OK, I don't get it

[hrj]

I know that it's fashionable to be outraged about whatever the most recent change is on whatever your current social media site is, but ... I'm having a hard time grasping what's supposed to be so evil about the current Live Journal enhancements. So we have two new thingies: the ability to be notified when someone else links to an entry of yours; and the ability to propagate your own writings on LJ to your accounts on other social media sites. Both of these thingies have been set up as opt-in, not opt-out (which latter seems to be one of the things that gets people's back up on FB).

Where is the down side to being able to know when you are being linked to elsewhere on LJ? This seems to be a useful tool for monitoring or protecting your public "face". Furthermore, like the "who's looking at my journal" function, it's set up to require symmetry. Just as you can't monitor your journal viewers without allowing other to monitor your presence, you can't monitor links without allowing your links to be monitored. That very symmetry discourages the worst sorts of abuses.

With regard to propagation elsewhere, this has, of course, always been an available option. It takes very few keyboard/mouse actions to cut and paste your postings or your comments from one account to another. The new FB feature simply cuts down on the number of clicks required to do so. But similar options have already been available from different angles. When I set up my FB account, one of the apps I found over there and considered (before deciding against it) was one that would automatically propagate my LJ postings into my FB account. I know a number of people on my LJ reading list have automatic Twitter dumps into their LJ account. This is not some new radical thing that LJ has invented to mess with people. Furthermore, since you have to explicitly tell LJ what your FB account & password is (and presumably similarly for Twitter etc.)it's not as if this is a feature that could be enforced against your will in any event.

I understand that there are people who like to keep a clear firewall between their identities on LJ and FB (and real life and who knows where else). These people clearly should simply NOT SET UP THE FEATURE. And, yeah, maybe it's possible that someone else's propagation of content between their own accounts on different sites will provide enough contextual clues that a highly motivated person can figure out other people's linked identities on those same sites.

Welcome to the angst-ridden world of trying to maintain multiple closeted identities. There's a reason why gays have worked so hard to eliminate the negative consequences of being out. Closets suck and they involve a lot of work (and all too often, not a little dishonesty) to maintain. I sympathize -- really I do. But the moment someone creates an identity whose functionality relies on it not being linked to their other identities, they've created this hazard.

The hazard does not come from Live Journal. The hazard does not come from Facebook. The hazard cannot be escaped by moving to DreamWidth. The hazard exists because it is not other people's job to keep track of which of their friends' identities aren't supposed to know about which other of their friends' identities. And eventually someone of good will and innocuous intent is going to slip up. Just like eventually you and your closeted girlfriend were going to bump into her curious cousin in the grocery store. And that doesn't take into account the people of not-entirely-good will or of mis-directed intent or even the outright muck-stirers.

I'm not saying that there aren't social media companies who prioritize monetization over subscriber happiness. And I acknowledge that the nature of online social media vastly increase the scope and speed with which identity-firewalls can be demolished (compared to face-to-face interactions). But I do think that before people start ranting and raving about the particular actions of particular social media sites, they need to consider what percentage of the problem is created by the site and what percentage was a pre-existing risk of living in human society.

Comments

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

it's not as if this is a feature that could be enforced against your will in any event.

That's the problem -- it can. Someone can be outed against their will. If you have the FB/Twitter Connect set up & I don't, you can port your comment to my locked entry to your FB/Twitter & that will automatically quote part of my locked entry to your FB/Twitter, thus compromising my privacy without my permission.

Pingbacks can also do this bec. they quote a portion of the entry that's pinged. Supposedly it doesn't work on locked entries, but ppl have claimed to test it on locked entries & found that it does.

But I'm with you on 'the hazard doesn't come from LJ' -- just they have a poor implementation of this specific feature. It's the fate of the Internet industry & that privacy controls are not a business concern for, well, most anyone.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Applauds.

[mariedeblois.livejournal.com]

I think it's neither the pingback nor the crossposting option for your own posts that has people piqued, but the ability for others to crosspost their comments on your posts, even if said posts are locked.

This doesn't make any significant difference to your point.

[julesjones]

If someone posts a comment to a locked post of mine, *they* can choose to export that comment, with context, and URL showing LJ handle of the original poster, and on Facebook the subject header of the locked post, to *their* Facebook.

They have always been able to do this manually, of course. However, it has just become trivially easy to do it maliciously, as in one click easy, and very easy to do it by accident, especially as the tab sequence that used to take you to the "post comment" box will now tick the "cross-post your comment to someone else's locked post" for you. (Although they have apparently fixed that last idiocy.)

And the pingback feature is opt-out, not opt-in. I am unamused by this even though I personally think that a well-designed pingback system is a useful feature.

Autoquotes?

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

So where/how does autoquoting happen? I'm on a free account. It doesn't autoquote, nor is there a setting in MY ACCOUNTS to make it autoquote. So I'm a bit puzzled by this whole thing. Is there perhaps an option on paid accounts to autoquote?

(I haven't been doing links/pingbacks, so let's set that aside. Right now I'm simply talking about standard comments like this one.)

Fill me in.

Re: Autoquotes?

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

Here's the FAQ for the Facebook/Twitter Connect: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=279

It's not terribly well-written, but there are multiple indications that one person can override another person's privacy settings & that is the default interaction of the feature.

[stitchwhich.livejournal.com]

Have I told you lately that I love you?

Re: Autoquotes?

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

I read the FAQ, but there's nothing there about the autoquotes that people have been complaining about (that might reveal things they wanted locked).

