Gawker, under the heading “Things We Actually Like“, links to Matt McKeon’s elegant visualization of The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook. Click on the link to view, but I’ll give you a spoiler: Discretion is not a key component of Facebook’s future monetization plans.
The thing is, I am relatively old (54), asocial, and technologically challenged. Also, I picked up most of my writing and interpersonal skills in a hyperliterate subculture (sf fandom) where we learned the dangers of oversharing even in limited-membership forums with hardcopy distributions measured in double digits. Having discovered at an impressionable age that the considerable limits of twilltone and ditto technology could not protect me from knowing more than I cared to about a new acquaintance’s sexual peccadillos and/or pop-culture enthusiasms, I have never felt much impulse to join any internet-based “social technology” more advanced than Yahoo Groups.
On the other hand, Facebook seems to have crossed some sociological threshold that earlier incarnations like MySpace never approached. “Everybody” is on Facebook, because it’s assumed that sooner or later everyone will “need” Facebook. I am obviously not Mark Zuckerberg’s dream target — if I wanted to be in touch with my high school classmates I wouldn’t have avoided all those reunions, and my job skills are not the sort for which HR departments websurf — but I’m genuinely curious as to how many people here actually do consider their Facebook accounts a modern essential.
To phrase it another way: What kind of violation of trust or privacy would it take for you to give up your Facebook account?
Yutsano
The ones that are already in place. There is no such thing as true privacy on Facebook. You can try to block as much information as possible, but if Facebook decides to sell that information (and it becomes their property as soon as you disclose it) you have no recourse. Also there is no such thing as true deletion from Facebook. Once it’s on there it stays period. Between those two factoids, it makes me very leery of joining them. FWIW MySpace has similar policies in place, so it’s not just a Facebook only issue.
spudvol
Implementing talking sheep in Farmville should send most of the Tea Partiers scurrying.
de stijl
My question is the obverse of Anne’s.
Currently, I am not on Facebook, but am feeling the pressure via friend requests. Should I set up an account and why?
Mark S.
Huh, I have absolutely no intention of ever getting on Facebook. I find the whole thing creepy as hell.
Yutsano
@de stijl: I am also getting a tremendous amount of pressure to join Facebook. Then I watched the South Park episode about it. That pretty much scared me off the idea for awhile. I ran through a debate with wifey and FH # 1 about joining (they’re both on but limited users) but I’m still waffling towards no.
thejoz
I joined it when it was only joinable by college students.
They have taken away a shitload of things in terms of privacy and exclusivity.
Yet I am still on it, and as of now, have no plans to delete it.
Why?
Because it’s what “everyone” uses. It is what my friends are on, and I want to be able to communicate with them. That is the way people are doing things now, and while that is probably not a very good excuse for a lot of people it’s good enough for me right now.
If/when something else comes along that allows me to do the same things on Facebook but without the bullshit of Facebook, I’ll be there, along with “everyone”.
And then that asshole CEO will want to make more money, and etc etc.
We’re the unwashed masses, remember? We’re getting screwed no matter what. Might as well try to enjoy it.
eco2geek
Since you blog here, you’re clearly neither asocial nor technologically challenged. :-)
I, too, wonder why people “need” a Facebook page. My sister describes it as a way to keep up with the nieces, who also have Facebook pages.
I’m not so sure that people care that much about privacy any more. Most of my co-workers don’t seem to have many aspects of their lives they won’t casually discuss with each other over their cubicle walls. About the only thing that’s taboo is sex.
Jon
My company (at the time) was one of the first ten non-edu’s allowed into Facebook. I went along because at the time, one of my jobs was riding herd on campus sales reps, and I figured one more avenue of contact wouldn’t hurt.
The big problem with Facebook is that they presented themselves as the safe and secure way to share your life with your friends online – and then started to roll back the protection once they were able to monetize that information. Previous assurances are no longer operative, as it seems like every policy change resets all your controls to the most public settings – and everything’s opt-out rather than opt-in, of course.
Here’s the other problem. I have two degrees, I’ve been in high tech for over a decade, my friends all think I’m brilliant – and it took me HOURS to get all the privacy settings right. Facebook does a hell of a job making it damn near impossible for you to do anything to lock yourself down, and they’re obviously counting on the indifference and impatience of others to prevent more people opting out.
The big thing to note is that the anti-privacy landslide has really picked up steam in the last six month, and shows no signs of slowing, so if you’re wondering if now’s the time to blow it up – you’re not alone.
Yutsano
@eco2geek:
That’s mostly because of HR rules, and if your work is anything like mine that rule is not very well enforced. You’re right in that my co-workers will say just about anything about their lives. I choose not to be so forthcoming so I’m considered this big mystery. I’m not even out at work, even though I don’t think I would have much trouble. If I got a Facebook page that little fact would definitely not be personal anymore.
Comrade Luke
Fuck. Another Aceh earthquake.
Cassidy
Very simply, Facebook provides the forum. It is the user who must maintain privacy. If you want to keep the purchase of your new sex swing private, then don’t post it.
steve
I’m 53. I joined Facebook about two years ago and did so very grudgingly; my friends wouldn’t stop pestering me about it. I filled in the bare minimum of personal information in my profile (essentially my name, city, and where I work) and did not upload a photo of myself. I almost never fill in my status and until recently I had the “wall” disabled. I finally activated it after a family member complained, but everyone except family and a few close friends are locked out of it. All of my privacy options are set to the maximum possible level.
Despite all this, Facebook feels like a massive assault on my personal boundaries. It is constantly cyber-prodding me to announce what I’m doing, add more friends, reconnect with existing friends, add details to my profile, etc.
What would it take to get me to flee Facebook? Not much. If just one of the rather flimsy privacy provisions were eliminated (for example, if the high school girlfriend I’ve blocked was suddenly given access to my email address) I’d be out of there so fast the air would crackle.
Spiffy McBang
@Cassidy: The problem is that the way Facebook works still appears to imply some level of privacy that doesn’t actually exist, on top of the fact they’ve screwed over long-time users by rolling back privacy settings that in fact did exist. That’s wholly on them.
That said, there’s a reason I made my Facebook profile with a fake name and bullshit information. The default assumption for people should be that anything they put online could be found by the entire world at some point, and they’d better be ok with it.
@steve: You can shut off the messages that come to you without too much hassle in the profile. My dad used to spam my roommate and I with so much nonsense that we had no choice but to shut that option down.
joel hanes
Already happened.
I disabled my account in Feb; since then, the unilateral no-notice changes to privacy settings that were previously-chosen by users have convinced me that I’ll never be going back.
Now I’m about ready to tell FaceBook to delete my data. I’m no longer convinced that they will do so, or that I will know or have any recourse if they do not.
And that’s why I’m doing it.
Mark S.
