Google Plus Circle Management

As Google+ Circles were so annoying, I did some experiments and research to find out a couple of ways to minimize the exposure. If one wants the highest publicity and wants to be included in other circles, this post many help you do the opposite. lol (so, please do the opposite)

Limit Visibility of the Circles You Are in:

1. Go to this page: https://www.google.com/settings/privacy?tab=4 (login required)

2. Find the following section and set the visibility:

(The following screen-shot shows google+ default setting)

 

Limit Shared Content:

1. Go to this page: https://www.google.com/settings/plus#  (login required)

2. Find the following section and decide which circle(s) can share your postings:

(The following screen-shot shows google+ default setting)

 Also Edit "Photos" section on the same page:

(The following screen-shot shows google+ default setting) 

 

These findings look not that much information, but it took quite a while to find the locations! 

Hope this will help.

I also sent a feedback to google wondering if there is anyway to prevent other people from adding  myself into their circles. I will update here if I hear anything from them.

Hope this helps! :)

Google +

So far I found two annoying things on Google+

1. Circling annoys hell out of me:

Anyone can add me in their circle and I will show up when someone else looks at their profile. -> This freaks me out effectively.
I have been trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening.  I will add this on this posting soon as I figure that out.

2. Photo Sharing:


I have a handful of Google+ friends and I did not know if I could see all of their pictures they have ever put on Google service. With my blurry vision, I was not able to see what on earth those were (thumb nails on my 11" laptop). So I randomly clicked a random picture (looked like sky + a red dot) without thinking. It was my colleague/friend's wife in the picture (I guess - sky was ocean and the red dot was her!!) and she was wearing a swim suit!!! And there was a pop-up window that made me go mad saying "Your photo preference has been saved." What the?????? So... all of a sudden my photo preference became looking at my friend's wife's pictures????? I got out of Google+ in less than a second feeling sabotaged...

Ugh... BTW I am writing on Google Blog right at this moment.

Help!!!!

Facebook Gone Wild before Google

After last weeks posting, I began to think about privacy again! and here is why I am concerned about privacy. This month, Google's privacy policy is discussed here and there. However, Google is not the first giant online service who changed its privacy policy when the users are "settled in."

Here is what facebook did from 2005 to 2011 re: their privacy policy.

A quick summary of FB privacy change 2005 - 2011 

***** 

2005: No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings. 

2006: …We understand you may not want everyone … to have the information you share on Facebook; … Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community … 

2007: … Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings… 

2009: Facebook is …to share your information with anyone you want. …You should review the default privacy settings and change them … Information set to “everyone” is publicly available …may be imported and exported by us and others …. The default privacy setting for certain types of information … are set to “everyone.” 

December 2009: … such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone…and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings. 

April 2010: When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. …The default privacy setting for certain types of information … are set to “everyone.”   

  
April 2011: …Facebook is about sharing information with others …. We share your information with third parties when we believe the sharing is permitted by you…

*****

I am sure they kept changing it after 2011. Please check FB's current privacy policy here.

As Google now has one privacy policy on tens of products of theirs. Small changes may make a big difference now. Will keep an eye on their privacy policy changes! 

The Trade-offs...

I remember back in 1990s when I was not this much wired, I enjoyed the time hanging out with friends without glancing at a smart-phone. I still remember waiting for a phone call from my friend in London in the middle of a night (and those moments still linger in my memory). Also, it was almost impossible to find static(?) web presence of  my real-life friends on the Internet, unless the friend was a geek with a developed website of her/his own.

Now, checking e-mails more than fourteen times a day, sending hundreds of text messages per month, twitting, facebooking (with all the friends around the world), updating the profile on linked in... now I think: "Is my life enriched by all the information?"

There are things that definitely benefit people.  I wait metro less than before. It is easier to locate an address. I feel more connected to the world. We have all kinds of mobile apps making our lives (in a way) easier...

However, I believe that most of the things are double edged swords. According to an e-mail statistics report, average number of corporate e-mail that one person receives per day is 75 (in 2010).  Seventy-Five "corporate" e-mails every single day per person!!! Some people may receive more than the average, and we all have to do "something" to clean up the inbox.

On social media platforms, everybody is following each other... we all know who is doing what. Also, some smart phones can trace our digital footprints and can tell what we were doing at certain time of a certain day. Not only we are busy updating ourselves and others, we are spending considerable amount of time doing all that, there also is practically no privacy.

Recently, "the right to be deleted" is discussed and also, in Europe, a new law(so called "cookie law") allows people to opt out cookies.  Will the U.S. give its citizens and taxpayers the right to be deleted in the near future? I don't want people to see my silly pictures after my death. Don't we also have right to be anonymous sometimes?

Here is an interesting posting explaining how our privacy is being sold with/without our knowledge.:

Beware of Lollipops from Strange Websites!

Are Social Media Monitoring Mainstream Media?

Are Social Media Monitoring Mainstream Media???

Maybe in part... ????
What I believe is that most of the social media can start stirring up certain issues, but one of the most critical leverage is still the mainstream media; major news channels, news papers, and so on.

(Benkler - from http://benkler.org/Face.html)

Even thought Benkler argues that blogs and other on-line media can do the role of the watchdog... (and he has pretty optimistic view... look at him in the picture! He looks very optimistic!! lol) well... even in his book, The Wealth of Networks, it is apparent that mainstream media played a critical role to leverage the movements. (Look at the graph on page 224 for Sinclair case and the diagram on page 234 for Diebold case of this pdf file (chapter 7 only).)

Not only in Benkler's book, but also in many other cases, mainstream media play more important roles than what we assume. Think about Occupy Wall street, Occupy DC, and some other incidents... although those cases were well known in the social media world, what if it was NEVER picked up by any of the mainstream media?

I believe it is hard to ignore when a majority of people get to know some events/incidents, but there still will be a huge difference depending on weather the event is picked up by major media outlets or not...

This may change, but for now, blogs and other social media outlets can be a source of news, but I wonder if they can really replace any the current mainstream media in the near future...

Just a thought. I may keep looking into this and write a paper????
Any other thoughts??