While I love FB’s new Timeline and most of the changes revealed at f8 - I suggest that every FB user thinks twice about his privacy settings on the new social reader apps.
If you haven’t been following the conference live stream yourself here’s a short description what “social reader” really is: “Social reader” takes away the burden to decide what action you want to post on FB and does this for you automatically. E.g. you hear a Song with Spotify and it’s posted in your live stream that you now hear this particular song. Sounds good? Yes? No?
With music it might not be that big of a problem. But take another example: The new “Washington Post social reader” (which is already available to everybody). Everytime you open the apps page it posts something like “XXX is now reading Washington Post social reader” into the stream. But it goes a step further if you open an article. Now the app posts “XXX is reading YYYY”.
Well, I assume nobody of us reads some shady stuff ;-) but even reading “normal” stuff might get you into trouble. Imagine reading an article about “relocation to somewere” or “how to write a good ressume”. You have work colleagues in your friend list? Or maybe your boss? Think about how fast a rumor can spread that you plan to leave the company … although it was just innocent interest or maybe you just know that one of your friends maybe interested in that information and looked it up for him.
While the basic idea of “taking away the burden of liking” seems nice at a first glance it lacks another important thing: Just reading something doesn’t mean I really like it. The idea behind that automatic feed is to extend the reach of discovery. Your friends should be hinted to stuff they may have missed otherwise. While this is again great in theory it lacks the information if this was a good read or not. Does it help my friends to know what I read? Or does it more help to know what I “liked” to read?
Again it might be different with music (as you most probably hear in general what you like) but this concept doesn’t work the same way with news and some other stuff.
You’re scared now? No need to! Because you still have control over your data … you just have to use this control in a proper manner. Every social reader app tells you what it will post. Make sure you read the text in detail before easily accept access. More important this window gives you the opportunity to change your privacy setting (which is by default your standard privacy setting). For me this standard is “Friends of Friends” as I willently distribute most of my content freely. But for “social reader” I definately narrow this. Even for music I will go down to “friends only” at least. For news and other stuff it will be “Only Me” for now.
You already granted access to social reader apps? Go to the apps settings in the privacy section and just change it to whatever you want.
As much as I like to share … sometimes even I prefer to share less :-)
