My two cents on Facebook/Twitter repost feature

[alexandral]

Hee, may be am quite late with this , but I could not resist:

LJ appeared to go ahead with a new "very helpful" feature of being able to re-post your comments (in any entry, it appears, locked or not) to Facebook and Twitter.

1. I haven't tested this myself, so I am not 100% sure if the re-posting comments from locked entries work. I have seen posts from people who tried to do so and succeeded , but I am not 100% sure. I am sorry - as a part of my job I do a little bit of computer systems support and my initial reaction to anything is always to double-check it. But let's assume that this works.

2. I don't see any immediate huge difference between ability of anyone who has malicious intent and has access to my locked entries to copy-and-paste and ability to re-post on Facebook/Twitter.

3. The only difference is that this can happen accidentally. Which is hugely possible with the "automatically re-post" checkbox being clicked. Which is a problem indeed.

4. This is just me, everyone is different: I am hugely paranoid and the thought of posting something on the Internet that I can’t openly express in RL makes me very very uncomfortable , regardless private or locked status of the post. I personally never do this - whatever you see in my LJ is what I also talk about with my family and friends and work colleagues. These are databases! They can be broken into by evil Russian programmers! They can be sold to evil advertising agencies! Even if the management now is good, the management can be bad tomorrow and – NOTHING ever gets deleted or removed from databases! For this they have archives!

I lock my personal posts as a first-line prevention measure against idiots, but I have no illusions : I am quite positive that nothing will work against really determined individuals.

4. This is my opinion and my only and I do not think it is universally right or anything, but I just have it:
I do not like some things about Dreamwidth. I do not like the way every time anything happens on LJ there are big posts on Dreamwidth from Dreamwidth’s management/creators of "look how bad LJ is!!!!!!!". I don’t like this attitude and I haven’t seen this happening much on LJ.

In short: LJ, please remove this stupid feature because it can cause accidental damage. But I am not moving and I am thinking about deleting my DW account.

Comments

[intermezzo]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. ;)

I never thought to jump ship, either, and no matter how many FAIL LJ did (and over the years, it failed. A lot. A lotlotlot), I still stayed loyal. I don't like many things about DW, either, but what it boils down to now is, which is the lesser of the evils? And for me? It's not LJ. Not anymore.

As I said, I'll keep posting fandom stuff (let's face it, the kdrama community is already small here. It's practically nonexistant on DW) and if lj fixes this huge breach of privacy (Facebook has NO respect for privacy, that's a known fact), I may reenable comments. If it doesn't and if LJ keeps failing, oh well, at least I'm all set over there and it'll take just the click of a button to delete the journal.

The main problems I have with this features are
1)facebots. Once allowed, they MIGHT harvest info, even info that are NOT visible to registered users OR friends (say, your name? where you live? your credit card number if you've ever bought stuff from the LJ store, like I did) unless you specifically told them. So I'm not talking aobout flocked entries only. When I signed up 6 years ago and when LJ updated its ToS, nowhere on the registration form or tos was said that bots would be allowed on this site. And I'm paying for this? Why? o_0 I'm afraid the damage is already done. Even if you delete the journal now, your data might have already been harvested so there's no way to protect THAT info anymore. If you pardon my analogy, as of now, LJ is like a house with all its doors and windows wide open, it's practically inviting all sorts of people and things to go inside.

