From danah boyd: confused by Facebook

I'm also befuddled by the slippery slope of Facebook. Today, they announced public search listings on Facebook. I'm utterly fascinated by how people talk about Facebook as being more private, more secure than MySpace. By default, people's FB profiles are only available to their network. Join a City network and your profile is far more open than you realize. Accept the default search listings and you're findable on Google. The default is far beyond friends-only and locking a FB profile down to friends-only takes dozens of clicks in numerous different locations. Plus, you never can really tell because if you join a new network, everything is by-default open to that network (including your IM and phone number).

From Caroline McCarthy: Report: Facebook threatens to ban Gawker's Denton

Facebook isn't too happy with Gawker Media founder Nick Denton over some screenshots of a member's profile that he posted on Gawker.com on Tuesday, Portfolio.com reports. The social-networking site reportedly plans to send a warning letter to the New York-based digital-media entrepreneur citing several terms-of-service violations--one more, and he's out.

Facebook representatives were not immediately available for comment.

On Tuesday, Denton--who took over as managing editor of Gawker.com this month after several staff departures--posted a bit of an expose on 25-year-old Emily Brill, daughter of New York publishing figure Steve Brill. Screenshots of the younger Brill's Facebook profile, featuring glamorous photos of a yachting trip to the British Virgin Islands, as well as excited "status" messages about an impending trip to the Caribbean luxury getaway of St. Barth's, were juxtaposed with an older photograph of the Brown graduate when she was significantly heavier.

It's not clear whether Denton and Brill are "friends" on the site, or if it was even Denton (rather than a source or another Gawker Media employee) who pulled the screenshots from Facebook. But both Denton and Brill are members of the New York regional network, so there is a chance that Denton would have been able to view Brill's profile even without being connected as friends.

It boggles my mind that someone sat down and coded “Anyone who lives in the same city as me” as a privacy control and didn’t immediately smack themselves on the head for writing something so ridiculously useless and that is guaranteed to cause privacy issues. 

It would have been easier to have a notion of public profiles and appropriate scary warnings or defaults that protected people’s privacy than the farce that is “regional networks”.

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