@steve:
Jesus, you’re 53 and you had to block a former high school girlfriend? That’s some psychotic persistence.
fucen tarmal
all i can say about facebook is, thank god i gave them a fake name when i signed up, i have had several “enterprising” people cross over from online communities of special interest, to post references to my facebook “name” . sure i carry the charade out, channel my would be sense of violation into the virtual world of, as if i were that stupid….needless to say, simply to cover the real secret of my secret identity.
based on these experiences, and the seemingly innocuous info that i gave out, more like references to interests etc….
that marked me as said person, i would never put my real name into the member field..its confusing, but proper anonymity requires many a nom de internet, and there are many a people who make this security necessary, even for a random and relatively unnote worthy person such as myself.
here is the test, imagine you were to become suddenly newsworthy, would you want to have to remember all of the places your name might be, to keep prying eyes away?
its not like i say anything all that bad, or caustic online, i just prefer to have some degree of unconcern for how some people might take some things. what quaintly used to be called privacy.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
I don’t know about violations or trust, I just treat everything on FB as open to everyone, everywhere, and measure my comments accordingly. I mostly use it make quips and share photos or things that strike me as funny — I don’t disguise my left-wing opinions, but I leave my more incendiary thoughts for other places. Like Balloon Juice, for instance.
Since I allow absolutely ANYONE to be my friend — friends from times past, tangential co-workers, close working associates, real friends, potential employers, recruiters, the woman who cuts my hair, the people who sometimes sit for my dog, people I’ve never even met but who share some weird common interest — I just make sure that my statements are things I wouldn’t care being reported in my local newspaper and beyond. It’s a reflection of my absolute public face, and if the world wants to judge me for (for instance) making a statement about the lack of regulations that led to the BP disaster, I don’t care.
Do I consider FB an essential? Kind of. It’s useful for keeping up conversations with all sorts of people in my distant, near, or immediate past. Do I feel weird having different levels of privacy in my life? Not really. There are things I won’t share even with my wife, and I’m totally committed to her.
eco2geek
@Yutsano: True. Seems like the bigger the organization, the more people can get away with.
(It’s a good thing that talking about sex at work is taboo; otherwise, peoples’ conversations would be even more distracting than they are now. I need to do what the girl in the cube next to me did and get some noise-canceling headphones.)
DarrenG
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
I think this gets it exactly right.
My main rule with any online social network is to never give out information that I don’t want public to organizations that have no serious legal or financial disincentive against sharing anything I give them.
Facebook can be a useful tool if you always keep this rule in mind and assume they are going to try and make a buck off everything you say, do, or voluntarily disclose.
And just wait until more people realize how much of their online activities are being tracked and sold by other companies through tracking cookies, URL collection, and such…
Yutsano
@eco2geek: It’s funny, because if I used noise cancelling headphones at work I’d be lost. We rely too much on other calls coming in to ignore what’s happening around us. It’s annoying if you’re not used to it.
Mark S.
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
I always assumed you were using your real name here.
MaximusNYC
It’s an essential for now — I keep in touch with dozens of friends, including people I see regularly and others I haven’t seen in years.
I’ve long kept some of my FB info (including my status updates, many of which are highly political) hidden from certain extended family members, using the lists feature. It’s tricky to figure out how to put people on lists (with each list being allowed to view certain info), but there are internet tutorials on it if you’re interested.
But I’m getting more and more angry about FB’s deceptive and ever-shifting privacy practices. I’m not ready to unplug — yet — but I am reducing the amount of info I share.
de stijl
@HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist:
You mean you’re not really a wealthy industrialist, philanthropist, and um… a bicyclist? What next? Art Vandelay isn’t really an importer-exporter?
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@Mark S.: Lol. Same to you, Mr. S!
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
@de stijl: I think Art Vandelay is concentrating more on the exporting than the importing — isn’t that the whole problem?!
MaximusNYC
P.S. I also find FB’s event feature useful — I get a lot of invitations thru it, and I post my own events and invite people. And I have a page for my music (http://www.facebook.com/MaxxKlaxon).
But all this is contingent on the fact that I live where I live, have the friends I have, and do the sorts of activities that I do. Your mileage may vary.
Comrade Kevin
See you next season, Red Wings!
asiangrrlMN
I actually resisted for a long time because I knew that I would become quite involved. I only put things on there that I don’t care if they go public or not. I have a limited number of friends (69), and I have all the privacy settings on the strictest ones possible. It’s a way for me to keep in touch with my friends around the world at one time. As for sex, eh, it’s not off-limits at all (except in pics). I don’t find it any more intrusive than any other site, and I basically use it to make jokes with friends.
Doctor Science
I use facebook rarely and only for superficial or business-like interactions. If I want to actually communicate with people, I’ve been using livejournal.com. I’m now in the process of migrating (slowly) to dreamwidth.org, an LJ clone with a truly serious approach to privacy issues — because their business model is to *never* carry ads, but to balance the books via paid subscriptions.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: You realize, of course, this is why I love BJ so much. The three of us were having this exact discussion and not a week later poof here it is.
Ken Lovell
Facebook schmacebook. They opened a door marked ‘release your inner juvenile’ and got trampled by the thundering herd.
Steeplejack
@eco2geek:
And money, usually.
Steeplejack
Okay, this blog is dead for the night. Going to cut bait before the morning shift gets here. Somehow this song seems appropriate to the Facebook thread: Joe South, “Games People Play.”
Okay, I was listening to that and just wanted an excuse to stick it in. But, c’mon, when was the last time you heard a sitar in a pop song? Electric sitar, damn it.
ETA: Joe South was a great songwriter: “Hush,” “Down in the Boondocks,” “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” “Don’t It Make You Want to Go Home,” etc.
El Cid
The Mustache of Wisdom declares that due to debt issues, the baby boomers got to wake up and help pay higher interest to rich bondholders, mainly by cutting their social security & Medicare.
This is because ‘conservatives’ just cut taxes and thought deficits would go away while ‘liberals’ wanted to increase spending without increasing taxes.
Can someone please tell the guy who married into being a billionaire that ‘liberals’, meaning recent Democratic officials & leaders, actually have attempted to raise revenues.
But conservatives blocked that and kept rolling back taxes.
Asshole.
Also, I’m god-damned tired of these billionaire mother fuckers telling old people and future retirees that they need to stock up on their cat food for the good of the people.
Quiddity
There’s been a lot of Facehate in recent days, mostly about privacy and the Faceborg’s evil ways. (Okay, I’ll stop with the Face___ gimmick.)
I’m not much of a fan, but use it a little bit and have some suggestions:
First of all, it’s a limited-scope forum. Posts/stories can be no longer than 420 characters. It’s like a multi-person chat session in most instances. Treat it as such.
I strongly advise the following:
1) If you create an account, just put your name in and very little else. I gave my city, occupation, high school and college, and a few music favorites. That’s it. No politics (I think I had to choose something so put down Macedonian Independence Party and for religion: Gadzooks). Basically NOTHING THAT COULD POORLY REFLECT IF AN EMPLOYER LOOKED AROUND.
2) I would stay away from putting pictures there. Email those to friends (or put on a blog and put links in emails).
3) If you strictly limit your Facebook activity to chat (and always be polite) you will get the advantage of establishing contacts and sharing light-weight personal information with each other. Sex topics are out. Take the view that you are at a high school reunion, and chat accordingly.
