My issues with Facebook privacy

"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"

Yep! I deactivated my Facebook account today.

This isn't the first time I've walked away from Facebook. Two things were different back then: back then I wasn't using Facebook correctly, and also I actively deleted the profile. This time, the profile is merely deactivated, which means logging in will restore the account. But more important, it's not me misusing Facebook: Facebook is misusing me.

Look, I actually like using Facebook. And I like being in touch with my friends who use it, too.

So why did you deactivate the account?
This afternoon my friend Sean said the following:

So, I headed over to CNN.com this morning, and I saw a little ticker in the top right corner of the page scrolling my Facebook connections' updates. This is after I opted out of Facebook's idiotic Instant Personalization bullshit.

When we're talking about handing over personal data like this, I don't know what else to call it other than evil. I've been opted out of that "feature" from the moment they launched it, but Facebook is still sharing my data with other sites.

For the time being, I've logged out of facebook in my primary browser, and I'm not ever staying signed in there again. If this sort of thing continues (Facebook taking me visiting some random site on the Internet as implicitly granting them permission to hand over my personal data), I may go all out and nuke my FB account from orbit.

I checked and sure enough, it did the same with mine, even though I spent fifteen minutes trying to minimize my settings. The only way, it seems, to deactivate this, was by changing a setting on cnn.com. So, does this mean that in order to control Facebook information I must change settings not just on facebook.com but also on any site that gets access to Facebook's data? That's just too much for me.

You might find this to be hypocritical since most of my Buzz content is public. The difference between Buzz/Blog and Facebook is in how I use them. Facebook is, for me, a place to connect with less technical-savvy personal friends. As I said upon my return:

Last month learned that many of my friends (the real ones, the ones I wanted to spend weekend time with) had joined The Facebook in the intervening time. All of a sudden there was this real value to returning to The Facebook, and so I have.

I discuss much more personal stuff with those friends than I would discuss on Buzz or a public blog. All of this is a long way of saying that you don't actually know what I share on Facebook, but more personal than this. If they're giving my personal life away to CNN, I can't use it.

What would make you return?
I have faith Facebook will address this, but I hope part of addressing this takes the form of consolidating their privacy controls. There are plenty of settings everywhere, but I do not have time to track them down.

And this is the crux of the problem: No matter how much time I spend tweaking Facebook's privacy settings, I can't help thinking I missed a setting someplace else.

While they're at it, they could address some other privacy issues:

• Limit who can add me as a friend: Right now, friends-of-friends can ask to be my friend. I don't want that: I want to stop people from asking. Allowing people to ask to friend me is social pressure. I want to use Facebook without the social pressure of expanding my graph.
• Put an end to the slogginess of setting privacy levels: By way of an example, there are some visibility settings that are listed as a choice between Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, and  Customize. Only when selecting "Customize", are you offered a second layer of settings, including "Only me." Why can't "Only me" be on top? Yet another way that Facebook cares about the social whole over the individual.

Why not just delete the account?
Because I like my friends, and Facebook is currently the easiest way to keep in touch with them. When Facebook puts me back in control of my data I'll happily return.

Aren't you some Google corporate shill?

I'm giving up an easy communications mechanism with my best friends, including the one who announced his baby's birth on Facebook, and nowhere else. And I'm walking away. My employer can't get me to do that. But careless treatment of my personal thoughts and opinions can.

What about staying on Facebook and educating your friends?

It's true. It's more effective to stay on Facebook and educate people than it is to run away. But this isn't about educating people, and it isn't about this bigger notion of The Wild Internet World And Peoples' Privacy. This is about The Wild Internet World And MY OWN PRIVACY.

Horse crap. You say plenty of public stuff on the web.
Don't define my comfort levels, asshole.

Update: Yes, it has been made clear to me that since CNN has the event stream via an iframe, they don't actually have access to my data. I considered redacting that portion of this post, but the important thing was still the confusion I have around the Facebook security settings. The crux of the problem, as commented, still stands: "No matter how much time I spend tweaking Facebook's privacy settings, I can't help thinking I missed a setting someplace else."

