Facebook Graph Search: Marketing Opportunities and a Potential Privacy Nightmare

I don't want to sound mean, but if people aren't smart enough to keep their lives out of Facebook, then let them get burned.<p>It's not rocket science. I've had a Facebook account for years and there is nothing - absolutely NOTHING -on my Facebook account that I would worry about an employer seeing. That means no political views, no off-color humor, NOTHING that I would not say or post in public, in broad daylight. I will never understand why some people can't get this through their heads.

Well ... if they are male chances of liking porn and guns are so high that you shouldn't bother searching.<p>And in the last 10 years the notion that everybody is a freak in his numerous personal ways began to take hold anmog the populace. But the institutions became more easily offended and prude.<p>But I suppose with the inevitable dieout of the current gen of employers the next just won't bother with searching ... it will be like - why bother - I will find crap for everyone.

This was, of course, 100% predictable. Facebook has never given even a fractional, hypothetical shit about privacy, except in so far as they are absolutely compelled to by their users, which is rare. They certainly have shown little evidence that they have ever thought seriously about the deeper implications and privacy impact of any features they have rolled out.

I had a long, snarky comment about how no sane person would do X, Y, and Z on their public profile.<p>But then I realized graph search shows you to friends of friends. This is a potential shitstorm and I'm not sure I value my facebook account enough to be in it.

How would Facebook know who likes porn (except assuming everybody likes porn, obviously)? Those who say so on their Facebook profile are presumably not very concerned about that information leaking out?

I see Facebook as a walled garden, just as AOL was, and I have often looked forward to a day when people shared their updates in an open and non proprietary format.<p>This just points out that utopia has its downsides - even without a walled garden we would share this stuff - and the graph would still exist. Facebook is crap at privacy but frankly it's just sharing what we want to share (with our friends)<p>I think Scott McNeally was horribly right - privacy is gone

Many of my co-workers are "friends" with me on Facebook anyway, and I post so much pro-gun related material, that no-one has to ask to know that I'm solidly pro-gun. I also login to Facebook from work, on my work laptop (this is considered acceptable at my workplace, as long as you don't spend all day on there, and get your work done).<p>OTOH, I do my pr0n surfing at home, on my own time, using Chrome in incognito mode, and don't advertise anything about it to anyone.<p>The moral of this story? Stuff I want kept private, doesn't go on Facebook in the first place. If it's on Facebook, by definition, it's something I don't mind people knowing.

Site down. Cache:<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=cache%3Awww.stateofsearch.com%2Fsearch-graph-privacy%2F" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&#38;q=cac...</a>

Off topic, but that jumpy, sticky page title is really really annoying. It jumps over the point I like to scroll the top of the paragraph I'm currently reading to.

About You: [EDIT]<p>I like falsifying statistics and Lying to Facebook

the solution is simple, don't put anything online you don't want anyone to see, this should be known by now.<p>Also this is the most wretched and terrible website layout I've ever seen, I couldn't even finish the article and will never return to this site.

I didn't know we had any competition named "Porn and Guns". Cool name though.