Facebook

It doesn't look like the original creator of the Snarkfest groups page on Facebook is going to update the page, so do we start a new one? We all seem to be really good at packing up and moving! I can get the new page started but if it allows more than one admin I would like there to be more than one person. That way if we need to rent the U-Haul again we're all good.

Yay? Nay? Abstain?

I'd be happy to co-admin with you. I administer several FB pages already so it would be nothing new for me.

Okay, new group started. It's called Snarkfest 4: The Snarkening in order to keep up with the number of times we seem to have to move. We will overcome!

maxell131313 wrote:Okay, new group started. It's called Snarkfest 4: The Snarkening in order to keep up with the number of times we seem to have to move. We will overcome!

I've been doing too much political stuff lately, so now that song is stuck in my head. Thank you SO MUCH.

I just have to thank everyone involved in this transition. It was so much smoother than the "social experiment."

It looks like LinkedIn is using the same creepy connection suggestions as Facebook. I just got a "do you know [person]" email suggesting a guy I went on one date with about 6 years ago. We had emailed for quite awhile before the bomb of a date and never spoke again, but here he is. It's especially weird because my LinkedIn acct isn't through that email address (though some people have emailed me to invite me to LinkedIn on that address, my actual acct is under another address) and he's not in any field anywhere close to mine and we have no connections in common.

Ooh, I get creepy facebook suggestions too - one is someone I have a email-based only working relationship with, so I get the facebook probably saw his email though it's stalking magic, but it's still creepy.

I find that additionally creepy, because I don't think I allowed FB to search my email address book until much later in time, and yet they suggested people through there they only could have gotten from my address book, as we had no mutual friends in common. "Respect our privacy" my ass.

Speaking of which, I have found on several status updates and comments I've made, Facebook is adding a location. This is not like checking in. It's so hidden and subtle, I haven't noticed it. I thought I'd have to opt in to this kind of bullshit, but surprise, surprise, it happens automatically. They change their privacy so damn much that I don't know how to shut it off. UGH.

I don't know how many of you were around for the bizarre PXThis episode post-Fametracker but I just discovered that "abbe" has a Facebook page where she's still flogging her book. With alleged quotes from Bobby Flay and other restaurant types.

Is it in green font on a black background?

Sadly, it's just the usual Facebook colors. Her Amazon page (for the "revised" edition of her book) has nothing but stunningly rave reviews. I can't imagine how the Pulitzer people overlooked it.

Auroura76, I had that location posting problem as well. But if you go to write a status update and hover your mouse over where it has the location, you can click on the x and it seems to stop automatically putting the location.

Facebook continues to find ways to be annoying. I created a list, so that I could see updates in the order that they're posted. (Mostly.) Now, when I click on the list, I get "So-and-so and 3 other friends posted about Halloween." Some of which are from 2 days ago. One of which I hadn't even seen on my goddamn newsfeed in the first place.
JUST SHOW POSTS IN THE ORDER THEY ARE POSTED! Stop trying to read my mind and group things, or assign levels of importance to posts!
I swear, if this wasn't the only way we'd ever get pictures of the nieces and know what's going on with them, I would dump it and become a luddite.
(Well an iPhone-having, interwebs-browsing Facebook-shunning luddite, I guess.)

One of my friends has a question!

do you know if there is a way to make it so that people cannot download your pictures on facebook?

i am tired of my in-laws downloading my [baby] pictures and posting them like they are theirs. or posting them as their profile pics.

Any ideas?

I'm pretty sure that it's impossible. Isn't that lovely? Basically, unless your friend is OK with just not letting her in-laws see the pictures, she can't prevent them from "sharing" them. Sharing is basically my least favorite thing to ever happen to Facebook. You have absolutely ZERO control of how your posts - pictures, statuses, wall posts, etc. - are shared, except for the fact that you can determine in advance who can see them. So I assume that your friend has to let her in-laws see the pics or face their wrath, but after that, they can do any little thing they want to do with the pictures. I've done pretty extensive searching of Facebook's Help section to figure out how to prevent sharing and/or how to prevent seeing shared stuff from people who aren't mutual friends, and found nothing. But if someone does know how to do this, please share!

I started looking into this after they added the ticker. I started seeing all my friends' comments on people's statuses, pictures, or walls - people I'm not friends with. It only took about five days before one of the comments was something totally inappropriate for me to see (it was my friend offering condolences on the loss of the other person's mother). I immediately realized that should something similar happen to me, literally thousands of people would be able to see my friends posting their condolences to me. But there is basically no way to prevent strangers from seeing this stuff. And there's no way for you to stop seeing it from other people. Aside from the gross privacy-invasion stuff, most of it is just really tiresome. Like, I don't care AT ALL about my friends' posts on the walls of people with whom I am not friends. Stop filling up my ticker with that junk.

I'm so glad I don't have the ticker on my FB!

How did you do that, Ruby? And how can the rest of us??

According to FB,

Ticker only appears when your network of friends and connections meets a certain threshold of activity.Ticker will appear as you connect to more friends, subscriptions, and pages.

I don't know what this threshold activity is but I hope I don't ever meet it!

The way I understand it, if you have your settings restricted so that only your friends can see your activity, then only your friends will see when you comment on someone else's wall -- the friends of that person won't see your post on their ticker (unless you are mutual friends).

So has anyone tried UnThink yet? I am now joining the Beta

Also, you can go to each of your friends pages and downgrade your "subscription" to them. Which means you only choose certain things to see on the ticker. What annoys me is that it's something you have to do to stop seeing other people's posts as opposed to stopping people seeing what you post on non-mutual friend's walls. Does that make sense? A few weeks ago I asked people to unsubscribe from my newsfeed but I don't know if people did.

Great, so a friend of my friend commented on my photo album (because I tagged my friend). How do I make my photo albums friends only (because that was the privacy I had before)? Thanks in advance.

Isn't it when you tag a friend, you effectively make that picture available to your friends AND their friends? I HATE this feature, but I haven't seen an option to disable it.

This is the same answer I gave katesti -- you can't prevent your friends' friends from seeing or commenting on things if 1) your friends are tagged in them, or 2) your friends share them. I think the "tagged" thing was always true, but the sharing thing is new. The only way to prevent people from seeing/sharing/commenting on your posts is to leave specific individuals out of the "audience" for that specific post.

Even then, here's an example of when that wouldn't work: you remove your boss Jane from the audience for a political post, because you don't feel comfortable with her seeing it. But then your other coworker, Judy, shares the post on her wall and is like, "Man, this is great! I want to share this! And because I never thought to look at that 'share with' button, I'm sharing with the 'public.'" Now Jane (and everyone else on the internet) can see it, and can see that you posted it, and there's nothing you can do about it. Fun!

Here's a grosser (and possibly crazy paranoid tinhat) example of that: you post a photo of your little daughter in her dance costume. Your cousin shares it, again with the "public," where any old pedophile can download it, using that handy little button below the picture. You can't opt out of the "download" thing, and you can't prevent sharing.

Truly, the only way to prevent sharing/strangers commenting is to post things so that only you can see them. That's literally Facebook's suggestion for solving this problem. Try poking around on the Help section, and you'll see what I mean.

Regardless of your privacy settings, your friends could always save a pic you shared, if not through a direct download link, then by right-clicking or taking a screen capture. The direct download links probably lets more people think it's OK to save a pic, but it's not a new feature either.