4) Whatever you do, set just about everything to share with Friends, or Friends of Friends. But nothing more (there’s a Internet/world default that’s truly insane and should be attended to ASAP).
5) Don’t feel you have to respond to ANY requests to be a friend. Just leave them on the queue. Ignore them if they come in to your email account. People will eventually forget they tried to Friend you. I’d rather leave a request unprocessed than proceed with an explicit Denial action.
6) Log in, log out. I’ve read that if you are logged in and then navigate away, the subsequent URL may be used/shared by Facebook.
As to Facebook’s future, I’m not sure. In the past we had AOL’s Hometown, then Tripod, then something else, then Myspace, and now Facebook. It seems that people use these things for a while but eventually they become too hard to manage, or get clogged up with too much junk, which causes people to move on to the Next Big Thing.
I’ll repeat here what I’ve been telling folks recently:
A completely satisfactory way to share information is with HTML-capable email and a blog. Those are flexible, private (with the emails) and searchable. But there does seem to be a trend towards more abbreviated data mechanisms. Instead of email we have 140-character Twitter. Instead of a blog we have 420-character Facebook posts. Part of this trends is driven by small-size electronic devices: cellphones and iWhatevers. They need something that works with their limited sizes, and Twitter and Facebook are possible solutions.
Steeplejack
@El Cid:
Welcome, thanks for your screed, and you have sent me off to bed with the warm coals of outrage burning in my breast. Please allow me to pass off to you the baton of Balloon Juice stewardship at the beginning of this new day.
Steep out.
Quiddity
@El Cid: You are too kind in your characterization of Mr. F.
Quiddity
In today’s New York Times:
Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline
Covers Facebook and privacy issues. Get this:
Mark S.
@El Cid:
Friedman really is the Yeats of our era.
Karen
I play addictive games on Facebook and I see it as a virtual newsletter. My mom, sister, two cousins and two aunts are on it. I don’t get ultra personal of course but it’s a way the family can check in with each other and since I’m in MD, my mom is in NY, my sis is in Mass, etc. it’s nice to be connected that way. I’ve also renewed old friendships from college, high school, it’s a great way to get in touch.
But I yanked my address and most of my personal info. What I couldn’t get rid of is in a privacy filter. What would be the last straw for me would be them selling my information to spammers.
MikeJ
@Quiddity: The age breakdown is interesting because it had always seemed to be the opposite. People who were on the internet 20 years ago tended to be much more guarded. Those 20 year olds of 20 years ago are todays’40 year olds.
Of course in 1990 the percentage of people online was much, much, much lower. The people who were there picked up the good habits and probably still have them. The people who weren’t there came online along with the younger cohort who didn’t care as much.
I’m glad the younger people are learning. The older late adopters are probably stuck in their ways now.
stuckinred
It’s always something,
Roseanne Roseanna Danna
arguingwithsignposts
My problem with the NYT story: sources from NYU, Yale, Tufts, Georgetown, NY New School. Have these people never heard of a weathervane school in flyover country?
The Tim Channel
I don’t worry about it. My demographic is male over fifty. If any of you have truly been paying attention to the world then you might surmise (rightly) that you have no real privacy anyway. The illusion that using a pseudonym is going to protect your privacy is just that. Better to stand up for something than to bend over for anything. Let facebook do what they will with the data I give them. The folks who buy this info are going to have a very difficult time extracting anything from me that I am not already interested in anyway. And for the record I don’t give a dam whether you know I smoke pot, think torture is a war crime and that Sarah Palin is a full blown dipshit. I’ve been saying stuff like that since the birth of the Internet.
Remember the dog that got shot in the drug raid lately? I was blogging back when Mario Paz got killed and spoke out about it way back when. Perhaps if more people had the balls to OPENLY stand up to the powers that be we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today?
Enjoy.
stuckinred
@The Tim Channel: Whoop tee dooo.
Joey Maloney
What kind of violation of trust or privacy would it take for you to give up your Facebook account?
This is the wrong question. If this were the only factor, I’d’ve deleted my account months ago, or more likely, never signed up in the first place. I hate the way my data is just a commodity to Facebook Inc. and they are whoring it out however they like. I hate the way the privacy defaults are set in ways far more permissive than most people would choose at the outset. I hate the deliberately difficult and deceptive setup of the privacy controls that makes it unreasonably difficult to lock down your information.
But I’m very far away from the people I love most and they use Facebook for their main means of communications. They don’t even use other internet channels – email, AIM, Google chat – consistently enough to stay in touch.
And that’s the problem disgruntled FB users face. Deserting Facebook would mean deserting my entire social network. I’m stuck until another soc-net product reaches critical mass or at least until crucial nodes in my network desert it.
eemom
not to be contrarian here…..but JHC, lighten up already, people.
In my experience, FB has been a really positive way to reconnect with old friends I haven’t seen or heard of in 20+ years.
But if the privacy thing creeps you out — and why anybody thinks we have any privacy anyway anymore I can’t fathom — don’t use it, and who the fuck’s gonna care?
MikeJ
Am I the only person who doesn’t want to be in constant contact with my friends? Ever hear, “how can I miss you if you won’t go away”?
Not only do I not feel like I need to share what sort of sandwich I’m eating with everybody, I feel sort of squicked out by everybody knowing everything about everybody.
It’s less an issue of people seeing things that I am or will someday be embarrassed by and more wanting to share my life only with people I want to share with, and even those people get limited and different subsets.
Ross Hershberger
I’m 50 and a former insurance company mainframe programmer. The lack of privacy on FB is no worse than that of the Internet in general. As an IT pro I’ve taken this for granted for years. Shunning FB won’t improve your privacy. I love FB and use it cautiously. Without it I wouldn’t have known that my niece in France had a new boyfriend or that my nephew in East Lansing ran out on a restaurant check. It’s a very efficient way to stay controllably in touch with people that I want to be somewhat in touch with as well. Overall, it’s a way to make certain social interactions more efficient and I have a good time with it.
HRA
Anne Laurie, I am in total agreement with you about FB.
What I get from family who are on it is almost constant heads up on those who are sending out too much information about their lives and thoughts. Then I get told I must talk to them and have them stop it . All I can tell them is you need to not give out too much information about yourself.
Lately a greater problem has a risen from FB even though I am of the mind to realiize it would have risen even without FB. It’s a likely breakup of a long marriage.
Maude
@joel hanes:
My end users are mostly teen and they use Facebook and MySpace.
Already had one problem with MySpace.
I have four articles and now the how to on deleting the account. I will put them on the bulliten board. I have the Facebook privacy settings how to already up.
Thanks for the link.
I am known to call my end users the little thugs.
When info like this comes along, I am protective of them.
Mystical Chick
I have been on FB for a couple years and have re-connected with some old friends that way. That’s fine by me. I am also of the age (49) where I am mindful of what I put out for the world to see. It feels to me as if kids these days lack some boundaries for what should be out there because they’ve lived their entire lives online.