Live: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Before The Hitchiker’s Guide To the Galaxy was in any other form, it was presented as a radio series. The What Exit? Theatre is performing three stories from the radio series! I was invited to the opening night performance.

Of all the forms H2G2 has taken on, the radio series has always been my favorite. There’s no image of Zaphod or Marvin can match those in my head, which comes from mood and feeling rather than lines and color.

All other re-creations of H2G2 haven’t been very good. I'm used to being disappointed as an H2G2 fan, and in fact, after this long, I would call myself a tired fan, in the same way that I’m just tired of Monty Python. Over the years friends who said “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries” went from funny to clever to not funny to mildly annoying. “A ha ha ha ha,” I would say to such friends. “You put such a funny spin on it.”

So you can see, my expectations weren’t too high. I mean, would they use American voices for critical parts?

The lights went out and Journey of the Sorcerer played over the speaker. The actors walked on stage.

And the story began.

And it was pretty good!  The audio, the acting, even the accents! That’s the difference between a voice actor and, well, your buddy. One of the odd accent choices was the use of a US Southerner for Zaphod, which I think was based on a mix of Sam Rockwell’s portrayal in the movie and George Bush.

But here’s my one complaint of the show: One of the actors played his parts over the top. He read his lines as if to say “Hey everybody, this is a joke!” Yeesh,

OK, let it go.

Listening to the dialogue was like attending a Beatles concert: I knew the lyrics by heart. Well, mostly by heart. Like anything else committed to memory, I could mentally check out and check back in without missing any dialogue.

They performed three stories, but rather than performing the first three, they told the first, fourth and sixth. This meant they wouldn’t end on a cliffhanger, giving a conclusion to the evening’s show. But it also meant that Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin were not properly introduced.

Because they skipped episodes two and three, the emcee filled in the important parts of the plot. I wonder if the audience was able to keep up with the emcee’s pace, but of course I was able to keep up, and didn’t even need him to fill in the back story. Smug! But episode 2 is where we meet Zaphod, Trillian, Marvin and Eddie, so their introduction in episode 4 was jarring.

The emcee also used the in-between time to show clips from the movie and TV show to give a sense of two characters that do not get their due: Marvin, the Paranoid Android and the sperm whale. I used to repeat the whale’s dialog to my friend to our joint amusement.

Oh, hey, über-fan nit: they changed part of the sixth story! I doubt anyone else noticed. But I noticed! There was only one way to address this: confront the emcee.

The emcee was pleased I was a big fan of the show. I think he was hoping people like me would come. But I had to confront him about this plot change! Remember, fans, if you confront people about stuff like this, be polite. It’s the difference between being a fan and an a-hole. In his judgment it was better to use the storyline he chose because would be better as a live presentation. I disagree, but it’s his show.

By the way I’m certain they also omitted the fourth episode scene where The Book explains the consequences of Arthur saying “I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.”

Heathans!

Rob, let it go.

Everyone I spoke with enjoyed the show, even a friend who knew nothing about H2G2.

Seriously, this show was wonderful, and rekindled my interest in the radio series. I’m listening to episode 7 right now, and I look forward to seeing it again next week. What would it take to get them to perform the other nine episodes?

Seven on Seven

I had an opportunity to attend Seven on Seven, an event at the New Museum. The idea: pair up seven groups of one artist and one technologist. They were given twelve hours or so to create a project, and today they presented their findings. Each group was given 20 minutes to present with 10 minutes for questions.