2) I don't see any immediate huge difference between ability of anyone who has malicious intent and has access to my locked entries to copy-and-paste and to re-post on Facebook/Twitter. POint. That might happen, but for me, it's different. Leaving aside the accidental mistake (my actual main fear), the difference between the copy&paste vs repost/crosspost is that while when a troll/friend-turned-into-enemy/whatever copy and pastes your flocked content, they're eventually found out (ofen sooner rather than later) and the community tend to defend the person who got trolled and shun the troll (and that's not a common event for that very reason) with the repost/crosspost feature trolling is a lot easier and there'd be no way to expose the troll because hey, if the troll says it was an actual mistake, there's no way to prove it otherwise, right? Also? that feature actually legitimize and favors the reposting of flocked content. You're right, there's no other way to protect oneself than not posting at all, but...this is now what LJ ToS said. LJ's strongest point WAS security, that's what made it popular in the first place. it wasn't the comms. It wasn't the layouts and moodthemes. It was the security. It was the possibility to talk "behind closed doors" about anything and be (fairly) sure it stayed that way (isn't that LJ unspoken code of behaviour?). And guess what? Security at DW? Is even better, it's a lot more customizable and I SO didn't expect that. I already ranted on my LJ about this whole debacle, which FYI was the last straw, it wasn't the ONLY reason for getting a dw, and why I'm posting my RL post there so I'll stop now. /rant

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

I hear you with bots, but I am not sure about several things:

1. How is this new re-post feature related to bots? Bots don't have access to protected entries, right?

2. How is any other site (DW, any) different in relation to bots? Bots is a problem of nowdays. At the beginning, new sites might be smaller and doesn't invite attention of as many boat-making people as LJ. But if they grow, this will surely happen.

3. with the repost/crosspost feature trolling is a lot easier and there'd be no way to expose the troll because hey, if the troll says it was an actual mistake, there's no way to prove it otherwise, right?

I don't know. if accidents happen more than once - I would think people will start suspecting.

I also think LJ did a lot of fail over the years, though.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

PS; please see the solution jenlev has posted below. It seems there is a way to switch this option off in custom stylesheets - sounds great.

[intermezzo]

I already had that one on since I was monitoring the news post and ppl found that "solutions" and others pretty soon. Actually, I have a code that supposedly applies to more journals. Here, let me show it to you

.b-repost-item, FORM#qrform > TABLE[style="border: 1px solid black;"]:last-child TD[style="vertical-align: top; text-align: right;"]:first-child { display: none !important; }

And that solution is not a solution at all. It's a temporary fix and it doesn't work on ALL the journals.

I'll reply to your other comment later. I need to pack for my holiday and finish a few other things here and there. I'm not ignoring you, but I'm afraid that comment may turn into a long comment ^^'

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

Stumbled across this while flist wandering. Go to "customize Journal Style" page.

In the box titled "custom stylesheet" (should be the third one down) type this: .b-repost-item {display:none}


I gather it's working for most people. What it does is remove the twitter and facebook buttons from the bottom of the comment page which hopefully will eliminate any accidents and help out a bit. I hope so....after I applied it those buttons simply vanished from my screens. And in the journals where other people known to me have applied it, the buttons don't appear when I comment in their journals. I hope this helps. *hugs*

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

Oh, fantastic! I knew there must be a way around this.

Thank you so so much dear, i am going to try this.

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

I'll check back in to see if the buttons go away then? :)

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

YAY! They sure did. I wonder if this gets rid of automatic setting, though, if someone already has it.

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

Yay!!! I think it does, but I'm not sure. :)

[endlessdeep.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not moving to Dreamwidth either because of LJs current bungle. LJ is my home even if they do ocassionally make a bad decision without consulting us.

It's definitely not a democracy here. They seem to know what is best for us and by golly they are going to give it to us. Whether we want it or not. lol.

Besides, I just don't have the energy to move some where else. :)

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

It's definitely not a democracy here. They seem to know what is best for us and by golly they are going to give it to us. Whether we want it or not. lol.

What surprises me is that there is an expectation of democracy. Even among the people with paid accounts.

Besides, I just don't have the energy to move some where else. :)

The same for me! Few times I even thought if I should continue blogging (when RL life gets busy) . But then I think of people I like to keep in touch with and I continue.

[timescout.livejournal.com]

I'm not going anywhere either, though I do have DW account I'll use keeping tabs with those in my f-list who decided to leave LJ. I'm starting to get the feeling it's all blown out of propositon and some of the stuff people are saying make me think there's paranoia at work.

