Sometime over the weekend (I first noticed it on Friday night and admittedly, I spent way too much on Facebook for a Friday night), Facebook changed the way your comments on others links, status updates, photos, etc. show up on your profile wall.
Previously my wall would say something like “Kim commented on Deep Friar’s status” and the friends name would link to his profile page.
Now an excerpt of your comment is displayed. The friend’s name is still linked to her profile page.
Of course I noticed this right after I commented on a thread that was asking which player in the Premier League you disliked the most and why. I realized that I should have commented on the player’s skills or lack of them rather than saying his head looked like a potato ;-)
These comments, however, should only be displayed to you, the friend’s page that you commented on, and any friends in common. But, you still might not want them to show up. Update: It seems that I was wrong about this. You will see all of them on your friend’s wall even if the comments are on profiles that you are NOT friends with. This is not good.
So, if you don’t want the the excerpt displayed on your wall, you can do the following:
- Not leave any comments you don’t want everyone reading an excerpt of on your wall.
- Don’t say anything important in the first 7-8 words.
- Delete them manually from you wall – that will be fun!
I looked through the privacy settings and it doesn’t seem that there is anything that can be changed to keep these from displaying. I can change my posts to only be visible to me but that would be for everything I posted, not just my comments, and that kind of defeats the purpose of using social media.
What do you think? Do you like this change?
As for me, I will simply try to refrain from calling Wayne Rooney an overrated potato head. ;-)
photo credit: jonathan_hamner
Why does FB have to keep changing things? Drives me nuts.
The thing I don’t get – how I can read the original status if I follow the link from the witty comment on your profile. Is this just the way people have things set up, so it’s open to friends of friends? If they had it set up differently, would I still read your comment, but not be able to read the status?
I am often astonished at the things I can read through friends of friends links, never sure if the person writing them knows how open their profile is. maybe I worry unnecessarily.
Hi Joanna – I was mistaken and updated the post – anyone you are friends with can now see them – not just mutual friends. I based my initial understanding of it on the Facebook help – lol – but then after publishing the post I did more tests and discovered that if I go to, say your wall, I will see the partial comments you’ve left – even comments to people that I am not friends with.
Fun!
Trying to keep control of your information on Facebook is like chasing a run away train. Coupled with the all too frequent hacks and breaches on the internet, i’m half afraid to post anything anywhere. Not calling someone a potato head in the first 10 characters is a good start though :-) Thanks for the heads up on this as I have been offline for a few days.
Hi Karen,
Yes – I had my gawker account hacked and have been changing passwords everywhere – even if they weren’t the same. So silly too because the last time I commented on one of those sites was forever ago.
Facebook makes too many rapid changes that are unnecessary and doesn’t provide enough info about the changes.
At least I was only referring to Wayne Rooney and not my brother or something ;-)
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it haha
As soon as I read potato I said must be Rooney LOL
Hi Manshu – LOL
Well, my observation must be an accurate one ;-)
Ahh! The fallacy in your argument, Kim, is that Facebook management consider their social networking site ONLY for real friends to connect with each other.
If you are only connected to people you know physically, there shouldn’t be a problem. Yet, how many people do that?
Hi Ari – But we’ve discovered that they are showing up for people we aren’t mutual friends with. If you leave a comment for your sister, I will see that excerpt on your wall even though I’m not friends with her on FB.
And, yes, I am “friends” with a lot of people that I don’t know in real life.
Ugh! Just one more way Facebook lets us know it doesn’t give a crap if we want to be more private.
That’s so frustrating. And also is one more reason why I should’ve never friended my mom in the first place. There are some thoughts of mine she should never be able to read. LOL
Hi Tawnya – Oh, I don’t know. I still think it’s better that you friended her. I often wonder about friending my Mom but I know she would have never used it – I couldn’t even get her to use flickr for her photos.
As usual, Facebook’s decisionmaking sucks.
Hi Dot – I really don’t know what they are thinking – it doesn’t seem like they care what the users want. But, for everyone’s grumbling very few stop using it.
I don’t think Facebook has gotten quite a fully-rounded status as other social networks.
Hi Adam – What do you mean by that?
I’ve noticed this and I guess the purpose of this change is that they can get more people to comment on each other;s status or posts but I don’t really like it. It has gone so public.
Hi Andrew – And since it only shows a partial comment out of context I don’t think it really inspires more comments – it’s kind of confusing.
Hi Kim! I don’t like the change.. don’t understand very well what kind of improvement they are looking for… When more and more people are starting to be concern about privacy it seems completely stupid to make your comments more public… but…
Anyway, I agree with you on one little thing… Wayne Rooney is overrated ;o)
Thanks and regards
Lorie
Hi Lorie – And as I mentioned to Andrew above since they are partial comments and are out of context they are really only confusing.
Glad you agree about Rooney :-)
I like this change… for those that complain about privacy.. hello.. u can just delete your account, and u dun have to worry about those things anymore.
Hi Henway – It’s actually not so easy to do. Facebook makes it easy to deactivate an account but the location to delete it is hidden. Also, even when you delete the account Facebook still has your information and continues to use it for data mining.
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/11/go-ahead-quit-facebo.html