from the "i can't believe i have to explain this" department

[jazzfish]

The ability to lock your posts to a subset of your readers creates an expectation, and culture, of privacy. The ability to broadcast comments made in locked posts breaks that expectation and defies the norms of that culture.

Telling people "you shouldn't put anything anywhere on the internet you don't want someone else to read" is blaming the victim. The weaker version, "if you don't trust people not to abuse this then don't friend them," is still blaming the victim. Don't do it.

Comments

[jazzfish]

No, not directed at you at all! This was a reaction against posts and comments by other people. I've definitely appreciated our discussion.

In comments at DW, coraa provides an excellent example of the "distinction between 'public' and 'publicized.'" I can see where this is a place where it's possible for reasonable people to disagree, provided those people agree that, while it's maybe foolish to talk about your coworkers in a busy street, it's flat-out /wrong/ (or, charitably, horribly mistaken) for someone to broadcast it.

I really really hope they're listening and making changes based on user feedback (the tab order fix is a small positive sign). I've seen mention of this possibly being a result of a contract between FB/Twitter and LJ; that would explain why a) there's absolutely no 'disable for my journal' option, and b) even if you don't have it enabled you can't get rid of the %&$ check boxes without resorting to CSS hackery. I'm trying to reserve judgement for another week.