Great observations. I like your analogy of “dressing for the world”. The feeds also kill users ability to experiment with different ideas in their profile. Knowing that everyone will see a change to a profile reduces the users likelihood of test new elements in their profile. To use your dresing analogy, I may try a new look (say trade in my khakis for a set of prada pants), knowing that I will likely encounter certain people that day and can test my new look on them. If I knew I was going to see everyone from my mother to an ex to my boss, I might be inclined to stick with khakis. Social experimentation is much harder when everyone is looking.

drew

I believe you are right: this looks like a camera in your dressing room. . . And however, I’m not sure the worst is always the most revealing. Have you noticed that, at the doctor’s, you undresss behing a curtain, and then let come back in your underwear? What’s the point in hiding if you have to show it all? Being visible to someon of the art is fine; leting see changes is, somehow, not so.

I’ve always consdered the most undecent film ever shot is Rohmer’s “Claire’s Knee”: not a square inch of skin, no unproper language, nothing PG-worty, nothing—but for two hours, he decribes meticulously a man’s fantasy (a thirty-somehthing wants to caress the knee of a girl five year younger). Why is that so shocking? Because one’s though will always be his best kept secret. Because many type those weird questions that they use to keep for themselves (and sometime their trustful best friend) in the resquest line of search engines, the logs of Google and others became the most fantacized database ever. . .

I recently was at a party: the restroom had a window that you could see through from where I stood in the dance floor (odd architecture, I reckon); no big deal, it seemed: you could see nothing but at the height of the head of someone standing—however, a girl entered, and I saw here doing nothing but stand there, to check on her make-up. . . The way she looked at herself in the mirror! My, I felt like I learnt more on her in the ten seconds I dared to look than by talking to her for hours; I felt such a urge to look away! And I know most of your will blame me for those ten seconds of looking—at her eyes!

Fred,

Your main factual point seemed to be (back to business) that befriending someone on Facebook is too little a commitment to access such a feed.

Privacy is complex, and it is more about ackowledgement than real hiding. Do you remember ever refusing your e-mail address to someone who asked for it? Becuse the mere asking implies the relation can sustain mailing. Wouldn’t this be fine if people had the link accessible from they website, and could send it to their friend, if needed?

I’m thinking of something like Google Calendar feed (Fred, see my e-mail signature, but please don’t post it here): there is tremendously private information there, but I decided that some people could see it. I need some to know when I’m available (to schedule some stats lessons or LaTeX introduction, see how sexy this can be); more people receive it than needed—but that is OK, it’s my responsabilty (and I can reprogram it, or set it back to more privacy if needed).

However, most people who don’t know that there are revealing information would blame the provider for their misunderstanding—and privacy statements are more about making fraud understood than covered. And puting all public info in the same place is not strickly revealing, but it looks like it.

I understand, to a programmer, this is odd—but remember all those blogger high-school students who left very harsh comments on their teachers and who got busted because social algorytms can help you find relevant pages even when the author carefully avoids all the wrong words? Lowering the barrier to get information is a big deal: you can make billions with it—or lose them if people would rather hide it.

ClaimID is about making associations clear, with the concerned party active consent. Imagine a similar device, that could tell you where else on the internet someone with the same IP posted some “public” info?

it’s not just ‘what if everyone saw what i wore every single day’ but ‘what if they saw how many times i changed outfits every morning before i left the house.’

in response to brian’s comment: the ‘x’ button he describes only removes updates from a ‘mini-feed’ list on users’ profiles. it does not remove the update from the main newsfeed on the homepage, and in some instances, ‘x’ing out an item on your mini-feed will cause another update to pop up on the homepage newsfeed incorrectly informing the community that you’ve removed the updated item from your profile —

e.g., if you add a movie to your favorite movies list, an alert appears on both the mini-feed and the homepage. if you then ‘x’ out the mini-feed update, a notice will appear on the homepage saying (erroneously) that you have removed the movie from your movie list.

“So I guess you could stay I’m stepping out of my analyst role, and trying to be a user advocate.”

so: a user advocate that happens to be extremely knowledgeable about the environment and its users. perfect.