As far as I can tell, Google engineer Steve Yegge never intended to become famous for criticizing the company he works for. But if you use his company's search engine to google his name, you'll find plenty of references to his recent Google+ post, in which he called the company's new social media service a "pathetic afterthought," a "knee-jerk reaction" and a "study in short-term thinking."
Those are harsh words for someone to write about his employer, but in a follow-up post, Yegge said that he had never meant for it to be public. He intended it to be "visible to everybody at Google, but not externally."
Yegge, who referred to himself as "not what you might call an experienced Google+ user," posted his rant at midnight and made it public by mistake.
I'm not sure what he did wrong. In his follow-up post he said "by the time I figured out how to actually post something I had somehow switched accounts." But one thing is for sure, if a Google engineer can mess up on his Google+ privacy settings, so can the rest of us.
Whenever you post something on Google+ you have the option to post it to the public or restrict it to specific people that you enter by name. Or, you can select a group, or groups, of people called "circles." Directly below the text box is an area where you can "add circles or people to share with." Once you make a selection and click "share," your post is seen only by those people.
There's a catch to in-line privacy settings
But there's a catch. Whatever option you select will remain the default until you change it. So if you generally post only to specific circles but decide you have something to say to the public, you had better remember to go back and change the setting the next time you post.
To be fair, the icons that represent your choice are big, bold and in plain English. But that wouldn't necessarily prevent someone from forgetting to check their last setting. If you found that you have made a mistake, Google+ lets you delete or edit the post and change the audience but -- as has been said many times before -- once something is "out there," it's out there.
Facebook recently adopted similar "in-line" privacy settings. It now lets you decide each time you post whether it should be seen by the public or only by Friends, specific people you specify or a list of people. Lists can be ones you've set up (like Google+ circles) or "smart lists," which Facebook generates based on things you may have in common, such as work or school.
With Facebook, you need to look for a small indicator just below the update box that might say "Public," or "Friends" or perhaps the name of the list of people you're sending to. As with Google+, anytime you make a change it remains in place until you change it again, so it's very important to glance down at that indicator to avoid sending something to the wrong people.
But even if you're very careful in how you use your social network's privacy settings, I still urge caution when posting something that could cause problems if seen by the wrong people. There is nothing to stop someone from copying and pasting what you post. You can delete something from your profile, but you can't prevent others from posting it to theirs or sharing it via email or other means.
Email, too
It's also important to be cautious when sending email.
Several years ago, when I was writing for the Los Angeles Times, I got a worrisome email from my editor about a column I had submitted. Upset, I forwarded it to my wife with the comment "I don't think he likes my work," but instead of pressing "forward," I clicked "reply." The good news is that he wrote back saying that he loved my work but just had a small problem with that particular column.
And when you do forward, be careful about the "thread" of messages you're sending on. A couple of years ago, my wife forwarded an innocuous Gmail message to my daughter but she didn't realize that the message was part of a longer conversation that included a plan for my daughter's surprise birthday party.
Also be careful when you type names in the "to" box. Some email programs and Web services (including Gmail) have an auto-complete function that saves keystrokes but makes it easy to select the wrong person. If President Barack Obama were using Gmail to write a message to his wife Michelle Obama, he could easily direct it instead to Michele Bachman.
Another common error is responding to people on lists. I'm part of a Google Group listserv and when someone posts to the list, the "from" field shows their name. So if you want to respond privately, it's natural to just click "reply." But if you do that, the reply goes to the entire list, as several of us have discovered when we accidentally broadcast what was meant to be a private response.
In 1968, Andy Warhol said, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." The future is here, but with the wrong click, that could easily turn into 15 minutes of infamy.
Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit Internet safety organization that receives support from Google and Facebook.
Larry Magid blogs at LarrysWorld.com and SafeKids.com This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.
Follow Larry Magid on Twitter: www.twitter.com/larrymagid
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Online safety & civility | SafeKids.com
Online Faux Pas: An Etiquette Guide to Social Media Management ...
Now companies are aware that these networks are getting bigger and bigger, when you apply for a job the companies have people in the HR departments to look up the applicants to make sure that they are trust worthy responsible people. Some college kids aren't smart enough to realize this and put pictures up of them chugging beers and other inappropriate things, and the companies may not hire them because of these pictures.
When replying to a message you should *always* remember to cite only what is actually necessary of the previous message(s). Don't just blindly repeat the *whole* of the message to which you're replying. That *often* leaves to information leakage.
Also, list servers which "hijack" private replies to go to the list instead of the group are evil. Your mail program has a straight "reply" and a separate "reply to all" button for a *reason*. If the list is set up to hijack the former of those, then you should complain and get the admins to fix it.See http://david.woodhou.se/reply-to-list.html and http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html for further discussion.
That stuff can be recorded and circling your friend circle within seconds.
A parent saw the picture and filed a complaint and the teacher lost her job.
Be forewarned, particularly if you teach school. Everything you post on Facebook will become public sooner or later. If you don't want your mother to see it, (or the parents of your students.), don't post it.
In his 1992 book, Visions of Liberty, former Executive Director of the ACLU, Ira Glasser writes:
"The use of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping emerged during the Prohibition era. Roy Olmstead was a suspected bootlegger whom the government wished to search. It placed taps in the basement of his office building and on wires in the streets near his home. No physical entry into his office or home took place.Olmstead was convicted entirely on the basis of evidence from the wiretaps.
"In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Olmstead argued that the taps were a search conducted without a warrant and without probable cause, and that the evidence seized against him should have been excluded because it was illegally gathered. He also argued that his Fifth Amendment right not to be a witness against himself was violated.
"By a 5-4 vote, the Court rejected his arguments and upheld the government's power to wiretap without limit and without any Fourth Amendment restrictions, on the grounds that no actual physical intrusion had taken place.
"Olmstead's Fifth Amendment claim was also dismissed on the grounds that he had not been compelled to talk on the telephone, but had done so voluntarily.
"Thus the Court upheld the government's power to do by trickery and surreptitious means what it was not permitted to do honestly and openly."
Ladies, if you want privacy, join the ACLU.
Seriously.
Civilization with a Truism for all Eternity !
Facebook - just yesterday at espn.go.com/newyork/conversations in exchange for using Facebook to login, wanted the rights to Access my basic information
Includes name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information I've made public.
Send me email
ESPN may email me directly at scirocco99@sbcglobal.net ·
Post to Facebook as me
ESPN may post status messages, notes, photos, and videos on my behalf
Manage my events
ESPN may create events on my behalf
Access my profile information
Birthday
Google Maps beats MapQuest, let's see if they can stick it to Facebook.
Still disturbed by their expansion into every conceivable area of computing and smart phones.
Firefox AdBlocks my friend... Zero ads. It's a beautiful thing.
"Yegge, who referred to himself as "not what you might call an experienced Google+ user," posted his rant at midnight and made it public by mistake."
So he rant about simplicity when nothing like that exist in OTHERS social network, Facebook being the worst in that department, then to talk about not being an experienced user, did you even try?, my mother which I introduced yesterday to it for the first time found it explicitly basic, she created only 1 circle where she will only put people she knows, so after that I question this guy´s argument, Gplus is not the most, is by far the most simple social network out there when adjusted to your needs, so it is your mistake mate, no the platform, you are the after-thinker here not the very network.
Then we get Google on the heavy front pushing G+ beyond its boundaries like the integration of G+ to the like of ICS natively and soon to be the black bar to Youtube so to my further interrogatives, I wonder where the after-thought make any sense into all this, if anything, Facebook is more of an after thought now a day than Google+ is.