Mine is pretty locked down as far as who can see what and I try to stay on top of whatever new-fangled things FB does that might cause privacy issues I’m uncomfortable with. I do like being able to see what my family and friends are up to, though.
Starfish
I deleted my Facebook account yesterday. I couldn’t be bothered to keep up with their changing privacy policies and never quite figured out how to lock stuff down well. And I can’t be bothered to relearn the user interface every time they decide to make something difficult.
The Facebook security hole from last week that they cleaned up after what they claim was only a few hours was pretty creepy as well.
Chuchundra
I don’t care much about privacy issues on Facebook. I figure any company like FB is going to screw you over in that regard sooner or later. So there’s nothing on my Facebook that I really have to keep private.
If someone managed to get access to my FB wall, what would they find? Well, there are links and comments that demonstrate my very liberal political views, chit chat with old school friends and internet friends and cute pictures of my beautiful daughter. There’s nothing there that I wouldn’t share with a random acquaintance if they were particularly interested.
superking
I could get by without Facebook. A lot of people I know are already moving on to twitter in order to keep up with what their friends are doing. Facebook is by no means essential.
henqiguai
@MikeJ (#48):
MikeJ, FTW !
Okay, so I freely admit, my next life I will be a forest or mountaintop hermit. “Recluse” only begins to describe my mindset (yeah yeah yeah, those who know me say more at “frakkin’ weird”).
ellie
I am on Facebook all of the time. I think it is an excellent way of keeping in touch with people without actually having to talk to them. I don’t understand the privacy concerns. Is Facebook making you put up photos of yourself? No. Is Facebook making you post your status? I rarely ever do. Is Facebook making you post all of this private information? No, it isn’t.
I play those stupid, addicting games; comment on people’s photos and videos; and stay in touch with my hockey friends. That is it. No one knows what I am doing day in and day out. People don’t know if you don’t tell them.
Linda Featheringill
@stuckinred: That about covers it.
[I miss her.]
MikeJ
@ellie: And if any of your friends ever goes to a web site that connects to FB, FB sends
eastriver
Eff-Book. Little practical good. Other than to find out what ever happened to people from high school or college. Once you find that out, done. If you really need it to stay socially active as an adult, you’re kind of a loser.
andy
I like Facebook and use it with the caveat that I only reveal really personal stuff with people offline or through their personal e-mails. Given their stalking tendencies, I do not make “friends” with conservatives on FB, and block them should they reveal such tendencies commenting on friends posts. All of my co-workers except one are blocked, and new hires are pro forma blocked, having learned the hard way that there’s no such things as friends at work either. I think I would be on Twitter myself save the fact that I truly despise the expense and attitude of cellphones.
Svensker
I find it a great way to stay in touch with far flung family and friends, and strange stuff happens — my SIL in NYC has become great friends with my niece in rural WA, even tho the two have never met in person. Reconnected with an old friend from NJ who moved to NZ. Have “met” some distant cousins and we have shared family photos that one side didn’t know the other had. And I like riding herd on a couple of young cousins and great nieces/nephews who are having parental troubles and like the idea of turning to a far-away non-judgmental adult relative for advice.
I just don’t put any info that is too personal or that I wouldn’t want broadcast to the world on FB.
You either “get” FB and it works for you, or you don’t. Why stress about it?
timb
I think I started seriously questioning if I needed it about the time a friend of mine forwarded pics of a stunning young lady who had just interviewed for a job with him. Look, we’re that old (upper 30’s), but it still seemed sort of pervy to be sending around half naked pictures of this 23 year old and it seemed pretty stupid for her to not realize employers google.
I never like facebook and that incident made me realize how little I wanted to be anywhere near it
scav
The possibility of reconnecting with people that I knew 20+ years ago is exactly why I’d never join Phasebook! If I wanted to be in touch with them, I’d still be in touch with them. And if I knew my current friends musings every day on what to have for breakfast, they would rapidly join the above crowd. So I am evidently in the MikeJ camp. Hermits United.
Michael
@Mark S.:
One friend of mine had an issue pop up with his high school girlfriend last year. He’d just gotten divorced after a 25 year marriage, and the high school girlfriend found him and started pestering him on Facebook. After the third day of her innocuously annoying him via the thing, she announced that she had a huge fight with her husband about my pal, that she’s never stopped loving my pal, and that her husband had walked out on her and the kids and she’d packed his stuff up and put it on the porch. Happily, she’s all the way across the country.
My pal was in panic mode, terrified that she’d show up on his front door with her surprisingly small kids. He took great effort to describe himself as a total piece of shit, a cheater who deserved to be divorced. Eventually, she relented, and stopped communicating. It didn’t stop a threatening call from the husband, though.
Ash
I’m a grumpy 20-something who remembers when Facebook was “The Facebook” and it was only for college students (my school was one of the first 10 or so they tested it on) and we didn’t have to worry about Aunt Lucy discovering pictures of our drunken debauchery.
Harumph.
Skepticat
I am old (63), antisocial, fairly technologically adept, and flatly refuse to use Facebook or Twitter. I accept cookies very sparingly; use Flush to get rid of Flash cookies; and have a separate e-mail account to use for blogs, online matters, and the like. And my phone number is unlisted. Nevertheless. I know perfectly well that there is simply no privacy left in the world.
wonkie
I’m with the person upthread who said that you set your own privacy setting by what you write.
I love facebook and wirte there every day. I use it as a scrapbook and diary but only of those things I’d share with anyone. My cattiest crtiticisms, my verbal assaults, my exaggerations (hypothetical deaththreats, etc.) i save for verbal interactions with those who know me well enough to have a sense of perspective on my discourse. Which is probably a prudent way to limit one’s speach anyhoo.
I have reconnected with highschool friends– and they grew up to be far more interesting people than I would have expected. In fact we are more truly friends now than we were in highschool.
I don’t get the paranoia, really. Facebook doesn’t replace a persnal letter or phonecall. That’s fine with me.
Skepticat
Incidentally, “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook–A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”
by Ben Mezrich is a great book.
Laura W.
Here you go, AL. I read this a few days ago and it rang true for me. It was in the comment section of a blog post re. the release of Jung’s Red Book and the respecting of his privacy.
I also deactivated my very limited FB account after I read it. I had 21 friend requests in limbo, and the very few people I followed I can talk with privately and personally, which is my wont. All the rest is overstimulating “noise” at this time in my life. Like a few others have said, if I wanted to be in touch with people from my past, I would be. Not my style. At all.
debit
@Michael:
That’s really sad. I still have fond memories of my high school boyfriend, but I recognize that my emotions of that time were hormone fueled and not some sort of deathless love.
@topic: I have no need or desire for Facebook. I joined Twitter since it’s the easiest way to keep up with my kids. I used to be active on Livejournal, but only for fannish purposes and haven’t checked on my friends list in ages.
Rosalita
I pushed back on FB requests for a while and then finally caved in. As someone who has lived in different places around the country, the opportunity to re-connect with old friends and people that I really enjoyed working with has been wonderful. I’ve been following the privacy issues and I monitor my account carefully. I don’t download any of their applications and I’ve unloaded all of the ‘like’ items. I want my network, but I’m doing everything possible to keep the crap to a minimum.
