Facebook Graph Search
What’s going to change on your Facebook experience
Facebook Graph Search is the new Facebook Search Engine. It's still a beta version and currently available only to limited US audiences.
Basically, Facebook Graph Search works by piecing information together according to key words such as ‘likes’, ‘political views’, etc.
Thanks to Graph Search, you can look up anything shared with you on Facebook, and others can find stuff you've shared with them, including content set to public.
A lot of people have already warned about the multiple possibilities provided by this new tool, but they focused on "likes”, "political views" or "religion" (but these things do not reveal so much about you, and they are usually already well protected).
In fact, Graph Search changes a more fundamental thing on the Facebook experience : the way people can scout out information on you.
With ‘Photos of ’, ‘Photos by’ or ‘Comments by ’ requests, Graph Search allow users to gather photos, comments, etc. you appeared in with a single sentence; whatever it’s hidden from your timeline or not.
What Graph Search changes radically is that your timeline is no longer the only way to get information on you.
Hidden or not from timeline, no matter.
Before Graph Search, the profile was the place where all the information about you was gathered. On your timeline, people can find the things you like, your political views, your photos, etc. When first concerns on threads to confidentiality showed up, people went to their settings and chose not to display this information on their profile. With the timeline introduction, this option became "hide from timeline". But these informations did not disappear. They were only hidden from timeline. If you're the only owner of the information, to hide from timeline is a good way do definitely hide information from others. If you choose to hide that you are interested in men, this information will definitely be hidden from everyone. But there is a lot of content that even hidden from timeline is not hidden from Facebook : it's the content that you share with others and that you don't "own" : comments and photos are the main things. For these kinds of information, hide from timeline is not relevant.
Your profile is no longer the only way to get information on you
As I said before, there is a lot of content on you that you don't personally own and as a consequence control. A good example is photos. You don't control the confidentiality of a photo you appeared in. The only things you can do is hide from your timeline or untag. A lot of people usually choose to hide from timeline rather than get untagged since it's much easier and less aggressive. Before Graph Search, it was a good way to hide these photos from others. If someone goes to your profile and clicks on the photos tab, he/she won't be able to see a photo you choose to hide even if you appeared in it. Of course, he/she can still see the photo if he/she go to the album where the photo is. But that suggested that they know where to search and considering all the possibilities, it was a quasi-impossible mission. Graph Search changes this. It gathers all the information available on you, hidden or not from timeline and it displays it with a single clic.
As a consequence, one can see all the photos in which you appeared (tagged) even if they are hidden from your timeline.
Some users sometimes chose to completely forbid access to their photos (even to their friends). This method is not relevant anymore. With a single search using the graph, one can have access to all the photos they appeared on. What is even more ironic is that is true even for your photos : you should rather use the graph search to see the photos you appeared in than the usual path, i.e. go to your profile and click on your photos.
A search on the graph is much easier, faster and it gives more information on you than going on your profile.
Graph Search and privacy
What does that change for privacy ?
Hide from timeline option is definitely not a good way to forbid access to your photos or to the comments you wrote. The only way to do so is to get untagged or to not comment. In a word, the only way to protect content from being seen by others is to delete it. For photos, to choose hide from timeline is no longer a good way to restrict access to these photos. To untag is the only solution which currently remains.
Graph Search, a new pillar
Graph Search override completely the "timeline hidden" protection. Graph Search can mainly do two things : data-mining at the macro-level, and privacy-destroying at the micro-level. Timeline is no longer the place to look information on you; you may have chosen hide from timeline. Thanks to Graph Search, with a single clic one can see all the content about you it is possible to have access to. Graph Search may be useful and it is certainly a new pillar of Facebook as Mark Zuckerberg said but it hurts privacy. Why ? What does "hide from timeline" mean if not "hide from others" ?
So the thing to do is either sign a petition for Facebook to create a new option "hide from Graph Search" or delete the content you don't want others to see.
