Pavel Durov on new privacy settings
I decided that many would be interested in the answer of Pavel Durov to users' indignation at the changes in the privacy of the block of friends. The text of the note he wrote today is below:
This text is written for people who are interested in the root causes and the course of the current changes in the privacy settings of VKontakte.
The reason for the rapid rise of social networks like VKontakte was hardly a lack of tools for communication between people. Before the emergence of social networks, there were many means for communication. In 2005, there were numerous instant messengers, blogs, forums, and email services in Runet. All of them provided excellent opportunities for personal and public communication - often better-quality than messaging features in some of the future social networks.
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It is hardly the reason for the success of social networks lies in the extensive range of services provided by them. At the beginning of its development, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki did not offer such services as News, Applications, Video recordings, Groups, Meetings, Statuses. Nevertheless, even without them, these resources were able to quickly outrun competing means of communication, such as forums, blogs and instant messengers. Initially, social networks offered only personal pages with lists of friends and the ability to send a personal message, as well as the simplest search for a person by their real name. These features were enough to make social networks popular.
Therefore, the initial set of functions, which was sufficient to ensure the popularity of social networks, can be summarized as follows:
1. Personal Pages
2. Personal messages
3. Search for personal pages by real name
4. Friends lists on personal pages
At the same time, the first two points were not unique to social networks, since profiles and personal messages existed on many forums, blog platforms and instant messengers. The unique features of social networks like VKontakte are the real names and lists of friends.
For a long time, Internet users preferred not to indicate their real names, and people could hardly find their acquaintances on the Internet. VKontakte rules initially insisted that users indicate real names, and there is still an easy pre-moderation to change the name. The meaning of such restrictions is not to restrict the freedom of users - freedom of choice is an integral feature of the Internet - but to preserve one of the two distinctive features of the resource, - features that make its existence meaningful.
Users who insist on their right to privacy and the possibility of indicating a fictitious name on a social network like VKontakte, lose the main thing: if everyone did the same, the social network would gradually cease to be interesting, including to them. Note that this thinking does not contradict the freedom of choice, since the user can choose on the Internet any means of communication, including one that does not imply an indication of the real name or the public list of friends.
Otherwise, we would have to admit that all Internet resources somehow restrict the basic rights of their users. For example, it could be stated that Wikipedia restricts the freedom of speech of its participants, since in articles they can only state unreliable reliable facts. But if Wikipedia articles could consist of the personal opinions of its participants, this resource would hardly be of any interest to anyone as it is today. Similar considerations can be extended to a social network like VKontakte, in which all users have hidden their real names, and instead of photos they use extraneous pictures — she would lose some of her meaning.
However, if we set the task to choose the more important of the two unique features of social networks - real names and lists of friends - then I would choose the list of friends. The rise of American social networks, Friendster and MySpace, was not hindered by the lack of a requirement for specifying real names, and the ultra-popular Twitter service, which many people call a social network, is developing at a rapid pace without requiring you to specify real user names and search for them. Of the entire set of features that the first mass social networks like MySpace offered the world, only public friends lists were really new. We should also dwell on the open nature of these lists. The publicity of the lists of friends was the initial innovation of these networks, since the lists of friends for personal use existed for a decade before this kind of private contact lists in e-mail services, messaging services like ICQ and MSN, finally on SIM-cards and in the memory of cell phones. One of the reasons why ICQ or mobile operators could not and cannot become social networks is the initial privacy of the contact lists of their users and subscribers. Social networks themselves owe their take-off to the changed notion of the lowest possible level of confidentiality and no need to follow outdated standards.
Interestingly, a similar reason was due to the rise in popularity of the microblogging service Twitter, which essentially offered to communicate in the form of public statuses, which previously belonged to the private sphere. As the society revises the constantly out-of-date ideas about personal and public, new social start-ups will appear. Changes in the privacy status of VKontakte in February of this year are a step towards reflecting shifting standards.
So, the publicity of the lists of friends is the only characteristic feature of social networks, without which the network becomes another instant messenger like ICQ. At the same time, until yesterday, the vast majority of users hid a list of their friends from everyone.
