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The Facebook privacy kerfuffle
Sat 01 May 2010 02:26:47 PM UTC — Deborah S.
Once again, Facebook is in the middle of another privacy kerfuffle. This time it centers around the information that you are sharing and the kind of information that other people can share about you.
There are two issues to Facebook's new social services. The first and tamer of the two is the introduction of the "Like" button, a replacement for the 'become a fan' button. The like button appears on blogs, online retailers and news sites and lets visitors show their approval and share content back to their Facebook friends with one click.
When you "Like" a page, it will appear in your profile, and you will appear on the site's page as a person who likes them. You can "Like" WOT now by clicking the button on the right hand side of this page.
The second one creating much of the backlash, is the social network's new 'Instant Personalization' service that allows websites to personalize site features to an individual users' tastes. For example, if you "Like" several musical artists, then Facebook's beta Pandora music site may recommend streaming radio stations that feature them. Doesn't sound so bad, does it?
But many privacy advocates, and a few U.S. senators don't like the way Facebook is handling user data. How do you feel about it? Make sure you vote in the WOT poll.
Here are some instructions to disable 'Instant Personalization'
WOT could also use some improvement?
Full disclosure :
1) I have been telling people to avoid Facebook (and sometimes helping people set their Facebook privacy settings) since Facebook existed. I do not use Facebook.
2) I am a WOT newbie
3) I think WOT is a great idea but the concept needs a bit of work?
I added WOT to my web site, tried it for a week and then removed it. On my blog I have a blog post that explains how I installed it. Today, I updated the blog post with the six reasons why I removed WOT. So (for now) there is just a link on my blog that allows people to view my WOT scorecard with a single click.
I would like to see WOT break the ratings into 3 parts.
First : a technical rating based on scanning software. This is much less subjective and very important. Most people are - above all - concerned about the technical safety of a web site. Opinions are "nice to have". For instance, Norton SafeWeb and McAfee SiteAdvisor do regular technical scans.
Second : Have a base rating based on a review by someone qualified. Random user opinions are really not that helpful - especially for smaller web sites. In other words, big web sites don't need your ratings - it's the smaller and newer web sites that need WOT ratings to build trust.
Third : the user rating scorecard. If the user rating scorecard became very different than your base rating (above) then the scorecard would automatically be flagged for another review by a qualified person.
Fourth : User comments section. I found many comments of one single word. IMHO it should not be possible to blast a web site or support a web site with a comment that provides absolutely no reasons for the opinion. I flagged a couple of these comments but they shouldn't have been there is the first place. So, it might be a good idea to refuse any comment of less than 25 words.
I hope this helps!
If you wish to read my 6 reasons for removing WOT rating circles from my blog then you can Search for "Namke Productivity Add the WOT Web of Trust to your Wordpress blog".
And : a few WOT ratings would be appreciated! Right now, despite Google PageRank of 2/10 and rising Alexa ratings on my 3 year old web site I still show up in WOT as a little gray circle.
Thanks for your consideration!
May all beneficial wishes come true in beneficial ways!
re: emsjuwel.com
emsjuwel.com
This blog topic is not about your website, or your misunderstandings about what WOT is, or how to incorrectly display a scorecard URL on one of your pages.
There is a Forum, where you could post to carry out discussions.
There is a Wiki where, after reading all of the information on the Support page, you can gather even more information as to "what" WOT is, "how" WOT works, and "why." it is not like SA or NSW.
Re:
First : a technical rating based on scanning software. This is much less subjective and very important. Most people are - above all - concerned about the technical safety of a web site. Opinions are "nice to have". For instance, Norton SafeWeb and McAfee SiteAdvisor do regular technical scans.
It is used together with the experiences of users.Users can be more flexible and react quicker if a site is contamined or clean. Also malware can be hidden from Anti-Malware Search Bots
Have a base rating based on a review by someone qualified.
Who is qualified? And if you mean professional, who will pay them?
So, it might be a good idea to refuse any comment of less than 25 words
You do not need 25 words to express your opinion. Although some people don´t understand it even with 50000 words.So it should be your choice if you think your comments explains your rating..
Blueberrycake Level Member of the WOT Community
Thanks for the feedback
Hi!
Just a couple of comments from a newbie.
As you know, every service has a terms of use, etc. After a few dozen of these it can get very tiring trying to figure out how each service works.
Here's my suggestion (and one that I would suggest to any service these days).
Suggestion 1:
When a user signs up then it might be a good idea to require that they watch a couple of introductory videos before they can sign up. In other words, a person who wants to be a WOT member would need to watch 10 minutes of video explaining the service as part of the signup process. It doesn't matter if the videos are available for public viewing. They would still have to watch them as part of the signup process. A process like this would have been a big help to me.
Suggestion 2:
To the question : Who is qualified? A person is qualified if they have training. So, it might be nice if WOT broke people into users (who just use the toolbar, etc) and qualified reviewers (according to WOT's own criteria). A short online course with a little test at the end would ensure that people who are reviewing sites know what is expected of them.
Suggestion 3:
About the comment length : I have the impression that some people just blast little one-word comments onto the sites to get their links in there. Perhaps it would be a good idea to let people make comments but NOT create a link to their sites (for instance, I do this on my web site). This would weed out the link spammers automatically and it would not inconvenience anybody. WOT members can communicate directly with each other if they have questions.
So : I know that this isn't exactly the right forum but I did want to reply to the existing comments directly.
Thanks for your patience!
May all beneficial wishes come true in beneficial ways!
May be very risky
To use right now, to me i think the facebook is getting more dangerous a year. But I can take it as long as I can and if I can't take it anymore, I'll deactivate my account.
Facebook is a steaming pile anyway.
I decided against using Facebook when they started spamming me with "invites," within which they demonstrated a very clear pattern of data gathering about me, as a non member. None of these "latest controversies" about FB surprise me in the slightest.
If I ever decide to use Facebook, it will be with all or mostly false info. FB isn't trustworthy, end of story IMHO.