Facebook Privacy

Link: The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now

There’s been a lot of back and forward on how horrible Facebook has handled there updates to default user privacy settings most of which is pretty ridiculous.

Facebook recently presented every user with a popup that asked them to review their privacy settings. It introduced simpler privacy options and forced every single user to look at them for the first time. If the user had never previously configured a privacy setting and clicked accept on the popup without making any changes then a new more public default settings group was applied.

Most of the uproar centered around this “taking advantage of users habits of not reading popups and just hitting ok”. Yes they should be aware of this precedent. Yes they are taking advantage of it. Are they causing harm by doing so? Openness is going to be absolutely essential in the future internet and openness will create a better Facebook for Facebook users. The goal of Facebook should be to provide the best Facebook they can provide and if that means being more open they’ve had to find a way to try and do that. That Facebook made a decision that would impact every single one of there users with an intrusive alert box that explains the changes and provides the privacy options available right there should be applauded not slammed. 

One day we’re going to stop creating walls around our data and trying to limit it’s availability, services like Facebook are realising this and being pro-active about it. The internet brings with it unprecedented access to knowledge and information and we shouldn’t be focusing on services that wall this wonderful data source off. We should be striving to share and work with this amazing data set to push society forward. 

Twitter in “Real Time”

Article: When Will Twitter Really Go Real Time? And What Will Change When it Does?

In this case we’re talking about going from the current “check for new tweets 150 times an hour” to always having the latest tweets instantly.

Once Twitter turns into more of a chatroom, both Twitter’s website and third-party clients will also have to improve the way they display these conversations.

This doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like having live information would enhance the way twitter works now rather than change the focus of the entire platform. Twitter is nothing like a chat room and accurate access to the information there probably isn’t going to change that. I’m sure twitter will change over time, everything does, but stories like this one are complete bull.

Interesting Read on “Cross Reality” and Privacy

Article: Cross Reality Will Change Your Life, But at What Cost to Your Privacy?

Raises some continuously interesting topics around broadcast of personal information such as location, and context aware computing. My take is that as long as it’s me broadcasting stuff about me and not someone else broadcasting stuff about me then it will all turn out fine. Truthiness wins out in the end right?