Rikke and I both use Google Reader and its share items freely, not only with each other, but in my case also with the general public. As it turns out, the new ‘Friend’s Shared Items’ is being scorned by a range of people, one of who even goes so far as to say it has ‘RUINED CHRISTMAS’ for him and his family.
The problem arises when items are shared using under the new feature, they automatically become available to any of your gmail contacts who are also Google Reader users. And there is no way to disable the new feature, or indeed manage the contacts that can make use of it.
This has caused something of an outcry (via Gruber), where at least one user goes so far as to exclaim this feature as having RUINED CHRISTMAS for my family!.
Give me a break.
I have no delusions of being able to turn the tide on this trend. But since it was brought home to me in extraordinary fashion in the past few months, just how reactionary people become when they’re given the channels to do so, at least I can raise a flag of dissent, and hope to be heard.
Gruber doesn’t think it’s a good idea to turn Google Reader into ‘a sort social site’. I disagree. I make good use of it, and while being able to manage who of your contacts are able to follow your shares, or the simpler solution, being able to turn off the feature entirely, is of course a needed option.
But you have to be something of a nincompoop, to point your finger at Google for ruining Christmas, when the real problem in fact, is hiding your true colors behind white lies and hopes of ignorance, lacking the courage of your your own convictions.
Or, you simply fail to understand, that on the intarwebs, nothing remains secret forever.
More:
Security through obscurity.
Update:
Lo and behold, they fixed it.
It would have been polite for Google to have warned people before they outed them to everyone they’d ever included in the Address Book.
If one tells people ahead of time, it’s one thing. If one purposefully attempts to profit from “outing” them, it’s another.
And to do so the week before Christmas demonstrated monumentally bad judgement on Google’s part. First because of the family concerns, second because of the professional relationships, many of which are reviewed/renewed on an end-of-year basis.
Google will undoubtedly get sued over this. And while I’m normally opposed to frivolous lawsuits, I’m not sure that in this case they don’t deserve to lose. “Don’t be evil” probably includes “Don’t expose your customers “secrets” without asking”.
reinharden
“But you have to be something of a nincompoop, to point your finger at Google for ruining Christmas, when the real problem in fact, is you hiding your true colors behind lies and hopes of ignorance, lacking the courage of your convictions.”
Are you suggesting that any corporation or government that has our data has the right to reveal that data at a time and date of their choosing? And if we get angry, we’re just hiding our true colors behind lies and hopes of ignorance, and that we lack the courage of our convictions?
As a general rule, a lot of people don’t discuss religion or politics at work. That is their right. You’re suggesting that everything you’d like to share with just one specific person is fair game to be shared with everyone you know.
I think you’re seriously misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting the issue.
The button is called share, and has an icon that resembles radiowaves. Tell me again, what did you think was going to happen upon clicking it?
Michael, you’re absolutely right. I don’t understand what these people thought they were doing when they were sharing items. it’s not Google’s responsibility to protect people from themselves, and it’s not the rest of the Internet’s responsibility to keep their secrets for them. If there’s something you don’t want somebody to know, don’t publish it on the web, plain and simple.
Personally, I enjoy it. Every day or so I see a random item from somebody I know, and it’s usually interesting. I never had a reason to use sharing before, but I do now.
And yes, Google should have made this opt-in, and I’m sure they’ll correct that soon enough. But the idea that sharing something you’ve made public with people you know is a privacy violation is just silly.
“ As it turns out, the new ‘Friend’s Shared Items’ is being scorned by a range of people, who feel it has ‘RUINED CHRISTMAS’.”
Talk about hyperbole. Only ONE person said “it ruined christmas”.
Duly noted and corrected.
The button always said “share”, but the thing it did when clicked changed without warning. If I used Google Reader, I’d be pissed too – it’s ridiculous to assume that Address Book == Social Network, doubly so without warning, triply so after letting your userbase get accustomed to a different behavior. I don’t think the ruined-Christmas person said it was a privacy violation per se, just that it opened up a conversation she wasn’t interested in having. What’s so hard to understand about that?
The outcry over this whole thing is a bit dumb. You can’t share something on a public URL and then expect the data to remain private.
Unfortunately, this particular blog post does not make its point particularly well. Claiming that “on the intarwebs, nothing remains secret forever” and rambling about “white lies” is just absurd. If I use gmail, my mail now automatically becomes public?
The people streaming in from Daring Fireball seem to be mostly against my own standpoint, as would be expected, since most other people don’t really get drawn to an entry like this.
And that’s fine, I was never in doubt about the non-privacy of the items I was sharing, for instance, but I don’t fault them for being misguided by Google’s apparently less than stellar explanation of how the new feature worked.
And yes, there are certainly situations where it sucks to have misread, or failed to read the feature update when it was first rolled out.
Wherever the fault lies, that’s one thing. What I’m personally more interested in, is the way people react to these ‘scandals’.
So the Google Reader team made a mistake; it happens. Let them know, in a civilized manner, and they will of course fix it and learn from it, as they have before (the first Google Reader was horrible in every way; they fixed it). But some people are literally willing to throw away all of their trust in the entire company of Google! That’s ridiculous!
We have no insight into how this feature was greenlit, what layers it passed through or who decided on its implementation in the first place. And we probably won’t ever find out, as that is up to internal review to figure out.
This torch-and-pitchfork routine isn’t particularly constructive, really. It might have been, had everyone felt betrayed by this feature, but as it is, there are plenty of people who did understand the consequences of the switch, and who, like me, like it.
As I said, there are certainly scenarios where this could have been an issue. I would never personally rely on a publicly available URL for any sort of privacy, but my mom might, so… But in situations like ‘ruined christmas’ rant, the problem isn’t with Google, it’s with the family and their lack of respect for each other. If they had an honest and open relationship to begin with, their Xmas might’ve been considerable better.
Or not. That’s just my view.
Now, I’m closing the comments on this entry, as I’m not really in the mood for the ‘ol ‘clarification and reiteration of points previously made, to the point of making mortal enemies’-dance (again), and I hope of course, that as few as possible had their Xmas wrecked by an oversight on the otherwise fabulous Google Reader team’s side.
PS: I’m leaving pings open, so ping away.