In 2006, you could go to your VKontakte page, go from a friend list displayed under your photo to a friend’s page, continue to follow his friends - and continue to explore the world of social connections almost endlessly, establishing new acquaintances and expanding your social circle.
However, as the possibilities of privacy expanded since the end of 2007, the fashion for maximum closeness, which was mistaken by many as a sign of elitism, began to spread among users. As a result, most VKontakte users have hidden their friends' lists from absolutely all users, turning the main social component of the service into regular contact lists, like lists of this kind in email and ICQ. Only 11% of VKontakte users have kept the original privacy setting for friend lists that are visible to everyone. This situation contrasts not only with the first months of the existence of VKontakte, but also with the initial idea of the service.
As the dynamics of the development of social networks shows, the ability to completely hide the lists of friends is not basic for such services. So, in Odnoklassniki there is only a paid opportunity to hide such lists from non-users, and in such social networks as Facebook, this opportunity is traditionally hidden away so deeply in settings that it is used only by an absolute minority of users. Thus, the very need for privacy on the complete list of friends is overvalued and is not supported by the statistics of early VKontakte and other social networks.
In some cases, the desire to hide the complete list of friends is due only to the desire for secrecy for the sake of its intended status, or outdated fears and irrelevant views.
At the same time, social networks for many people have become a reflection of their real life, and the need to hide certain users from the list of their contacts to prevent their acquaintance and exchange information between them in some cases may be due to objective reasons. This applies not only to non-integral natures who are not ready to advertise the presence of certain persons in their social circle and lead a double life. More importantly, maximum openness can damage the business goals of people who, for example, do not want to publicly have business contacts with other market participants.
To meet the social needs discussed above, VKontakte offers to hide up to 15 friends from its list, leaving the lists themselves open. An extensive study confirmed that the limit of 15 people fully meets the objective need for secrecy for 98% of users. For other users this year, the Bookmark service was reformed, which is able to provide the functionality of a classic - visible only to the owner - contact list.
Testing has shown that the Bookmark service can satisfy the needs of those 2% of users who need to make massive lists of business contacts. This is due to the ability to set privacy on receiving personal messages only from friends and friends of friends, as well as the ability to respond to private messages to all users, regardless of their privacy settings to receive personal messages.
Social links of other users - the main way to expand the circle of communication and search for people. The openness of the lists of friends is the only fundamental feature that distinguishes social networks from all other services for communication (email, SMS, IM), where traditionally there were only hidden contact lists. The possibility of complete confidentiality of information of this kind puts social networks on a par with other services and ultimately destroys their uniqueness and value to users.
Go
For this reason, the VKontakte administration decided to bring the resource closer to the original plan and make all the lists of friends public. Respecting the right of users to privacy, we suggested that all users who go to their VK pages select up to 15 friends whose acquaintance they for one reason or another do not want to advertise. It is important to note that before the user selects these friends and saves the changes, the list of his friends does not become public. In addition, the user can close the window with the selection of secret friends without saving, in order to transfer a number of contacts from the list of friends to Bookmarks before the list becomes publicly available. This transitional period will last for a month, after which the old privacy settings on the friends list will no longer be valid.
Like other resonant changes of the last year, this innovation will increase the social value of VKontakte for tens of millions of users. The amount of available information about social connections for the average user has increased 10 times.
Every day, including weekends, VKontakte innovations are introduced that reflect changes in a rapidly changing world. As a result, VKontakte attendance is not only growing, but, as statistics have shown for the past month, it increases the growth rate compared to previous years. Decisiveness in introducing changes allows VKontakte to remain a relevant tool, while more conservative methods of communication, fearing one step or another to provoke an outflow of users, fade into the background.
Go
We will continue to respond to changes in the world around us, getting rid of functions that have become irrelevant and responding to new, ever-present demands of society. Go
This text is written for people who are interested in the root causes and the course of the current changes in the privacy settings of VKontakte.
