Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Should Just Admit She Doesn't Understand Facebook's Privacy Rules Either

from the bad-responses dept

Wed, Dec 26th 2012 2:02pm — Mike Masnick

There's been some buzz today over the news that former Facebooker, Randi Zuckerberg, who's also the older sister to Mark Zuckerberg, is among the many people who don't understand Facebook's privacy policies, as she got upset at someone for tweeting a photo that she thought she had shared in a more limited way than she really had.

There is, of course, the basic irony / schadenfreude of watching a Zuckerberg get confused about the privacy policies, but what I find even more ridiculous is the way that Zuckerberg responded to the whole thing. After getting the person who tweeted the photo to take it down (though lots of other sites have since published it) she basically pretended that the snafu had nothing to do with misunderstanding the way privacy controls work on Facebook:

If you can't read that, it says:

Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency.

No matter what you think of Facebook's privacy settings and the controversy they create, it seems that this response is particularly silly, and seems completely bogus. Danny Sullivan's response to her statement makes the point clear:

If you can't read that, it says:

Sure Randy Zuckerberg asked all in her family if she could share that pic before posting. That's just human decency

I think that's the bigger point in this story. Yes, Facebook's privacy settings are complex and confusing and people get tripped up by them all the time. And, if Randi Zuckerberg were being honest, and not trying to brush this situation under the rug, she'd just admit that. Making a silly claim like it's about "human decency" to ask permission from every single person whose photo you share just seems silly. Hell, if it were true, then wouldn't Facebook change its setting so instead of an easy one-click "share" button on pretty much every photo, it would instead alert those associated with the photo and ask for permission first?

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Filed Under: decency, mark zuckerberg, privacy, randi zuckerberg
Companies: facebook

38 Comments

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Rikuo (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:09pm

I'll toss this under the heading "High Profile People Don't bother applying logic before opening their mouths".

Sure, it makes a nice emotive argument to say "ask for permission before sharing a friend's photo", but once I ask Mr. Logic to take a look at that statement, you end up advocating that Facebook have the details of every person on the planet, match their face to every photo they're in (which I believe is optional at the moment), and then force you to ask every single person in each of your photos for permission before you can post, which is of course a curtailment of free speech.

There's a few people on this site I wish would use logic before they hammer away at their keyboards...
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out_of_the_blue, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:20pm

If you don't pay for the product, YOU are the product.
Oddly, I haven't agreed to your demand last week to stop using that phrase. But so far as you go here, I do agree.

But your ingenue pose seems to not understand that IF Facebook were in any degree an opt-in system, it'd collapse. Same with Google's tracking of you. Soon as sufficient of the pubic really grasps that those corporations are ruthlessly monetizing one's content and habits, there'll be a second dotcom bust.
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out_of_the_blue, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:21pm

Re: If you don't pay for the product, YOU are the product.
^^^ Heh, heh. I mis-sperred "public".
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:22pm

Re: If you don't pay for the product, YOU are the product.
"... IF Facebook were in any degree an opt-in system, it'd collapse."
Here's your "opt-in system", boy...
Don't register on FaceBook.
Problem solved.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:22pm

Really its a big deal because they think they are important and oh no can't have your picture.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:27pm

How to Avoiding Embarrassment
Never post embarrassing pictures to any website; as the temptation of others to show them further is too much. Once a copy is on the web it is too late to control who can see it.
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Willow, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:34pm

Common sense
Just don't post anything remotely embarrassing on Facebook in the first place. Some things belong in an old-fashioned, physical photo album and nowhere else. But apparently people lack common sense now.
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slick8086, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:38pm

Hahah. What does some one who believes "Anonymity Online 'Has To Go Away'" know about human decency?
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:43pm

It must be sad to not even be able to trust your own brother :)
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Lester Louis, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:52pm

The Zuckerberg's
The Zuckerberg's are wealthy and powerful people. Aren't you worry about how the might react to what you write about them.
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bobby green, 26 Dec 2012 @ 2:56pm

seriously?
Are you guys dummies? What does this have to do with celebrity? If I share a picture on facebook, I know it's now public, but I don't expect people to take it and post it around the internet. I'd be pissed too. Lol it's clear she didn't mean "you hacked my account and took locked pictures". It was a matter of courtesy. The fact that you guys misunderstood it the first time and then continued to project your odd impression onto her even when she clarified just shows you concoct weird scenarios in your head.
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Rikuo (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 3:09pm

Re: If you don't pay for the product, YOU are the product.
Opt-in? Um...yeah, it is. So far, it hasn't collapsed, not that I can see.

