Well, that was fast. Just 48 hours after the FT flagged a loophole that “resharing” on Google+ could in a couple of clicks make a “limited” post visible to anyone, Google has announced a fix will be in place early next week.
The bug was small but significant, given the emphasis Google has placed on the Circles feature of its new social network, which is designed to give users more control about which of their groups of friends and acquaintances can see a photo or status update.
Kelly Ellis, a Google engineer, described the changes in a video on her Google+ page:
“We’re making changes all the time… Commenting and sharing on posts can always be disabled and the next time you post, you’ll see a tip that describes how to do this. And starting next week, limited posts will not be sharable publicly. This is really important to us. On Google+, you should be in control of who sees your posts.”
Google is also working on improving another usability issue, which can see a post that is commented or given a +1 by lots of friends rise to the top of your main “stream” again and again.
The question remains, however, over how far the privacy genie can be put back in the web’s social bottle. The FT’s Richard Waters and April Dembosky consider this issue in an analysis of Google’s challenge to Facebook:
“Online, there’s this temptation to think you can stop information spreading – you can’t,” says Jeff Jarvis, associate professor of journalism at the City University of New York and author of an upcoming book on the merits of online sharing.
The internet makes the sharing of information friction-free, according to Mr Jarvis. So even if you tell something only to a small group of friends, there’s no way to control how it is spread after that.
Continue reading: “Google in push to enter new social circles”