I. The main reasons for the popularity of social networks
The reason for the rapid rise of social networks like VKontakte was hardly a lack of tools for communication between people. Before the emergence of social networks, there were many means for communication. In 2005, there were numerous instant messengers, blogs, forums, and email services in Runet. All of them provided excellent opportunities for personal and public communication - often better-quality than messaging features in some of the future social networks.
')
It is hardly the reason for the success of social networks lies in the extensive range of services provided by them. At the beginning of its development, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki did not offer such services as News, Applications, Video recordings, Groups, Meetings, Statuses. Nevertheless, even without them, these resources were able to quickly outrun competing means of communication, such as forums, blogs and instant messengers. Initially, social networks offered only personal pages with lists of friends and the ability to send a personal message, as well as the simplest search for a person by their real name. These features were enough to make social networks popular.
Therefore, the initial set of functions, which was sufficient to ensure the popularity of social networks, can be summarized as follows:
1. Personal Pages
2. Personal messages
3. Search for personal pages by real name
4. Friends lists on personal pages
At the same time, the first two points were not unique to social networks, since profiles and personal messages existed on many forums, blog platforms and instant messengers. The unique features of social networks like VKontakte are the real names and lists of friends.
Ii. Real usernames as one of two reasons for the success of Russian social networks.
For a long time, Internet users preferred not to indicate their real names, and people could hardly find their acquaintances on the Internet. VKontakte rules initially insisted that users indicate real names, and there is still an easy pre-moderation to change the name. The meaning of such restrictions is not to restrict the freedom of users - freedom of choice is an integral feature of the Internet - but to preserve one of the two distinctive features of the resource, - features that make its existence meaningful.
Users who insist on their right to privacy and the possibility of indicating a fictitious name on a social network like VKontakte, lose the main thing: if everyone did the same, the social network would gradually cease to be interesting, including to them. Note that this thinking does not contradict the freedom of choice, since the user can choose on the Internet any means of communication, including one that does not imply an indication of the real name or the public list of friends.
Otherwise, we would have to admit that all Internet resources somehow restrict the basic rights of their users. For example, it could be stated that Wikipedia restricts the freedom of speech of its participants, since in articles they can only state unreliable reliable facts. But if Wikipedia articles could consist of the personal opinions of its participants, this resource would hardly be of any interest to anyone as it is today. Similar considerations can be extended to a social network like VKontakte, in which all users have hidden their real names, and instead of photos they use extraneous pictures — she would lose some of her meaning.
Iii. Public lists of friends as the main reason for the success of social networks
However, if we set the task to choose the more important of the two unique features of social networks - real names and lists of friends - then I would choose the list of friends. The rise of American social networks, Friendster and MySpace, was not hindered by the lack of a requirement for specifying real names, and the ultra-popular Twitter service, which many people call a social network, is developing at a rapid pace without requiring you to specify real user names and search for them. Of the entire set of features that the first mass social networks like MySpace offered the world, only public friends lists were really new. We should also dwell on the open nature of these lists. The publicity of the lists of friends was the initial innovation of these networks, since the lists of friends for personal use existed for a decade before this kind of private contact lists in e-mail services, messaging services like ICQ and MSN, finally on SIM-cards and in the memory of cell phones. One of the reasons why ICQ or mobile operators could not and cannot become social networks is the initial privacy of the contact lists of their users and subscribers. Social networks themselves owe their take-off to the changed notion of the lowest possible level of confidentiality and no need to follow outdated standards.
Interestingly, a similar reason was due to the rise in popularity of the microblogging service Twitter, which essentially offered to communicate in the form of public statuses, which previously belonged to the private sphere. As the society revises the constantly out-of-date ideas about personal and public, new social start-ups will appear. Changes in the privacy status of VKontakte in February of this year are a step towards reflecting shifting standards.
Iv. Changing the attitudes of users to the privacy of the list of friends on VK
So, the publicity of the lists of friends is the only characteristic feature of social networks, without which the network becomes another instant messenger like ICQ. At the same time, until yesterday, the vast majority of users hid a list of their friends from everyone.
