The above is a screengrab from Facebook (with names redacted to avoid further blushing) which highlights the futility of Facebook’s new frictionless sharing system, whereby – if the app is enabled – your viewing habits on certain sites are instantly broadcast to your Facebook friends.
The above incident is fairly self-explanatory but does suggest that users are unaware of just how the new system works and that greater privacy issues lurk beneath the surface. If this non-permission based sharing becomes de rigeur for the social web, viewing habits will change drastically and see a wave of NSFW derivations spread across content headlines:
- Not Safe For Family
- Not Safe for Significant Other
- Not Safe for Parents etc.
Browsing on the web is still – at least to your curated public audience – a largely anonymous activity. Sure, the service providers, data warehouses and Ad servers know what you are doing but your friends and family don’t and nor should they need to, within the bounds of taste, decency and legality.