Fern
I use FB grudgingly and am extremely selective about who I friend – it’s limited to family members and a few others. I rarely update and don’t share anything of a personal nature. It don’t really see much use for it, but it does allow me to maintain a bit of contact with cousins, nieces and nephews. My brothers use it to share photos with the rest of us, and I like that.
I recently discovered that there is a Facebook Lite, and the interface is way less annoying.
James K. Polk, Esq.
I quit my Facebook account about 2 years ago.
It’s “Keeping Up with the Joneses” was just too much for me.
Will
There’s nothing on my Facebook page that I would be ashamed to show my gf, boss or mother -all of whom are my FB friends. Use a little common sense, and the privacy concerns go away.
And if you are worried about companies, the government, etc. violating your privacy, you need to grow up. Any large entity – or sufficiently motivated individual – can get access to databases that contain far more info on you than all your FB postings will ever reveal.
And I’d just like to note the irony of this coming from a blogger on a highly trafficked public site. You’re the definition of an oversharer, with far more exposure to the downsides of living on the Internets than me and my FB network.
The Grand Panjandrum
Privacy? You’re worried about Facebook? Bwahahahahahahahahh…. unless you are paying cash for EVERYTHING and NEVER use a debit or credit card you have absolutely no privacy. None. Privacy is a quaint notion of early 20th Century Earth. Welcome to Orwell’s nightmare.
JR in WV
Hi,
Like the author, in my 50s, unlike her, professional software engineer as my career. Based upon my expectations as a software developer, Facebook is an epic FAIL. If you can’t tell what datum is going to be how public, the software is not usable.
So my vote is never. That’s when I’ll use Facebook. I’m totally not interested in acquaintances learning anything about me I don’t tell them in a conversation/email directly.
Likewise Myspace, Twitter (I never wanted to be a twit!) etc.
Barely interested in commenting on blogs where I have something to say.
My $0.02.
JR
Paris
I don’t assume privacy on Facebook but I also don’t want to be bothered by people I don’t know. I use it mainly to join issue groups, local businesses, organizations, bands, etc to get updates on sales, special events, concerts, new CD releases, etc. It great for doing those things.
russell
I free lance as a drummer. That’s a world where gig opportunities are pretty much all word of mouth, and if you don’t maintain some kind of presence folks forget about you and hire the other guy.
I use Facebook to stay in touch with other musicians, find out who’s playing with who and who’s playing where, and just generally do basic networking. It means I don’t have to hang in clubs all the time to stay connected.
I don’t mind hanging in clubs, but the bar bill gets expensive and I get to see my wife more this way.
I’ve also gotten back in touch with some high school homies, which is nice.
So, for me, FB is a win. I sure as hell DO NOT share anything on there that I wouldn’t want posted, frex, on the community poster board at the grocery store.
Corner Stone
“Never. Does never work for you?”
/NANCY SMASH
Toast
I am on Facebook constantly. Whether I’m on my main PC, my laptop, or my Droid, I always have an FB tab open in my browser. I have a fairly robust circle of friends online who are also frequent FB users.
I find the concerns about privacy on FB largely overblown. Editing your privacy settings is, contrary to the claims of some, quite easy, and you can really fine-tune who can see what.
As for what sort of breach of trust would cause me to ditch them? If they gave out my SS# or credit card info that would do it. Of course, they don’t have access to either, so it’s a non-issue.
Jean King
I am on facebook because my daughter-in-law invited me to be. I use it mainly to keep up with extended family and a couple of long distance friends.
I distrust facebook and reveal as little as possible about myself. On my profile I give phony city of residence and age. This is partly also to throw a stalker ex-boyfriend off track. As far as what it would do to get me to stop posting to facebook–I really don’t know. I quiver on the brink all the time.
TDE
I like it. I’m 33 and emigrated to the US 6 years ago, so it’s been invaluable for me to stay in touch with friends and family. It’s very easy to use.
From a privacy point, you can really edit down what is shared to nothing and you decide what you add. The privacy machinations on a voluntary service seem odd to me.
Politically, its a riot. Lots of networking and causes and people to follow. Also, it’s fun pissing off wingnut family members. For that reason alone I hope everyone here joins!
A Balloon Juice page would be awesome.
Ross Hershberger
FB actually improves my solitude in some ways. I really don’t like talking on the phone, especially when I have to stop what I’m doing to answer it. With people I’m ‘connected’ with on FB, there’s less phone chat to keep in touch. The advantage is that information gets communicated without both parties being tied up at the same time. For person-to-person communication I use email. I write when I have time and they read when they have time. Fewer interruptions. I’m very protective of my free time and this works for me.
I will never use Twitter. Anything I think of that’s that short probably isn’t worth reading.
FB is getting hammered in the press for the security holes. Good. I hope it costs them some growth and they get pressured to fix the problems. Nothing is 100% secure, but they can make casual snooping more difficult.
I had a MySpace account but closed it. Unless you’re in Junior High or an unsigned band I just don’t see the point.
abo gato
I kind of like it. Mid 50’s too and don’t put out a lot of info about myself, no photos of me, but funny photos of things I see and I do like to upload photos when we are out of town. Last time in NYC, I uploaded a bunch of pictures of art from museum tours. My friends told me it was like they got to go to MOMA. I have the FB app on my droid phone and sometimes look in it while I am away from my home laptop. I also like to use it to keep up with what my son and his friends are up to. Facebook stalker? Try not to be, but it does help to know what goes on sometimes.
I never play any of the stupid games and never agree to join anything on there.
I did put up a Facebook page for my dog a couple of weeks ago. Unintended consequences, for a couple of weeks, that email was inundated with requests from my son’s friends to be friends with Smarty. The kids all thought it was hysterical that Smarty had her own page.
satby
Gotta say I like it, I use it, but as an older (55) IT geek, I always assume everything’s not private anyway if it’s on a network. Any network that connects outside your house anyway. So like others, I only put up what I’m willing for even strangers to know about me.
But I used to host exchange students and have foster kids, and it has been thrilling to “find” them again on Facebook and see how they are and how things turned out for them as adults. That has made it invaluable to me.
Montysano
Through FB, I’ve established contact with friends from my college days back in the ’70s. I had completely lost touch with these folks. It gave me great joy to find them, and to find that they’re still wonderful people.
I’ve also reconnected with high school classmates from my hometown in rural Indiana, many of whom I’ve known since kindergarten. They’re mostly rabid teabagger racists, so now I have someone to taunt.
The privacy concerns? Meh….. Just take 5 minutes to change your settings and it’s done.
The Tim Channel
@The Grand Panjandrum:
That’s pretty much why I don’t worry about it. I’d like people to notice I’m gone if/when they come to drag us all off to the gulag.
Enjoy.
Jennifer
I’ve always been very “you damn kids get off my lawn!!!” about Facebook – twitter and texting, too.