The projects were as varied as they were fascinating. They were all in various levels of completion and success: some only managed to compete a full day of research, and some managed to complete a full project. Every project left me with things to think about, and some 

Here are short (and completely unfair) descriptions of the projects, just to give you a taste of the variety:

• An umbrella with identity; it communicates and broadcasts its locations, images and audio at all times. Take it, leave it, it passes on to someone else.
• The best part about this project was talking with the team afterwards. I spoke with them about a project I plan to take on this summer, and they gave me great ideas.
• A new feature on Wordpress: Fun Mode.
• Man, one of these days I should move to Wordpress, though not necessarily just because of Fun Mode.
• A mechanical device that only changes when nobody sees it: this might have been my favorite because they actually dared to build something physical.
• A proposal for allowing users to swap identities on Twitter. This was simultaneously wonderful and utterly preposterous.
• The first half of the presentation I kept thinking about the film Bubba Ho-Tep: if only Elvis did this instead! The second half of the presentation I thought about my "The Real Mark Jackman" project, which was all about assuming my friend's identity on the web.
• A video immersion project based on two key constraints: ten second clips identified by three labels only.
• The two collaborators commented on how much they enjoyed working together and that they planned to keep building on this project.
• A marketplace for guilt and absolution.
• Nothing particularly concrete came from this, save a fascinating collection of data using Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
• Best comment of the day referring to how easy it was to get information out of the Mechanical Turk: "People bared their souls for two cents."
• An analysis of mental health that was, to be honest, a little difficult to follow. But they shared some of their research which was well-presented.

Congratulations once again to the presenters.

"We want you to be healthy, so we'll encourage taking your money."

I was frustrated by a comment made by Seth Godin on his blog where he suggests that Pepsi employees should be in favor of the proposed NYS soda tax (1 cent per fluid ounce):

The benefit of a tax is that it affects you and your competitors at the same time, so you all benefit from doing the right thing, as opposed to having to compete against someone who doesn't care as much as you do.

This argument seems short sighted, or possibly idealistic. First of all, look at soda. It contains sugar (just kidding, corn syrup) and caffeine, and kids are addicted to it. Go tell those kids that their soda will cost twelve cents more .. no wait .. let me update since soda is no longer sold in 12-ounce bottles at schools, so, twenty cents .. tell those kids they have to pay another twenty cents per bottle, and see if they fall on the side of the government or the soda companies. So, campaigning against the tax can be seen as representing the best interests of their customers.

Now let's look at what might be in the best interest of the company itself: how about a tax that is applied equally to all your competitors, and your company is exempt? Well, that's probably not going to happen, but either the tax law will pass or not. In theory if it doesn't pass, things can remain status quo and still sometime in the future Pepsi may reveal an alternative plan, posing themselves as a leading crusader against obesity. If it looks as though the law will pass, Pepsi can certainly use political influence to carve out exemptions for itself so while it hurts everyone, it hurts Pepsi just a little less. (Side thought: I can't see using the tax as a way to eliminate smaller competition, you're still left after the fact with the tax. Or at least, there may be better ways to eliminate smaller competition.)

Finally, I don't see this as a deterrent for purchasing soda, but a way to raise funds for the government. (I don't have data, but do cigarette tax increases actually reduce cigarette sales?) That's just a hard thing to convince your customers to get behind. "We want you to be healthy, so we want to hurt your pocket when you buy our product."

Yes, everyone should drink less soda and drink more local water, and corn syrup has long outlived its welcome. Maybe Pepsi can come out with a "drink responsibly" education campaign, or just plain replace corn syrup with sugar, but as long as it's the profit-making venture that it is, actually endorsing the tax would be stupid.

Guava as an OSGi bundle

I have published an update site that hosts Guava (which hosts some of Google's core Java libraries), as an OSGi bundle for you to use in your Eclipse projects.

Before you use the update site, keep in mind: There are some kinks that need to be worked out. For example, it seems I didn't get source attachment right, and I'm keeping the version numbers low until the process runs more smoothly. But more important, URLs are going to change, so it is not a reliable site yet. Only use it to test and provide feedback on the set-up.

Feedback is welcome, but patches and (OSGi/Subversion) guidance will get priority over requests.

The update site URL is at http://guava-osgi.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/com.google.guava.site/. It's got the r03 release, which contains the first binary distribution of Guava.

Thought Experiment: First Response

Give the answer that first comes to mind:

Someone says to you: "I want your opinion. I hate the way [some computer language] handles [some problem] and I wrote a really ugly hack to get around it."

What's your first reaction?

a) You want to help the person solve his problem
b) You want to know the hack