On the other hand I do understand as this is a privacy issue and even though it's not an issue with me (at least atm it isn't) there are others who'd rather not have their LJ associated with Facebook in particular. Apparently Facebook sends bots into its users' personal email accounts, gets all the addresses it can find, matches them up and alerts people to each other's presence, without their knowledge or consent. People are afraid that now that Facebook has access to LiveJournal these bots do the same with LJ accounts and start sending inivitatons at Facebook to come check out a particular LJ.

Then, a word of warning about using code to hide the ticky-boxes:

1. This will only hide those boxes if they are looking at your journal in your style. If they've set things to style=mine, they'll see the boxes.

2. If anyone links their LJ to their FB account, those boxes will be automatically checked when they reply to a public post. And, thanks to your code, they cannot see the boxes to uncheck them. Which means that their comments will now be cross-posted, completely unintentionally and totally contrary to your wishes and plans.

[trailer-spot.livejournal.com]

2. If anyone links their LJ to their FB account, those boxes will be automatically checked when they reply to a public post

Oh! I hadn't read about that. Those two things are close to the worst thing I have read about this issue so far (the automatic setting and as a result of that, if you add the code, since the boxes are hidden, you can't uncheck them).
How did you found out about the automatic setting? I can see under "My account settings --> Extensions" boxes for Facebook and Twitter for default cross-posting of comments+entries. Are they automatically on when you enter your FB+Twitter IDs?

And just to explain, I'm just curious. I don't even use FB+Twitter. :)

Edit: I just read the original LJ-news post again. So apologies that I bothered you about this.
It actually explains if and when the cross-posting occurs (assuming for a moment that things are actually work as they say).
So it seems that not all comments are automatically cross-posted. Though just the fact that you can pre-select this heightens the risk that something goes wrong considerably.
And the code to hide the boxes is still counter-productive.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

** hides in shame **

I still haven't ordered your parcel. But I solemnly promise to do so this week. :(

How did you found out about the automatic setting? I can see under "My account settings --> Extensions" boxes for Facebook and Twitter for default cross-posting of comments+entries. Are they automatically on when you enter your FB+Twitter IDs?

There is settings link there as well and the "check" state is a default , but I assume you have found out this already. I also agree- this is the worst thing about the feature. If it was just a re-post that you must select every time you want to do it - I don't see a problem. But with the default this creates a scope for things going wrong.

[trailer-spot.livejournal.com]

It's not that the order is in any way urgent, but given how often you asked me if I have something I want to order I think you should be a little be ashamed. ;) But again, it's not urgent at all. My backlog of unwatched DVDs is bigger than ever. :)

I saw the default boxes, but I didn't know if you have to check them manually or if they are checked by default the moment you connect with FB. I think the original news post cleared it up, and, as I read in your most recent post, you thankfully did some testing yourself.

I'm usually very similar as you as I think other services have problems too, and it's foolish to expect that LJ as a company doesn't want to try to profit from their users. Though in this case I think they did a very stupid thing by betraying the trust of their users by allowing to cross-post things from locked posts. I find it especially stupid since I think the locking and filtering is a main feature of LJ. In my view they should try to stress this in order to distinguish themselves from the data monsters like FB or Google since I have a feeling that more people start to realize how evil those are.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

apparently Facebook sends bots into its users' personal email accounts, gets all the addresses it can find, matches them up and alerts people to each other's presence, without their knowledge or consent.

hm, it have never happened to me. I have a facebook account that I keep to keep up with RL people that only operate through facebook. As far as I can see, Facebook is indeed dodgy in many ways, but this never has happened to me.

If anyone links their LJ to their FB account, those boxes will be automatically checked when they reply to a public post. And, thanks to your code, they cannot see the boxes to uncheck them.

Oh, thank you! I thought that this can happen. because the feature is set up on their side, the fact that I hide can only mean that they can't uncheck it.

Anyways, as you I think this is not as big issue for me, but I can see how this can affect the others.