Release #69

[marta]

Release #69 is now about done! For your muti-functional perusal today, we have some new integration with Facebook, Twitter, and OpenID along with the re-launch of Pingbacks!
Facebook Connect can be used like OpenID
Facebook users without a LiveJournal account can log in, comment, list friends, and join communities just like OpenID users:

Comments

[master_simon]

If this is your brilliant strategy to lure Facebook users over to LJ, or lure defectors back, think again. The people who use Facebook Connect to post to various sites on the internet choose to do that because they don't want to have multiple user accounts/logins throughout the Internet to keep track of. You might drive a little traffic from Facebook to LJ, but I doubt it'll be as much as you think.

P.S. I would like a way to prevent people from linking to my posts on Facebook without my permission. ASAFP.

P.P.S. Add "Like" buttons to posts and comments and Frank's a dead goat.

[hbpen]

"I would like a way to prevent people from linking to my posts on Facebook without my permission."

Already an easy way: "Friends Only"

[master_simon]

Nice that there's no intermediate step, and that you have to completely lock a post to outsiders to prevent it from being subject to content-aggregators. We have the option to exclude our public posts from bot searches, but this essentially circumvents it and forces people to lock the posts all over again.

[gerg]

How do you figure? If you don't want your post on Facebook, can't you just not tick the box that posts it to Facebook?

[master_simon]

Comments that people post to my entries could still be cross-posted to Facebook if THEY tick the box when they reply. Even if the post in question is Friends-Locked. Which means that, from the comment's context, people who are not supposed to SEE my post could potentially deduce what it's about, even if they can't get to the rest of it.

Which is immediately resulting in a policy on my journal that anyone who uses the Facebook or Twitter crosspost feature on any of my posts will be permanently banned from all of my journals.

[erika_storm]

Using equal logic, what makes you think your entries/comments weren't posted to Facebook already by said users?

[lady_angelina]

True, but this makes it easier for them to accidentally misclick something and then repost their comment to Facebook or Twitter without meaning to. Copying/pasting comments and entries requires quite a bit more effort than that and is (I think) more often than not a conscious effort on the part of the reposter.

[master_simon]

Exactly. Also, up until now, anyone intentionally doing such a thing would immediately be exposed as an asshat in the process. Now someone in a passive-aggressive mood could pretend to "accidentally" link things that are supposed to be private.

I've dealt with people who published friends-locked info before. The one thing they couldn't get around, in terms of repercussions, was that they had to do it on purpose. I dealt with one woman who tearfully denied that she was the one who had done it for months, only to turn out to have been the one behind it all along, so believe me, I know all about wankers using flocked materials to make drama. Now imagine that instead of "it wasn't me!" she'd been able to say "it was TOTALLY an accident, I clicked on the wrong thing!" after the damage is done.

But mostly I am concerned about people reposting sensitive content unintentionally, as I explained in this scenario.

[lady_angelina]

YOU TOTES NEVER SAW ME POST THIS LOGGED INTO THE WRONG JOURNAL. X(

Yeah, exactly. D: Just doing it at all without permission is a dick move, but this would definitely make it way easier and reduce potential culpability for something that shouldn't even happen in the first place.

And your example is a very good one, indeed. All it takes is a few pieces of a puzzle, a bit of inductive logic and intuition, and boom, you've just nailed someone else's identity on one of the other sites. I don't know anything about Facebook, but if what I've heard about it using RL personal information is true, this really makes it that more of a privacy breach, just like you said.

[master_simon]

I saw nooooooothing. (Oh hey, and that right there is an example of what this new development would dismantle, too!)

About Facebook, lot of us (myself included) joined it back when it was less a social networking site than a professional networking site (LinkedIn is the place to be for that, now) and you were required to provide your real name and a confirmed student or corporate email address to join. When they changed their model, it was too late for us unless we deleted our accounts (severing all of the connections we'd made that were useful to us) and started over -- but honestly, I'd never have joined the place at all if it had been giving out those sorts of accounts at the time. Its whole premise is "find out what your friends, relatives, the people you haven't seen in thirty years, and some random guy from Indonesia who thinks your picture's hot, are doing now," and lately the answer to that seems to be "they're playing Farmville instead of working/studying." No way am I telling them what I'm doing with my free time

[karadin]

FYI on the pingbots, they reveal content of locked posts, and if you have it enabled, other users can see your locked posts (if you link)

[cesy]

Yes, but that exclusion is not a guarantee - some bots ignore those guidelines, and people could already cross-post things to Facebook manually if they wanted. All this does is make it easier.

[master_simon]

By all means, let's make antisocial behavior even easier to engage in then.

[badbookworm]

Other users can crosspost their comments even from your locked entries :-(

[master_simon]

Yeah, at that point in the argument it was still early in the release and none of us had twigged to that yet. The Friends-Lock not actually being any kind of protection just made it worse.

But even with posts that aren't locked, it's annoying and people should be able to make it not so easy to broadcast. I figure if someone really wants to make trouble in my journal, they should have to go to a little trouble themselves first. For one thing, that effort is often the only proof of malicious intent you can point to.

[badbookworm]

Sorry, I hadn't thought about how long ago that comment was - have only just come over from the news post after it hit 10,000.

That's one of the more troubling aspects of it, as far as I'm concerned - it's all too easy for someone to accidentally crosspost, and therefore all too plausible for someone to maliciously crosspost and then use that as an excuse.