Blue, read the last line of my above comment. That line applies to you, in case you can't use logic to figure that out.
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Atkray (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 3:20pm

Re: seriously?
The misunderstanding is in someone, anyone, thinking that they can exercise any degree of control over a photo or comment made online. If you don't expect "people to post it around the internet" then don't post it on the internet.
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blue skies (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 3:21pm

I have to admit this article makes me think of my mother and grandmother, who taught me that it was _very_ impolite and intrusive to share one's telephone number without asking permission first. Despite the telephone number being listed in the yellow pages (or whatever colour your telephone book pages are).

I'm not really sure she's wrong. I guess I really need to think about this one. Which is a plus-one to techdirt of course. Making people think.
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John Fenderson (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 3:36pm

Re: Common sense
Even better, don't post anything to Facebook at all, embarrassing or not.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 3:38pm

Better headline...
Randi Zuckerberg admits her family is not human.

Its just human decency to not bury requests to profit from others pictures and data so deep you need a mining helmet and a decoder ring to find them.

She truly is at worst a liar and at best deluded. It is perfectly okay for her to get rich doing it to you, but when she gets the same treatment it is an affront to human decency. Tell that to the guy who ended up as the face for the 50 gallon barrel of lube Randi...
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John Fenderson (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 3:39pm

Re: The Zuckerberg's
Huh? What do you think they're going to do? Who cares how they'll react? I don't know about the rest of the family, but Mark Zuckerberg is a massive douche who at least once has ridiculed people for trusting Facebook with their data.
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Mike P (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 3:55pm

Don't understand what's so confusing
Am I the only person who's not had any issues with FB's privacy settings? What's so hard to understand about Friends, Friends of Friends, Public?
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John Fenderson (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 4:00pm

Re: seriously?
I didn't see the correction. What did she say?

As to misinterpreting, perhaps you are right. But I've read that comment a dozen times now, and it's not the obvious interpretation of what she's saying.

Nonetheless, one part of her comment is wrong: it is indeed about the privacy settings. She could have used privacy settings to prevent this from happening. Based on her reaction, I assume that she thought she did, but failed. That's unsurprising, as FB privacy settings are byzantine and always changing.

That is the essential point of the post.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 5:09pm

Re: Don't understand what's so confusing
Am I the only person who's not had any issues with FB's privacy settings? What's so hard to understand about Friends, Friends of Friends, Public?

The problem here is that this is actually a subsetting. Randi set the post to go to "friends" but she didn't realize that there's ALSO a setting (buried deeper) that says that if you *tag* someone else, the image ALSO shows up for all of THEIR friends. So it went to a wider circle than she expected.

Details here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/12/26/the-facebook-privacy-setting-that-tripped-up-rand i-zuckerberg/
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2012 @ 6:11pm

Still confused about the whole affair. Does this mean sharing a picture on FB gives someone else the right to copy it and repost it wherever they want to? I don't think this has anything to do with FB's privacy settings.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2012 @ 7:26pm

If you really want to know what the pic was about...

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/mark_zuckerbergs_sister_is_angry_that_a_family_photo_pos ted_on_facebook_became_public/
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Dec 2012 @ 8:13pm

The bigger point is she did give permission for the world to use it by publishing it PUBLICLY.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 8:28pm

Re:
If you put it out in public you can't really cry about it.
Because she herself can't work FB's privacy settings she shared a picture much wider than she intended and had the gall to yell at someone daring to share a picture.

Ranting about human decency when SHE is actually the one at fault in the situation is pretty funny.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 8:29pm

Re:
I was looking at the picture and wondering if they were all like... we get $5 everytime someone presses the button so they went nuts.
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Random832, 26 Dec 2012 @ 10:41pm

Re:
Unless by "a friend's photo" she meant "a photo 'owned by' [taken by, shared by] a friend", not "a photo 'of' a friend". In which case your logic is totally invalid.
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techflaws (profile), 26 Dec 2012 @ 11:43pm

Re: seriously?
but I don't expect people to take it and post it around the internet.

