Posts Published June 2011

If there’s one thing I’ve learned reading 700 million status updates, it’s that people are predictable: You guys will complain about everything. Every time I change Facebook’s privacy settings, it takes exactly one day before the usual gang of idiots starts whining that this is an outrage and it’s the worst outrage ever and how dare I change the privacy settings again and Facebook is an Orwellian police state. Why so serious?

At least it means I can reliably plan to have my week disrupted.  Here’s what happened: Yesterday, I finally turned on a feature that Justin in Engineering blogged about months ago. It recognizes your face in other people’s photos and lets them tag you with one click. Awesome, right? But the guys in legal said I also had to amend our privacy policy, which is now longer than the U.S. Constitution. Whenever I do that, I’m piled on by reporters and regulators who can’t find the response I already posted in the comments. Scroll down, morons.

When I change your privacy settings, it’s for a good reason. It’s because I changed mine. Your defaults are always the same as whatever I have set right now. That’s in the privacy policy. Did you read it? No. But since your settings are the same as mine, and mine are what they should be, you don’t have to bother. See, you’re getting smarter already.

I knew there’d be a backlash no matter what I did. I mean, I had Justin blog about this thing last fucking year. I waited months to turn it on. I made sure it could tell your crotch from Anthony Wiener’s. I even added a button to turn off the feature. The security Nazis are griping that I should have made the face tagger “opt-in.” That’s geek slang for “no one will find it.”

Don’t listen to them. They’ll all leave it on. It gives them something to complain about, plus they’re dying to know if anyone’s posted a photo of them lately. “Look, here I am at the Total Surveillance State Conference in May. I’m standing right next to Bruce Schneier!”

Oh well, gotta hop. Corporate Communications wants me to personally answer Congressman Wiener’s staff. The Republicans are scouring the Web for more dick shots. See what happens when you give the Internet to someone born in 1964? Serves him right for using Twitter.

Photo via Big Think