think it’s significant. However, why did I write that things have changed?

I followed this link off the news article, to a similar article just over a year ago. This older article shares a mould with the newer one. Privacy concern. Newsfeed. On by default. Introduced an “off” option. People happy.

The amazing thing is the reason for the protest (quote from the page):

The backlash came over Facebook’s decision Tuesday to deliver automated, customized alerts about a user’s closest friends, classmates and colleagues. Users who log on might instantly find out that someone they know has joined a new social group, posted more photos or begun dating their best friend.

I joined Facebook shortly after that episode. The fact that all these information, by default, are delivered to all my “Facebook friends” is something I’ve taken for granted. I am used to the lack of privacy on Facebook, and acts accordingly. What caused an outrage just a year ago is the norm now.

It’s incredible how Facebook has opened up many people’s lives to the public view, and how people have grown used to it. More than not, it’s open knowledge who knows who and how they relate to each other. If you want to know where someone is going to be on a given evening, checking the Events calendar will give you a pretty good idea.

The biggest one is the “relationship” field. Any changes to it is sure to attract attention. Changing it to “It’s complicated” is to cause a scandal. New relationships and breakups are closely followed by Facebook updates.  One of my friends made public his engagement on Facebook before making phone calls or writing emails.

Personally, I find this a bit sad, as it devalues a lot of inter-personal communication. For lots of trivial things, (like which parties you are attending), it’s fine. But as petty as it sounds, I do value it when friends go to the effort to let me know what’s going on in their lives before making it public. Facebook is just so… impersonal.

To close off, I’m not blaming Facebook itself. I like Facebook. It’s useful. I do think, however, that people might benefit from taking some time to consider how to integrate means of communication, old and new, instead of doing everything via newsfeeds.

For the past few days, I’ve been doing vac work at the Bank that pays for my rent.

Stereotypically, one of the first things I did was check what parts of the Internet is available for free access, and how to get around any blocks. Here’s a summary.

• Gmail is blocked via a simple URL filtering. www.gmail.com is out, but mail.google.com works. The embedded Google Talk client works too. Nice.
• Google Reader works.
• Facebook is blocked. A proxy site such as www.kproxy.com lets you see most of the things. However, it is rather unreliable. Also, GUI components such as drop down menus and pop up dialogues are lost. There might be easier ways around it, but I haven’t found anything good. In laziness, I’m settling on Opera Mini 4 on my phone, connecting over 3G. The ability of this little app to render full web-pages (not just mobile ones) on a phone is simply epic.

That’s all the stuff I’d really want on a day to day basis I guess.