And there's your fault right there.
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vegetaman (profile), 27 Dec 2012 @ 12:16am

The joke is that thinking that once you've uploaded a picture to the internet that it somehow stay inside this magic privacy box. If you don't want stuff shared on the internet -- Don't. Fucking. Post it.
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harbingerofdoom (profile), 27 Dec 2012 @ 5:53am

Re: Re: Don't understand what's so confusing
i disagree.
the problem here is that if you dont want stuff getting into the hands of others/being seen on the big bad interwebs, then dont put it there to begin with.

all rules, settings and subsettings aside, the moment you put it up there, there is a chance it will be seen by people other than who you intended.
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Mike P (profile), 27 Dec 2012 @ 6:34am

Re: Re: Don't understand what's so confusing
I guess I can see that if I didn't know the setting existed. I tend to "read the manual" so to speak. EULAs and ToS on the otherhand...

I still don't have a problem understanding the settings though, though I suppose its also about how available the settings are. Even if FB left the settings basically alone, but organized the interface so it's more or less one page rather than a bunch of different sections it would be more intuitive.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2012 @ 7:03am

Facebook never has and never will give a flying toss about anyones privacy unless they are going to be sued. even then, if they can manage to worm out of it, they will. however, in situations like this, where it is a member of Zuckerberg's family that has the controversy, it's bound to be different, isn't it! i would like to know how many pics she has put up and how many times she has gotten permission first or even given a crap to bother!
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2012 @ 7:41am

Re:
The term "free speech" is applicable ONLY when a government entity attempts to limit it, not your Aunt Mary or next door neighbor.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Dec 2012 @ 7:50am

Re: Re: If you don't pay for the product, YOU are the product.
Funny... the word "hammer" was the part that caught my eye. Unfortunately, I re-read it, and found it way too civilized.
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Guy, 27 Dec 2012 @ 9:58am

Re: Re: Don't understand what's so confusing
Seems to make sense to me... Although can't we just accept that privacy is dead and move on? Anything you do/say/whatever can be (and probably will be) captured in picture/video form and posted online.

Not that I think we should stop anonymous systems like Tor. We should have ways to surf the internet without having to say who we are. Just that our person is always fair game.
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John Fenderson (profile), 27 Dec 2012 @ 11:41am

Re: Re:
This is picking nits, but I disagree. The Constitutional protection of free speech generally applies only to government actions (but there are lots of exceptions).

However, the concept and ideal of free speech is much, much larger than that and applies universally.
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John Fenderson (profile), 27 Dec 2012 @ 11:45am

Re: Re: Re: Don't understand what's so confusing
I suppose its also about how available the settings are

If you mean how visible, then I agree. But the other problem is that the privacy settings aren't stable. In the end, this (and the timeline) is why I cancelled my facebook account. It was too much error-prone work to browse through all the privacy settings, some hidden away in weird corners, regularly to make sure nothing's changed.
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John Fenderson (profile), 27 Dec 2012 @ 11:48am

Re: Re: Re: Don't understand what's so confusing
Although can't we just accept that privacy is dead and move on?

Nope. Privacy is critically important and to simply accept that it's dead guarantees that no progress can be made in this fight.

This same argument was made regarding all kinds of things in history (slavery, civil rights, consumer rights, etc.) when those causes seemed utterly lost. Progress in them only came about because nobody gave up.
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John Fenderson (profile), 27 Dec 2012 @ 11:53am

Re:
Regardless of rights or legalities, it's very well known that any picture that you post that is publically visible will be harvested and used elsewhere on the net. It's just the reality.

The issue is that Facebook provides a mechanism to limit or prevent this, but that Zuckerberg's sister did not use them properly. That's where the privacy settings come in. Then she made the situation worse by claiming that the problem was etiquette, not privacy settings.

That may be technically true, but to expect etiquette from the internet at large either betrays a shocking level of idiocy or a complete lack of experience with the internet.
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