People I want to keep in touch with, I keep in touch with via other means. The others, meh. If it was important to me (or them) we’d find the time to keep in touch. Recently I put up a page with just name, city, and business affiliation, ONLY because I was launching a new business. And actually I didn’t put up the page, my business partner did, because she insists that’s how “everyone” networks these days. I think I’ve looked at the page maybe twice. Whenever I get a friend request via email, if it’s someone who actually IS a friend, I email them and tell them why Facebook is not the way to keep in touch with me and direct them to my blog. I don’t WANT my customers knowing much about me personally, such as my political views, because I live in a place where not being a part of the conservative church crowd could actually cost me business. Yes, I have some customers who are idiots, who would rather do business with someone who makes a lot of noise about loving Jesus while ripping them off than with a heathen. So I find it best to just avoid doing anything at all with Facebook. And after reading the discussion here, I’m going to delete the damn account, because I’m never going to use it anyway.
Phoebe
@Will: Yes.
I’m finding it hard to care about the privacy thing. I keep coming back to “and?” People keep saying the same things, that fb sells your info to corporations, or whatever, and maybe I’m dense, ok let’s just say I’m dense, but, could you please tell me the bad thing that happens as a result of this? I’ve been on it awhile, and I notice that some of the ads are targeted to me based upon a crude sort of composite cyberpicture of me as a 40something female who likes The Colbert Report and The Confederacy of Dunces and Al Green and blah blah blah; I mean, okay. Now they know! Good luck to them with that info.
And here’s a feature they have I wish BJ had: I can actually delete ads I don’t like! And if someone’s posting a bunch of boring narcissistic “I just made a salad” shit, I can “hide” that person and problem solved.
Also, until someone can scare me with something tangible, I got to see that fantastic Saints youtube of some concert in some English town hall 30 years ago, thanks to fb. Could I have searched for it on the web? Yeah, but I didn’t. And was that person going to email that video to me and all his other friends? No. Too much trouble.
And apart from the Saints video, I found a good guitar instructor for my friend’s kid, blah blah, convenient practical, blah.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Don’t look at me. I joined because a few friends pestered the shit out of me (the same people who got me using email) but I have the security/don’t bother me features turned up as high as I can put them, never use anything that requires a download and less than a year later I rarely even remember I have an account. It must be down to personality type. I’m a fairly anti-social person and frankly don’t give rat’s ass what my grade school (or high school and most college and all law school) classmates are up too (and I can’t remember most of their names anyway).
The SO is my age, less tech-savvy but 1,000x more outgoing (and he can remember the names of people he went to kindergarten with, freak). He loves it.
One thing that started really putting me off it (in addition to the monthly reformatting) is people want to use it in lieu of other forms of communication even when it isn’t appropriate. An example: I recently went through something that was (to me at least) very bad. I didn’t mention it to anyone right away but the S.O. (who was also affected) posted it on fb. The next time I logged in, I had five zillion messages from people offering their sympathies. Which was nice, I guess. But how about drop a line by email or (radical idea) give me a fucking call? And if you don’t know me well enough to email or call, why not shove your “Awww, so sad!” up your ass and leave me the hell alone? And I really didn’t know how to respond in that forum. “Thx guys, [sniff] :-)”?
Fuck it.
And now, when I do remember to log in I’ve got tons of fb generated suggestions to “friend” the friends of friends. I assume this is new and I do not want. Usually these are “friends” of my youngest sister. No offense to my sister but I’ve seen the shit she posts up there and frankly I’d rather take a ball peen hammer to my nads than let more of that into my world.
Basically, I thought I would eventually “get it” like email and blogging but the more I used it the less I did get it.
And a tip: fb is not a blog. You want to post a long screed, get a fucking blog. Also2.
And I wouldn’t touch Twitter with a 20 foot pole axe.
Now get offa my lawn.
/Codgerant
adolphus
I have been using FB for a couple of years. I try to keep my privacy settings tight, ignore a lot of friend requests, log out when I leave FB, treat everything I write on there as public knowledge etc etc.
I would like to ask the group a question if it is not too late. Every so often on FB a rumor flies that Facebook will start charging and everyone throws a conniption. Then we found out that FB is monetizing our information and that induces barrage of FaceHate. Does nobody else finds this deeply hypocritical? Nothing is free. Nothing. Ever.
I find in these various conversations between paying for FB and privacy settings a small symptom of why this country is in such a financial shit hole. Everybody what’s shit but no one wants to pay for it.
Don’t join FB if you don’t want. Use a pseudonym if think that protects you (I suspect it doesn’t) or whatever. But the company has to make money some how and if you don’t write a check, then they will use you to make it some other way. Same with Google, Yahoo, whatever.
Nothing is free. Ever.
Montysano
@Phoebe:
In my view, the internet is the greatest bargain of my lifetime. What I get for my $30.00/month access is, for this old coot, an incredible deal.
I’m told that I’ve given up privacy, but to be honest, I rarely see any effect from this other than the 2-3 email spam per day, which is a small price to pay.
tesslibrarian
@Joey Maloney: That’s exactly my situation. Others are using it, so I use it. That’s why I joined in the first place, when one of my closest friends was about 3 days from giving birth in another state and I knew the quickest way to see pictures of her new son and get updates from mutual friends in-town (verifying room info, since she called very drugged to let us know he’d been born), etc. was to join. And it is the best place to get pictures of him, about twice per month there are pictures from a weekend visit or a family outing, and that alone makes me loathe to give up my page.
My original limit on friends was 30; I have closer to 60 now, and many (and the most active) are work friends that I don’t see or work with regularly because they are in different depts, and I’ve found fb essentially is a substitute for water cooler conversation. And that’s fine. My manager is a friend, so I have been careful with what I say for awhile now.
The most personal things anyone will find out about me is where I live, what my profession is, and how much I loved my two cats who died last year, because their obituaries are posted there. That said, the latest move has made many of us at work rethink our accounts. But I’m not sure what will push me over the line–probably if my friend quits posting pictures of her son.
Onkel Bob
@joel hanes: I had an account that I allowed to moulder and fester. I’m not a particularly outgoing fellow, asocial is an apt description. I collected a few friends, mostly relatives, and those connected to my significant other. Anywho, when I moved from my beloved SillyCon Valley to this hellhole armpit that is NYC, one of my first actions was to delete the FB account. Because I’m originally from the boil on the ass of civilization (Bridgeport CT) the last thing I wanted was to hear from people from the “good ol days,” which were neither good nor ol’.
Besides, isn’t LinkedIn what the “pros” use?
Phoebe
And oh yeah: I’m friend-requesting all of you!
— Phoebe Santillana Love
matoko_chan
i deleted mine when i got fb-stalked by an ex-bf.
the fb admins could do nothing for me because he was a sys-ad at the university with an infinite supply of IP addrs and he was smarter and more netsavvy than they were.
i have no desire to ever have another one.
Alison Lowndes
I run an entire charity using social media, especially Facebook’s free networking tools such as groups, transparency, phots uploads, videos, fundraising collaboration tools.