People have been talking about comments as if they automatically quote the original (locked) post - and that if people are crossposting, then this autoquote of the original gets sent to FB or Twitter. But that's not what the FAQ says is happening. According to the FAQ, what gets sent to those places is a message that someone on LJ has made a post, and gives the URL so that they can go directly there and read it. It can also quote either a subject or a bit of the comment itself, but doesn't seem to have a chance at quoting the original post.

Now, I'll grant you that people will sometimes cut-and-paste a quote from the original into their comment. They also might paraphrase it. Original post: "embarrassing thing happened". Comments is of the nature "sorry to hear about 'embarrassing thing' happening" - but neither of these is an autoquote. The commenter took deliberate actions to put that info in the comment.

Now, if I were setting it up the security setting of the original post would be the minimum setting for all posts in the reply chain. So if person A made a Friends-locked post, only A's friends could read anything in the reply chain. And if person B was also posting in a Friends-locked fashion, then a person would have to be a friend of BOTH person A and person B to read it. And even having the URL would NOT let some non-friend read the posts. So even though a FB account might send a crosspost message "Person B made a comment in LJ at this URL", no people would be able to read it unless they could already access the chain of locked messages. But my way isn't necessarily the LJ way.

Re: Autoquotes?

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

As noted, the faq is not well-written & simply says "subject and text of the comment, as well as a link to the entry" will be posted. What's included as "subject of the comment" has been both interpreted &, by some ppl, tested, to be up to 100 characters of whatever the comment was replying to. This could be the subject line, a previous comment, or part of a journal post. It is not clear.

All in all, it's a privacy violation with no opt-out.

Re: Autoquotes?

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK. If that "Subject of the COMMENT" can include up to 100 characters from the ORIGINAL POST then it appears we do indeed have an autoquote taking place. That's quite a bit different than the expected "up to 100 characters of the COMMENT".

Thanks.

Re: Autoquotes?

[sarahbellem.livejournal.com]

A very good demonstration of the FB crossposting feature in action has been put up here: cvirtue.livejournal.com/1636852.html. There are other demonstrations out and about, including what it looks like when Twitter reposts, but Cynthia's post is the most concise.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I think the features are great, with one exception: you can link a reply to someone else's private post.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

When I followed the link to the ping-back feature, it was clearly set up as opt-in. I think there was some mention that if you'd previously activated the feature on your account the last time it was available (evidently it went away for a while) then it would re-activate with the same setting. But when I went to look at my settings it was very definitely not activated.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

What I meant by "enforced against your will" is that the person whose posts/comments are being auto-exported has to have set up the account information for it to be possible.

There is, of course, the same potential for having someone else make your private postings public that there always was.

[zeborah]

It doesn't make anything possible that was impossible. But it does make it easy to accidentally or thoughtlessly do what once took a bit of time and effort, which time and effort might give people second thoughts.

Also it clutters up my page with stupid "Repost" buttons that I don't want, will never want, and can't get rid of without greasemonkey and/or css kludges that I don't want to waste time with.

[cellio]

I see no problem with pingbacks. I have them turned on (not that I've seen any effects yet).

The FB/Twitter thing makes it easier for people to screw up. They could always do this intentionally, but now they can do it accidentally. Do you trust every single one of the people you grant access to to never ever screw up in this way? This isn't a "doom and gloom" thing for me; more of a "sigh; why'd they think that would be a good idea?" one.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Firstly, the pingback feature is set up automatically, so users might not know about it.

Second, a locked post should never, ever, under any circumstances, be made available to people NOT authorised to view it - not in part, not in excerpt, never. There can be no excuses for this.

There is, of course, the same potential for having someone else make your private postings public that there always was.

No there isn't. Now someone who has enabled pingbacks and who doesn't understand all the implications of that feature might link to someone else's locked post and inadvertedly broadcast the title and exerpts from a locked post to the public, including search engines. Now someone who has the crosspost feature set up on their journal can inadvertedly click a crosspost box on a comment to a locked post and broadcast that content etc etc. It doesn't need malice, and it doesn't need much effort - before, someone would have to deliberately *work* at this; now they can do it with a slip of the mouse.

Both the fact that locked no longer means 'protected' and that its easy for other people to broadcast other people's locked content are, in my opinion, highly objectionable and worthy of an outrage. I do *not* accept that companies like Facebook, Google, and Livejournal redefine privacy and broadcast information that I have entrusted them because they feel they can make money with it, and I think it's important for people to protest.

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

This isn't a "doom and gloom" thing for me; more of a "sigh; why'd they think that would be a good idea?" one.

This.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

The "same potential" is the potential that always existed for someone manually copying or paraphrasing the contents of a locked post elsewhere. That's all I was saying.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's the same potential. There is new potential through the pingback - before there was *no* avenue for LJ to post your locked content where third parties might see it. There is new potential for people to inadvertedly click a 'crosspost to' box where before they would have had to copy the URL and copy the content - yes, locked stuff could get out through human malice, but it would have taken a fair amount of work _to_ crosspost it, whereas now it only needs a click on a tickybox.

Doesn't look the same from where I'm sitting.

[julesjones]

You probably had it explicitly deactivated last time round, then. To quote from the news post:

# If you've never used this feature, the default will be set to open (i.e., on).
# If you formerly disabled pingbacks, it will remain off.

If you didn't make an explicit choice last time, it's automatically set to on this time. Not good.

If you previously had it activated, it returned as activated. Which would be all well and good if it was exactly the same function as before and completely bug-free, but the latter is definitely not true, and the former may not be either.

Also, one of the bugs being reported is that people are getting pingbacks even when they don't have it switched on.