If I am misunderstanding your point, then it’s because you haven’t explained it.
No, I am not ignoring them. There are a lot of things to criticize about Facebook’s practices regarding usage of user information—at least, there are a lot of ways in which Facebook uses information that users perhaps should be wary of.
But specifically regarding the default setting for sharing material a user posts—there’s nothing “shitty” about it, and it is the only logical default setting, considering the primary purpose of Facebook and the primary way in which users use Facebook.
The reason why people sign up for Facebook is to share information with the people on their friends’ list. So the logical default setting is when you post information, that people on your friends’ list will be able to see it.
If you want either a broader audience (friends of friends or “public”) or a narrower audience (a specific subset of your friends, or even, indeed, an individual person), either for a particular post or for all your posts, you can do that. You can even make that your personal default. But it makes no sense for Facebook to make that the initial default.
If you have a contrary argument, I invite you to spell it out in detail.
Since it doesn’t look like anyone has given you a simple answer, as far as I can tell it is “No”.
I set up my Facebook account way back when it was still called “The Facebook”, and I don’t remember what the default settings were or how this information was presented to the user back then. However, a quick Google tells me that while for some time the default was that Facebook posts were public, in 2014 Facebook changed this. (Here’s a Forbes article on the subject.) For new users since then, the default has been that posts are visible only to the user’s self-selected “Facebook Friends”.
Facebook displays the audience (public, friends, some specific subset of friends, or only the user) who will be able to view a post right next to the “Post” button. You can click the currently selected audience to get a pull-down menu and change the audience to something else before submitting the post. You can also change the audience after submitting a post if you realize you’ve made a mistake.
Well, I don’t know how much they mentioned, but if I went on a vacation, I would definitely tell my friends about it, and yes, share pictures. You weren’t the only one there. Perhaps you should have asked them first, “Hey, mind not mentioning me first or showing any picture with me in it?” But that’s all. Otherwise, they did absolutely nothing wrong.
I don’t know what you want the “default” to be. The whole purpose is to share. Do you think people should post something there without anyone seeing it? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
how would I know they were on facebook if none of us are facebook? It wasn’t a subject that ever came up.
Look, I know it just is the default assumption these days that people are fine with things being shared without their permission but, it makes me very uncomfortable. We are wiser these days and in those circumstances we do request that they don’t post photos.
I’m still of the opinion that onus is the person sharing to seek permission, e.g. If that same couple had written in to the local newspaper to share their holiday and photos in a written form would it have silly of me to expect them to seek our permission to include photos and details of us?
Thanks Lamia, and that was my point. Seems like the defaults were set like that for some time and that for a long time the design for the privacy controls could be described as “shitty” (my words, not anyone elses).
This is how I use Facebook. I am not a great fan of it either but when I got a promotion at work recently I started an account for networking. It works great for that:
anyone who posts the remotest political opinion I don’t agree with, I block their posts.
anyone who reblogs stupid shit, like “save this pet, it’s so cuddly wuddly”, it’s easy enough to block the page they are reblogging
anyone is able to contact me through private messaging
Since most of my “clients” use FB heavily it has become a pretty important tool for me. It’s a great way to contact people and work with them, and learn about what they need, and what’s going on with their lives, without asking them. I work in a very social industry (not for profit) and it means a lot to people if I drop a birthday card in the mail to their kids, or congratulate the kid for winning a race.
But see, I have this uncanny ability that lots of people don’t seem to have. Admittedly, I grew into this ability. I have this ability not to comment on controversial stuff or stuff that makes me angry. I don’t argue or fight on facebook.
And I’m another one whose family is thousands of miles away. It’s a good way to keep them posted on my life while still keeping them at arm’s length.
Although, I have to disagree with some people here. If I went on vacation I’d certainly share pictures. I would never, ever share pictures of someone else unless they gave me more than permission - they’d have to explicitly say “Why didn’t you post that picture of me/us?” Only then would I do it - I’d never even ask. You don’t post pictures of other people without permission, Guinistasia (and others). Especially not if your profile is set to public, as apparently the Belgium people’s were (otherwise how did the coworkers find out?)
Off to double check my privacy settings, as I do periodically! Mine are only set to family and friends, not public, and I never share anything too personal.
I have threads that I’ve started on Facebook that I have the privacy set to "Only Me"consisting of outside link articles I’ve seen that I want to save and access later. If one of my friends posts a clickbait slideshow about “The 20 Most Awesome Bridges In The World” or “The 500,000 Most Scary Animals in Australia” or other silly things I add the link to one of my Only Me threads, especially if I don’t have time to look at it or don’t want to use my data up on clickbait, so I can go back to it when I’m on my desktop. If I want, I can later set the privacy of the whole thread to Friends or Public or whatever, and boom, now they have a dozen or two or so interesting links they can go to, or not. But mostly I keep these threads set to Only Me. It’s just an easy way to save things I might want to look at later. I can always delete individual articles after I’ve read/seen them or the whole thread if I want.