For context: I'm a silicon valley geek with a degree in computer science.
That said, I didn't find the facebook privacy settings page confusing. If your geek friend knows his way around virtual machines, it's certainly no more confusing than VM settings.
What I found incredibly obtuse was facebook *privacy.* Even after I'd set all my settings, when confronted with the actual UI, I felt frozen with paranoia that I really didn't know what was the visibility of anything I was seeing or doing - either for my own post, or someone else's post (say, if I were going to comment). Eventually I learned to use facebook filters (which are really just like LJ filters, except FB annoyingly makes you work a lot harder to attach them to a post). However, according to Facebook, <5% of their users ever used them. I wonder how many LJ users actually use LJ filters and how much we're the minority power users?
In this respect, I think this week's change is a big improvement, because of one change that's not getting a lot of notice: now, when I go to post an update, it clearly says "Share X with" and then a drop-down menu with a list of choices (friends, friends of friends, everyone, and importantly, all my groups). I still wish it showed the visibility of my friends' posts, but I'm a lot happier with how much easier it's gotten to specify (and be sure of) who's going to see a post I make.
I'm not sure I buy Rivka's skepticism about other people adding her to groups. That seems like kneejerk facebook paranoia to me. The only people who can add her are her friends - and it's not like her LJ friends can't add her to their LJ filters. The difference here is that she can decide to use those groups as filters too, if she wants - which might be the only thing that gives a prayer of pushing usage up beyond 5%. (I also read somewhere that if you leave a group, the friend that added you loses the ability to add you to other groups).
no subject
That said, I didn't find the facebook privacy settings page confusing. If your geek friend knows his way around virtual machines, it's certainly no more confusing than VM settings.
What I found incredibly obtuse was facebook *privacy.* Even after I'd set all my settings, when confronted with the actual UI, I felt frozen with paranoia that I really didn't know what was the visibility of anything I was seeing or doing - either for my own post, or someone else's post (say, if I were going to comment). Eventually I learned to use facebook filters (which are really just like LJ filters, except FB annoyingly makes you work a lot harder to attach them to a post). However, according to Facebook, <5% of their users ever used them. I wonder how many LJ users actually use LJ filters and how much we're the minority power users?
In this respect, I think this week's change is a big improvement, because of one change that's not getting a lot of notice: now, when I go to post an update, it clearly says "Share X with" and then a drop-down menu with a list of choices (friends, friends of friends, everyone, and importantly, all my groups). I still wish it showed the visibility of my friends' posts, but I'm a lot happier with how much easier it's gotten to specify (and be sure of) who's going to see a post I make.
I'm not sure I buy Rivka's skepticism about other people adding her to groups. That seems like kneejerk facebook paranoia to me. The only people who can add her are her friends - and it's not like her LJ friends can't add her to their LJ filters. The difference here is that she can decide to use those groups as filters too, if she wants - which might be the only thing that gives a prayer of pushing usage up beyond 5%. (I also read somewhere that if you leave a group, the friend that added you loses the ability to add you to other groups).