In 2006, you could go to your VKontakte page, go from a friend list displayed under your photo to a friend’s page, continue to follow his friends - and continue to explore the world of social connections almost endlessly, establishing new acquaintances and expanding your social circle.
However, as the possibilities of privacy expanded since the end of 2007, the fashion for maximum closeness, which was mistaken by many as a sign of elitism, began to spread among users. As a result, most VKontakte users have hidden their friends' lists from absolutely all users, turning the main social component of the service into regular contact lists, like lists of this kind in email and ICQ. Only 11% of VKontakte users have kept the original privacy setting for friend lists that are visible to everyone. This situation contrasts not only with the first months of the existence of VKontakte, but also with the initial idea of the service.
V. Objective necessity of the existence of privacy on the lists of friends
As the dynamics of the development of social networks shows, the ability to completely hide the lists of friends is not basic for such services. So, in Odnoklassniki there is only a paid opportunity to hide such lists from non-users, and in such social networks as Facebook, this opportunity is traditionally hidden away so deeply in settings that it is used only by an absolute minority of users. Thus, the very need for privacy on the complete list of friends is overvalued and is not supported by the statistics of early VKontakte and other social networks.
In some cases, the desire to hide the complete list of friends is due only to the desire for secrecy for the sake of its intended status, or outdated fears and irrelevant views.
At the same time, social networks for many people have become a reflection of their real life, and the need to hide certain users from the list of their contacts to prevent their acquaintance and exchange information between them in some cases may be due to objective reasons. This applies not only to non-integral natures who are not ready to advertise the presence of certain persons in their social circle and lead a double life. More importantly, maximum openness can damage the business goals of people who, for example, do not want to publicly have business contacts with other market participants.
Vi. 15 secret friends and bookmarks service as a balance between privacy and openness
To meet the social needs discussed above, VKontakte offers to hide up to 15 friends from its list, leaving the lists themselves open. An extensive study confirmed that the limit of 15 people fully meets the objective need for secrecy for 98% of users. For other users this year, the Bookmark service was reformed, which is able to provide the functionality of a classic - visible only to the owner - contact list.
Testing has shown that the Bookmark service can satisfy the needs of those 2% of users who need to make massive lists of business contacts. This is due to the ability to set privacy on receiving personal messages only from friends and friends of friends, as well as the ability to respond to private messages to all users, regardless of their privacy settings to receive personal messages.
Social links of other users - the main way to expand the circle of communication and search for people. The openness of the lists of friends is the only fundamental feature that distinguishes social networks from all other services for communication (email, SMS, IM), where traditionally there were only hidden contact lists. The possibility of complete confidentiality of information of this kind puts social networks on a par with other services and ultimately destroys their uniqueness and value to users.
Go
For this reason, the VKontakte administration decided to bring the resource closer to the original plan and make all the lists of friends public. Respecting the right of users to privacy, we suggested that all users who go to their VK pages select up to 15 friends whose acquaintance they for one reason or another do not want to advertise. It is important to note that before the user selects these friends and saves the changes, the list of his friends does not become public. In addition, the user can close the window with the selection of secret friends without saving, in order to transfer a number of contacts from the list of friends to Bookmarks before the list becomes publicly available. This transitional period will last for a month, after which the old privacy settings on the friends list will no longer be valid.
VII. The consequence of the privacy reform of the list of friends and other innovations on VK
Like other resonant changes of the last year, this innovation will increase the social value of VKontakte for tens of millions of users. The amount of available information about social connections for the average user has increased 10 times.
Every day, including weekends, VKontakte innovations are introduced that reflect changes in a rapidly changing world. As a result, VKontakte attendance is not only growing, but, as statistics have shown for the past month, it increases the growth rate compared to previous years. Decisiveness in introducing changes allows VKontakte to remain a relevant tool, while more conservative methods of communication, fearing one step or another to provoke an outflow of users, fade into the background.
Go
We will continue to respond to changes in the world around us, getting rid of functions that have become irrelevant and responding to new, ever-present demands of society. Go
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/121206/
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