May 20th, 2007
I got some more Facebook invitations today. And, yesterday, when I signed up for about ten minutes, Facebook helpfully showed me the profiles of everyone in my email address book, telling me which ones are on Facebook and which ones aren’t. Not only did this freak me out because, hey, how does Facebook know who’s in my address book? Oh wait, it already knows my email password, why does this surprise me? But it also freaked me out because some of the people on that list are people I should never be on a social list with: professors, ex-boyfriends, employers. Yuck. I felt curiously violated – I never gave permission for Facebook to delve into my email account. And I couldn’t stop it.
I find Facebook to be a bit spooky. Not only does it know my email account password, and mine my email address book for contacts I have, but it has a privacy policy which is distinct in that it does not promise to never sell or share my private information. Every privacy policy I’ve seen online brags and brags about how they will never let other people see your information – but Facebook doesn’t do this. It says I can control what information appears on my Facebook page, but there is no mention at all about selling or sharing my information in other ways. And, for Facebook to really work, you need to tell it your real name – and it asks for birthdate information, and other demographic information that would be helpful to marketers and fraudsters alike.
Basically, I’ve decided Facebook is too Big Brother for me. Why would I put myself at the mercy of a shitty privacy policy for the spurious “convenience” of contacting my friends? I can email my friends. Or phone them. I admit there is a curiousity factor in looking up old acquaintances, but let’s face it, if I wanted to still be friends with those people, I would have kept in touch. Maybe I’ll make a fake profile so I can spy on people I know, but I suspect the thrill of this will wear off pretty quickly.
Facebook is like pancake mix. Pancake mix has exactly two less ingredients than making pancakes from scratch. This is spurious convenience with a fat price tag. It’s a scam. Just phone your friends. Or read their blogs! Because as far as I can tell, there is nothing intrinsically interesting or useful about Facebook. The only thing it has going for it is its popularity, which capitalized on our desire to be included in social things. In other words, Facebook is popular because it’s popular. How lame.
I always worry about stuff like that with things like Facebook… which is why I avoid them.
Glad you ‘got out’!
It knows your email account password because it asked you for it at some point. I remember it asking me when I signed up, to which I said “no, thanks, I’m not giving it to you”.
But Facebook has been pretty useful. It’s a social networking site that actually lets you network socially. I’ve created a group to try to find other road hockey players nearby and have got in touch with old friends online.
My blog will still by “my” main place, but when it comes to meeting people it’s nice to have a central meeting place and so far Facebook is the best one I’ve used. Myspace is garbage and Orkut just never really figured itself out.