Research from Google shows that even experienced users of social networks often don’t realise what they are sharing with whom.

In a presentation that has gained a great deal of attention over the past week among in the web industry, Google researcher Paul Adams talks about how we have problems translating our real world social networks of friends and colleagues on to the web.

The presentation goes on to make some sophisticated arguments about social networks, but opens with a true story that is relevant to us all. It concerns a lady called Debbie whom Paul interviewed as part of his research.

Paul shows how Debbie has several groups in her social networks. People she met when she lived in San Diego, ones she met in Los Angeles, her family and more recently kids she teaches swimming to at the local pool.

When Debbie lived in San Diego she used to enjoy going to a bar with some friends where they had wild parties. They sometimes post photos of nights out at the bar which she loves, as they remind her of her time there, and she comments on them.

During the Google research interview she realised for the first time that by commenting or liking the photos they would be seen by the kids in her swimming class. Needless to say, she was really upset.

There are two reasons that this happened to Debbie and has probably happened to all of us. First, social networks like Facebook treat all of our connections as “friends”, the same type of contact. As discussed in Me and My Web Shadow and in the recent post about privacy settings, you can set up different friend groups to control who sees what – but it is complex.

The other reason Paul discusses, is that when we post anything on the web, from status updates to photos and comments we usually do it with a particular set of people in mind, and in fact it will reach much broader group. This is why, Paul says, we get so frustrated with people posting things on Facebook that we think are deadly dull.

The obscure hobby of a colleague can be really dull to hear about for us, but they are posting it with their network of friends who are also into that hobby in mind. (I imagine some of my Facebook friends must yawn when they see me posting about yet another Sunday morning mountain bike ride, for instance.)

It is important to note that Google is trying to find a way to develop a rival service to Facebook, so criticising its service is very much in the interest of it and its employees, like Paul Adams. However, this story and the broad points made in this presentation chime with a key  message of Me and My Web Shadow: it is important to understand how privacy settings and filters work on social networks.

If you are interested in finding out more, have a look at his presentation (below). It is, by the way, an excellent example of how to create a highly useful document and share it on SlideShare – just look at how many views, comments and Tweets it has received:

The Real Life Social Network v2View more documents from Paul Adams.

Share and Enjoy:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Things you need to know about . . . Facebook – managing your Facebook privacy settings (book update)

Written on June 13, 2010 by Antony Mayfield in Updates to the book

0 Comments - Leave a comment!

The introduction to Me and My Web Shadow said that the book would probably be out of date before it was even published, and I wasn’t joking. It also said that Facebook was probably the most important place to start looking at what information about you is private and what is available for anyone to see.

In the past few weeks there has been a lot of conversation online about the rights and wrongs of Facebook’s privacy settings. The New York Times published this visual representation of the complex nature of them. It has made many people feel vulnerable and anxious about controlling the personal information that Facebook stores and shares. To try and tackle this, Facebook has rolled out some new tools for managing those settings – claiming that this is Making Control Simple.

This article talks you through these new top level privacy controls and should act as an update to the Facebook chapter in Me and My Web Shadow. Hope it’s useful.

Read the full update post at... meandmywebshadow.com

The icon will be used in online ads that go to users based on demographics.

Enlarge This Image

A mockup of an ad that includes the Power-I icon.

Trying to ward off regulators, the advertising industry has agreed on a standard icon — a little “i” — that it will add to most online ads that use demographics and behavioral data to tell consumers what is happening.

Jules Polonetsky, the co-chairman and director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an advocacy group that helped create the symbol, compared it to the triangle made up of three arrows that tells consumers that something is recyclable.

From this summer in the US, people will be able to tell more about how their behaviour information is being used by media and advertisers to target them by clicking on a little "i" in the corner of display ads.

My sense is that the "i" symbol will simultaneously assuage fears and broaden the debate(s) around online privacy. While many will be happier about the openness of advertisers, for the mainstream user unaware that their clickstream, social graph and search history may informing the ads they see it will represent a new and troubling aspect of web use. Expect in the short term for ad-blocking apps and privacy opt-outs to become more popular.

In the longer term though, it will all be for the best.

Ultimately a better informed, more digitally literate society will make choices about how privacy and relationship between citizens, corporations and government will work. Better that literacy raises sooner so that the dominant voices in debates that may shape legislation are not just those of the advertising and media industries. The implications for our web future are too important for that to be the case.

If Facebook started today, they would take where the web is today into account. The default would be public rather than private. And this is why they changed defaults from private to public since they want service to remain relevant. Mark added that it was not an easy move – from a technical or a user perspective – to change a service with 300 million users on such a core dimension.

Interesting take (above quote and linked post) on Facebook's shift to making public the default setting for Facebook users: that if it were setting up today then public by default would be how it did things.

On one level - of technical and service innovation and staying on the cutting edge - this view is absolutely correct. However, Facebook is not a new entrant to the social networking market, it comes with 300 million or more users to whom it has a duty of care to.

Whilst its most Twitter-literate, Foursquare-using, smartphone-toting users require public-first, or at least are used to open as their default setting on their web lives, the majority of its users are still uneasy or easily confused about privacy issues - from the practicalities of settings on the service, to the implications of their personal content and data being available on the open web.

The better, more responsible move for Facebook would be to be private as the default setting, easier settings for users and more effort put into educating users about the options available to them.