Google Reader “shared items” provoking fury
Google has seen a new Reader feature spectacularly blow up in their faces after users furiously complained about their privacy being violated and Reader being turned into “another crappy social network”.
The controversial feature allows you to see the shared feed items being looked at and stored by your fellow Gmail / GTalk contacts. What is provoking the most anger is that Google automatically opted everyone in with no way to realistically opt out. Theoretically, the only way to stop people from seeing your shared feeds is to either delete the RSS feeds or delete the contact from your Gmail / GTalk lists - both of which are impractical for many Reader / Talk power-users, including myself. Especially if you rely on these applications for work.
So angry users took to the boards to strongly complain and demand that either Google switches off the feature, or at the very least give users the right to opt out.
But instead of instantly nipping the ill-feelings in the bud, Google only ended up fanning the flames by issuing a bland response. Their attitude was “it’s shared items, stupid! Shared as in everyone gets to see them!”. Some blogs even sided with that view while others said it wasn’t that bad. But it was the way in which this feature was steam-rollered in without consulting people first and the way you can’t opt out if you don’t like it which has got people riled. Even Google fans are shocked that Google doesn’t seem to care that people are upset. Mashable opined that perhaps Google’s patience with their users is running out.
For Google to say that “the shared feed has already been public for quite a long time so why are you over-reacting?” (not a direct quote) is actually quite misleading. Up until this new feature was rolled out, the shared URL was a secret and each Reader user could decide if they wanted to share their URL with people. So lots of people, including this user, were using the secret feed to share industry news and business initiative ideas with trusted colleagues. But now that Google has decided on their own initiative that these feeds are to be shared to the whole world, suddenly those “secret feeds” have been flung open to everyone - including business competitors. So it’s not hard to see why people are extremely angry.
Could this new feature cause Google to lose a lot of Reader users? Will the whole world come crashing down if the Big G doesn’t reverse course and scrap this pale imitation of a social network? Will Google finally get some of the hatred normally specially reserved for Bill Gates and anything Microsoft? Stay tuned.
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This is a pretty major goof on Google’s part. Obviously some people subscribed to some feeds on topics they want hidden from their other contacts.
It is a blatant disregard for privacy which could cause a lot of problems for some people.
Examples;
If your boss can see your feed and it has employment sites on it.
If you’re married and you have subscribed to personals
Google needs to lock this feature down and give their users control over their own information. I can’t see this problem dying down any other way - at the very least, it may kill Google Reader as an application.
As you have suggested, there are already two camps regarding this issue: one that was really annoyed, and another that didn’t see what was the harm…
I personally don’t see what’s the harm. The new feature only applies to the “public” feed, which is already an indiscriminate way for sharing articles with others. I acknowledge that the “shared feed” is obfuscated, and therefore it is difficult for unauthorized users to run into it by accident, but obfuscation is no replacement for real and secure protection. Once a person emails aways the URL to his or her public feed, then that person loses control over the URL, and therefore that person is forfeiting the right to privacy. If I shared my URL with friends A, B, C, then how can I be sure that they properly protected the URL and prevented users X, Y or Z from accessing it? Even worse, if the URL is compromised, then we can’t tell who leaked the URL and we can’t revoke the URL.
Because of all of that, I have always hesitated from adding any articles to my shared feed, and I didn’t understand what that feature would be useful for (other than feeling free to share with the whole world).
What would have been nice of Google is to allow me to set up multiple public feeds so that I can customize the access list on a per-public-feed basis. This way, I can share my technology articles with friends at work, and political articles with friends elsewhere (just an example).
What is wrong with this? Is there a privacy disclaimer on these shared feeds? If there were, I am not sure they would be shared. If something is considered as being private, confidential, embarrassing or proprietary why would anyone want to publish it to an internet site to begin with. Just as I have been taught about e-mail, never send anything that you would not want broadcast to the general public. This information is sent TO Google and is stored on GOOGLE OWNED SERVERS and without any disclaimers that the information will be confidential. Amazing how people carelessly mishandle information and want to blame someone else for something that, apparently, should not have been published in a public, or somewhat public forum, in the first place.
Unfortunately, we still don’t even know exactly what Google stated to this angry user because the user has published talk salad here.
It seems pretty obvious to me that “shared” equals “public”, but Google’s response is rather audacious - “The problem isn’t our software, it’s that you users are using it incorrectly!”
If you are using something free, I don’t see how there can be any expectation of privacy.
I use free e-mail services, knowing that I don’t own the servers, and at any time an admin could read anything I send. You get what you pay for.