JD Rhoades
I got on FB because I’d heard from people in the mystery-writing community that it was good for getting your name and the fact that your work exists in front of people. So I didn’t expect privacy and, in fact, don’t mind if I get five or six friend requests a day from strangers (most of whom are readers and/or aspiring writers).
This doesn’t mean, by the way, that I’m one of those annoying people that’s constantly marketing, spamming, etc. I also have a lot of FB friends who are friends in RL. I chat, I play games that interest me, I post status updates about stuff I’ve read or found, and I read up on what my pals are doing.
But in the meantime, my profile pic is the cover of my latest book, I have a page for my work (JD RHOADES’ GANG OF HELLIONS) and I have links to my blog and author website so that, if someone thinks. hey this guy looks interesting, let’s see what he writes,” there they are.
I call it “the art of marketing without marketing.”
It also means that I can say “hey, I’m not goofing off, I’m promoting.”
JD Rhoades
@Phoebe:
:-D Friend request sent…
JD Rhoades
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Heh. I think the problem is that people expect “privacy” for things that they’re actually doing in public. A friend of mine was griping about the proliferation of CCTV cameras in New York. I pointed out that anyone walking or sitting along the same street can see the same things a CCTV camera does, so you’re not in a “private” space by any stretch of the word at that point. If they put them in your house, now, that’s different.
Same with the Internet. Unless it’s e-mail or one on one chat, presume you’re having the conversation in the street.
Phoebe
@JD Rhoades: accepted!
And about those cameras: a surveillance camera helped someone I know in a supermax prison because it caught his assailant attacking him with a knife from behind. My acquaintance flipped him over and the dude landed on his head and is now in a wheelchair for life. So hooray for the camera, because that could have gone much much worse for my acquaintance [in there for assault] although it certainly helps to know that the camera is there.
Likewise, posting things to fb [or here for that matter] could provide an alibi in some cases, if the time of the crime is known.
Sentient Puddle
Yeah, I’m going with the whole “Privacy? You’re on the fucking Internet!” stance. Facebook’s sins aren’t much worse than what you see elsewhere and don’t complain about. I get the sense that the only reason people are complaining so damn much about it is that they’re wising up to the fact that they’ve freely given so much information about themselves, blissfully unaware of the obvious fact that FACEBOOK IS GOING TO USE IT BECAUSE IT’S THEIR BUSINESS MODEL.
Joel
There’s nothing that you can find on Facebook that you don’t already know by looking up my employer’s webpage or reading my posts here.
Joey Maloney
@tesslibrarian: That’s why I joined in the first place, when one of my closest friends was about 3 days from giving birth in another state and I knew the quickest way to see pictures of her new son
By sheer coincidence as I read this I’m also listening to Prairie Home Companion and they’re doing a sketch about becoming a mom in these modern times and the “midwife” was saying “you’re doing great, the baby’s head is showing, so your camera crew will be right in for the closeup…”
NobodySpecial
I’m on Facebook, and I don’t care.
They sell my info? So does the Democratic Party and every single charity I’ve ever sent money to.
Publishing photos/bad stuff that ruins my employment? I’ve been at exactly two companies in the last 15 years. My current employer would keep me until I fall over dead if I’d let him. I’m also camera-phobic: There’s a 10 year period of my life where exactly five photos exist. (and yes, that’s pretty definite. Hell, there’s no head and shoulders of me in any of my high school yearbooks that I can remember, either.) Other than that – I don’t talk about my sex life, show pictures of my private parts, and have the good sense to get drunk and stupid at home where I can locate the bathroom.
In fact, the only things I can really hate Facebook for is Farmville and the copious amount of dating sites they try to hook me up at. If I want to get lied to in the hopes of getting laid, I’m old fashioned enough to go to the bar, and young enough to remember where they are.
Bubba Dave
I don’t Facebook; I’m techno-Amish. Or, as another friend put it, “I do antisocial media– you have to know my email address to get in touch.”
FlipYrWhig
@Phoebe:
Yeah, that’s where I am in my thinking too. What is the result of all this supposed strip-mining of all my valuable personal, private information I divulge on FB? I get a one-inch square ad off to the side somewhere for expensive cat furniture? What’s the problem?
I know people who don’t want to be found because of fucked-up-to-the-point-of-dangerous work or personal situations. That’s sensible. I’m lucky enough not to have that problem. I don’t say everything I think on FB because it’s attached to my own name and I have people I don’t know all that well as friends. It seems rather easy to find a balance.
And when my cat was terribly sick and I would talk about it on FB, I got little notes of support, and I really liked that. I didn’t want my “real friends” to call me on the phone and have an extended conversation, I just wanted a little human connection. (And she got better, which was very fortunate!)
So I’m not sure what the notorious “privacy” concern is. (I see a _safety_ concern if you have stalkers or other criminals out there, but isn’t that the same issue as the phone? You can be located and harassed using cheap and easily available tools that way too; FB doesn’t seem uniquely dangerous in that respect.) Use it for innocuous purposes–quips, cat pix, media sharing–and I can’t see the harm, at least for the great majority of people.
Catsy
I turned 36 not too long ago. My memorable childhood was the 80’s, I got into BBSes in 1990 and they soon became the center of my social life–and being a gaming and sci-fi nerd pretty much relegated me to the fringes of social interaction as it was; BBSes were a godsend. There has never been anything like the BBS subcultures of the late 80’s and early 90’s, and with as interconnected as the world is now, I don’t think there will be again. I think back on that era with considerable fondness and nostalgia.
As a consequence I can probably be considered a generation ahead when it comes to familiarity and integration with online communities. In the early 90’s, the equivalent of looking up someone’s Facebook page was entering a command at a prompt that displayed their user info or “plan” file, but that equivalent was there and we used the hell out of it–especially on massive multi-user chat boards like Prostar and Masterpiece, the latter of which is where I met at least half of my girlfriends as a teenager, as well as my ex-wife.
People of my generation who did not grow up aware of BBSes–and especially those who didn’t really get on the Internet until it was ubiquitous in the early-mid aughts–can adapt to the world in which we now live, but they don’t grok things like Twitter and Facebook and other online social media. It’s hard to relate to them.
That said, I actually find as I get older that there is a point where I draw the line on privacy, and the contemporary use of Facebook and Twitter by people who came of age in the aughts is way out of my comfort zone. My life was an open book on the internet between around 1999 and 2004, and I didn’t really like what that led to. I’m more private now, I rarely update my LJ anymore, and the only places I really put a lot of information on are blog comments and my Lego hobby on Flickr. But the stream-of-consciousness diarrhea of Twitter feeds, the brain-dead superficiality of Facebook updates, just turn me off in a big way.
Actually, you know what I hate the most about Facebook, and probably the association that most repulses me? It, like MySpace before it, remind me of the ten bajillion shitty Geocities sites that were like a plague of locusts on the internet in the 90’s. Geoshitties, we called them.
Facebook, like MySpace, like Lycos and Geocities, like AOL–all ultimately share one thing in common, in that their greatest strength is also their biggest drawback: accessibility and ubiquity. They enable even the lowest common denominator to construct the most repugnant, superficial eyesore imaginable and vomit it out onto the Web to dilute search results and offend the senses. That accessibility is what makes them powerful and enables things like the political blogosphere, but it also puts the signal-to-noise ratio through the roof.
