Oh its false and not real, did that even occur to you or is your hate of facebook so intense that this possibility that users could be mistaken is just not possible. You know the very same people who gladly give up a ton of personal information on line to any one in the first place and stupidly trust corporations with personal information. I mean really is it impossible that these very same users could be mistaken with regards to old wall to wall posts?
If it is indeed verified I would be the first one to jump on the bandwaggon and delete the account and tell others to do so. But so far I have not seen anything to verify it and more reports on Facebook claims that it is indeed old user to user wall posts (something I remember and used in the past personally) just showing up from people now liking them which at the time they didn't have a like button.
Regardless of what the actual situation is, if these posts are being brought to people's attention by friends because they seem sensitive and are now more prominent than they once were, isn't that a concern in and of itself?
Good point. Mass hysteria being used as a carrier for sudden bursts of clarity would be an interesting phenomenon in itself. Thousands of people suddenly realizing "Oh god, what have I been doing?"
Edit: The more I read about this, the more it seems to me that this is what is going on. I think this has interesting implications for the "Privacy is dead" attitude. It suggests to me that, contrary to popular belief in some circles, people are not ok with their diminished privacy.. they just haven't been thinking about it.
I wouldn't put this on the users' lack of clarity as much as I would blame Facebook for changing the course of it's features so much so that this is now happening to people. People were using the site as it was once intended and we can't blame them for being infuriated when the logic behind that usage changes. To me it's no different than Quora deciding to make all of your posts public without the chance to opt-in, except because of Facebook's privacy settings mess, it isn't easily reversible without severely crippling the content you've posted over the entirety of your account's lifespan.
Fair point. In either event I think it is fair to say that this demonstrates that privacy is valuable to consumers, despite what certain people might have us believe.
That strikes me as a very 'Facebook-eque' attitude towards the privacy of others. I am sure that if he were comfortable posting a screenshot of it, he would have done so without needing prompting.
Surely, somewhere, somewhen, somebody sent a private message the contents of which are not particularly private. I know most of my private messages consist of "what are you doing Friday?"
"TechCrunch has investigated more, and we have found no evidence that the allegedly exposed posts were actually private messages. Their email receipts show they were in fact wall posts, and the posts do not appear in users’ Facebook Messages inbox.
Facebook also says in no uncertain terms that there is absolutely no privacy bug. What people are seeing are old Wall postings, not private messages. A spokesperson tells TechCrunch:
“Every report we’ve seen, we’ve gone back and checked. We haven’t seen one report that’s been confirmed [of a private message being exposed]. A lot of the confusion is because before 2009 there were no likes and no comments on wall posts. People went back and forth with wall posts instead of having a conversation [in the comments of single wall post.]
A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy.”"
This is why real reporters actually check into news stories first before publishing. I have yet to find a single shred of evidence anywhere that shows this has been verified and repeated. And I've been looking pretty hard for the last 30 minutes.
yup due to a friend that puts way to much value in posters opinions here vs using logic and his own mind. People are jumping the bandwaggon of facebook hate on something that isn't verified based on reports that make a lot more sense that its old wall to wall posts and not personal messages. The lack of any real evidence including from those posting here that can confirm yet cant show screen shots of this is just more cause of concern this is just bandwaggon hopping. I have no love for facebook. None at all. But I am not going to go nuts over something that isn't proven in the slightest.
> And I've been looking pretty hard for the last 30 minutes.
You need not look so far, it's right here in this thread. People are confirming some of their private messages set to 'friends' only to be world visible on their timeline.
They aren't confirming anything. People are looking at wallposts and thinking/remembering they are private messages, but everyone that has tried to verify using email notifications has found only wallposts. Until someone shows that a verifiable private message showed up publicly, than there's no reason to continue spreading this. If it's a problem, it can easily be confirmed. Even Techcrunch, who criticised Facebook's response have now backpedaled.
"Same here, my wife just called me crying because a large number of very private conversations she had with friends in the past are now visible on her timeline."
Sounds pretty clear to me, I figure that the lady knows which conversation were private and which weren't, if only by their content.
Look at his edit, she isn't entirely sure they were private.
Amazing how many people have "confirmed" it but nobody has posted anything verifiable. Just a screenshot of the private message inbox/email + the post on the timeline. Redact as much as you want.
I've gone through the messages on my timeline, and truth be told I don't remember the context of a lot of the messages, so it wouldn't surprise me if people don't remember if something was private.
This feels like the "everyone go find weird stuff in your Wendy's food now" situation all over again. Except explained more by incompetence than malice.
And yet not one person has posted any evidence. Not one screen shoot. Which has been asked by a few people already. Show me the screen shots. Show me the screen shots.
No, people are making the same mistake the TC reporters made.
Look through the "private messages" of your friends. The dead giveaway is that a huge number of them are happy birthday posts. People post those on walls.
Can at least one person making these claims actually show any real proof about this? Just one person. I mean if its such a major flaw and verifiable I would expect at least one screen shoot showing this to be the case.
