{"id":11333,"date":"2011-08-26T14:48:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T19:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/?p=11333"},"modified":"2023-12-30T07:07:49","modified_gmt":"2023-12-30T13:07:49","slug":"umm-hulu-why-are-you-publishing-my-viewing-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.friedyoda.com\/noisecast\/2011\/08\/umm-hulu-why-are-you-publishing-my-viewing-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Umm, Hulu, Why Are You Publishing My Viewing History?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s entirely possible I missed it. It happens! Sometimes things slip by my burning gaze. However, I was a little startled to see, as I watched another episode of Misfits, that a new button appeared on the Hulu player, asking who I would like to share this video with. The default option: Everyone. Everyone you say?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, everyone. As it turns out, Hulu has a public feed of all the shows you’ve watched. Provided you have a profile on Hulu, of course. And if you have Hulu Plus, you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will be as forthcoming as I can. I am unsure of exactly when this popped up. My feed goes back about a month, but it’s unclear if that’s when it started, or if it retroactively published the last month of my backlog. However, it’s worth noting that at no point have I clicked anything saying I wish to publish my activity for all the internet to see. Full disclosure, I share this account with another computer in my household. Everyone in my home who’s used it, though, also says they’ve never seen any such permissions box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would legitimately like to know. We’ve heard scattered responses, saying that this behavior has been in place for a while, and confirmed that public is the default behavior. We’ve reached out to Hulu for comment, but have not heard back at time of writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hulu, if it turns out you’re creating social features without users’ permission\u2014and crappy ones at that\u2014we are going to have problems. I’m one of three people I know who actually pay for Hulu Plus. The service is already of questionable value, and if it weren’t for my devotion to House reruns, I likely wouldn’t have it in the first place. This would be a bad time to alienate users with amateurish privacy policy changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Worried your binge-watching is public fodder? We discovered Hulu’s “share with everyone” default for watchlists. Did we agree to this?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":11334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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