Your unsent messages can be read by Facebook

Question

Your unsent messages can be read by Facebook

The world’s largest Social network studies the messages that are written , but were not sent.

If you written a message on facebook but in the last moment , due to regret, changing your mind or doubt , and did not send the message. A common routine for any surfer, but the social network Facebook is echoed , albeit internally. Self-censorship is the ultimate object of analysis by the invention of Mark Zuckerberg. Things you do not say , but think first and then typed in the box dedicated to changing the state, also recorded on Facebook. Yes, so your unsent messages are read.

During the summer of 2012 Facebook kept all the ' failed states ' 3.9 million users. Facebook does not hide , for example, to compile many other data such as friend requests accepted than ever. The intent of the social network is to know your audience better, even if it means never record what is published , and it is included among treated as " service error " that users self-censorship.

Adam Kramer, Facebook data scientist , and Sauvik Das , Fellow during the summer of 2012 , are the authors of an analysis of 15 pages in that shed some interesting conclusions. For starters, considered " self-censorship " any updates over five characters not published once after 10 minutes. The document insists that the focus was on the HTML language and interactions with the forms, but not in the keywords or the kind of content that was never sent.

During the 17 days of the data collection phase , 71 % of users surveyed wrote at least one state, a comment or two , and did not published. On average , 4.52 and 3.2 wrote some sort of message but never sent it. Reasons for second guessing and changing your mind before you send a message contributed to many things such as political reasons , either not find affinity in the potential audience , or gender issues, or simply changing your mind.

They found that the chances are less to censor if it is a comment to a friend's status , but much more likely if a conversation is started in your own profile. The reason? According to the researchers is that more and more succinct understanding of the potential audience responses are given. At the same time , they noted that the level of censorship was much lower in the case of restricted participation groups, narrower and more affinity between participants.

This study is a version of the popular "abandoning the shopping cart " in ecommerce and has served , for example, for the service of Menlo Park improve its way of presenting the news. War of care and , consequently, the interaction is paramount to the development of Facebook.

"Our results indicate that 71 % of users have some level of self-censorship at the last minute," say the researchers, who attribute it to the theory of "perceived audience" by going to send your post or comment. " men censor more than women, and people who exercised more control over your audience, compared to those with a more diverse network in age and political ideas, which is less censorship. " They also conclude that the more young, less censorship and more friends of the opposite s*x, more self-censorship.

So there you have it, next time you write a message on facebook but decide not to send it to anyone, it gets stored anyways. If you don’t want your private thoughts being available to Facebook, keep them to yourself.