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Monday, December 21, 2009

"AlGORITHMS: Smarter Social Media Distinguishes Push from Pull"

Consumer groups recently complained to the Federal Communicatoins
Commission that Facebook reset its privacy settings to let people who are "not-friends" access previously "friend-only" information, but Intel claims that people want a new type of privacy setting that distinguishes between the "push" and "pull" of social media instead of "friend" versus "not-friend." Look for new approaches to privacy on social networks in 2010. R.C.J.



An Intel study finds that privacy settings at current social media sites are inadequate—that what people want most is for non-friends to see a more filtered view of them, one that pushes a carefully crafted image of them, while friends have unfettered access to the pull of more intimate details. Today, people have to take on different identities to maintain a range of privacy online, but smarter social media circumvents that need by offering a range of privacy settings—from push to pull—rather than just "friend" or "not friend." People perceive "friendship" on a spectrum from push to pull, according to Intel Labs' People and Practices Research Group (Beaverton, Ore.), which recently studied whether people could agree on what types of items were "worth posting" on social media sites.
Full Text: http://bit.ly/4oEGFQ