I’m not sure I like the tradeoff. But Pandora’s box is already open, and the world is what it is.
Bill Murray
I’d like to thank all of you that don’t care about privacy, for making it so that those of that do care, don’t have any privacy either. Thank you
licensed to kill time
Jumping right to the end of the thread w/o reading comments yet…
I have never joined the FaceBorg and feel no real pressure to do so. I’m already in touch with the people I want to be in touch with. If someone sends me a link to their FaceStuff, I ask them to put it in a link I can read w/o joining up. I do not trust their ‘privacy’ controls, especially after that thing the other day where the ‘controls’ actually allowed people to eavesdrop on your chats in real time. I have no illusions about the general lack of privacy we all suffer these days, but I see no need to add even more access.
Naturally, my kid thinks I’m old-fashioned. It’s just what “everybody does” nowadays, but I just find it a bit creepy. Talkin’ as an old hippie and all, I have a healthy skepticism about plastering my personal info out into the CloudNet where it will stay, apparently, forever. No thanks.
charlequin
Facebook’s inconsistency and deceptive practices regarding privacy are terrible. They have a responsibility to deal honestly with people about this and to make it as easy as possible for people to maintain their privacy, and they’ve failed at that.
That said, the effect they have on me is minimal because, like other people have said, I know how private Facebook is (not very) and I don’t post things there that I wouldn’t want freely repeated: I don’t talk about work, I don’t talk about sex, and I don’t admit to doing anything illegal.
The main reason old people get dismissive reactions to old-fogey talk about “the Facebook” is that they sound like the silly stuff old people were saying about cellphones ten years ago. “Why would I want people to be able to call me anywhere?! That’s terrible!” Is it really? Hasn’t pretty much everyone on the entire freaking Earth decided that always being able to check in with friends you’re meeting for dinner or having your kids be able to call you from anywhere if they get in trouble and need a ride is worth learning to manage the inconvenience of a phone that’s always with you?
Same thing with Facebook. “Why would I want to connect with people I knew in high school?” I dunno, why would you? Maybe you actually liked some of them? I appreciate that I can have the ability to easily hear that an old friend is gonna be in town and wants to grab drinks or see pictures of their new baby without having to keep in active touch with them constantly, and I appreciate having a venue for one-to-many asynchronous communication with people because when I do decide I want to reconnect with someone it makes doing so much easier than the awkward process it can sometimes be otherwise when you’ve had no peripheral awareness of one another in the interim.
All this stuff makes privacy harder and requires new coping strategies, which is why it’s important to push back against the violations of privacy these companies inflict (and produce new, stricter laws to keep them from doing so in the first place) but like cellphones, email, blogs, etc. before them the benefits are clear enough that people need to think about how to adapt to these technologies rather than hope they turn out to be fads.
low-tech cyclist
@eemom: But if the privacy thing creeps you out—and why anybody thinks we have any privacy anyway anymore I can’t fathom—don’t use it, and who the fuck’s gonna care?
My friends who repeatedly bug me to set up a Facebook account, apparently.
Don’t ask me why – I’m another 50-something. I shouldn’t have friends bugging me to set up Facebook accounts. But one of the most persistent FB acolytes is about to find herself unfriended in an old-fashioned, real-life sense if she doesn’t STFU.
But in answer to your parenthetical, there are layers and levels of privacy and lack of it. All sorts of corporations know everything about me, I’m sure, but they just want to use that info to sell me shit, and let them try. And if they’ve discovered how to sell me stuff based on what I say as ‘low-tech cyclist’ or my other noms de web, I sure haven’t noticed it.
But the number of people who know who’s behind “low-tech cyclist” and my other handful of online identities is vanishingly small. And I’m just as happy that people who knew me 30-40 years ago can’t find me over the Web, even if they trip over one of my cyber-me’s.
KRK
As a non-user, I do have to thank Facebook for making Failbook possible, because Failbook makes me laugh.
Ecks
@ellie: Amen. It’s just another quasi-public place for chitchat. If I said all these things at a barbecue with mixed friends and strangers, nobody would be panicking about my privacy then, even though it could be overheard and spread around, so why is FB any different? You can read my page for titillation if you want, but you’d be bored out of your mind, except for some of the photos and videos – and those only for their artsy value.
If I were to do anything wildly illegal or worthy of real embarrassment to future employers, I sure as hell wouldn’t post it up anywhere with my real name clearly attached to it.
And I don’t have potentially private identifiers like my birthday in there, but I do have my email address, but if you started out knowing my real name you could probably find that with a little Google-fu anyway…
ruemara
I’m on facebook, I like it and I say nothing there that I wouldn’t say on national tv. Using my photos to market shit w/o my approval and compensation would make me sue the pants off of them.
Ecks
@Phoebe: And have my real name connected to the crud I write here? See, perfect example. I’d probably be ok with real world people knowing what I write here, but on balance would rather have an extra degree of freedom to occasionally go off and pick fights with people in a consequence free environment :)
jcgrim
Facebook is a timesucking vampire.
I haven’t looked at my account since Aug of 2009 and don’t miss it.
eemom
@low-tech cyclist:
actually the only reason I’m on FB is because I have a friend who bugged me to do it, and I’m eternally grateful to her now because I really like it.
To each their own. I just think all this controversy is a little ridiculous.
KDP
After the last round of privacy changes, I’ve locked down everything and rarely post anything. With the new ‘connections’ feature, I’ll probably avoid linking to articles now as well.
About the most I’ve done in the past three weeks is add a comment to someone else’s update. I do have pictures and I did have limited information about myself on my profile, but I’ve set it all to be visible to no one.
Kind of defeats the purpose of belonging to a social network.
Anne Laurie, hmmmm, fanzine fandom. Wonder who we know in common. My start in fandom was Noreascon 2.
Will
For all the privacy mavens, you are aware that there’s a damn good chance that someone is harvesting your ip addresses here and selling them. Unless Cole has set up a personal server farm, you have absolutely no anonymity posting in a forum like this, fake name or not.
Alex
I’m an old fogey in a 19-year-old body. No Facebook, no twitter, don’t even carry a cellphone. Privacy concerns aside, they all seem like massive timedrains, and lord knows I waste enough time on the internet already. If people want to keep in touch with me, they can do it the way everybody used to until a few years ago. And for the people saying that privacy is vanished, so why bother being so careful, well that may be, but I see no reason to run in the direction that I’m already being pushed by big moneyed interests.
joel hanes
Facebook’s inconsistency and deceptive practices regarding privacy are terrible.
This.
Any company that provides a user setting “share these things only with friends” and then unilaterally changes that setting on user accounts without notice is demonstrably managed by scum.
Nutella
For those of you who think changing privacy settings on FB will make your information private: It doesn’t. Every software developer in the world can access all of your data by signing up to develop FB applications. They have to say they will only use the data they’re supposed to, but they have access to all of it and the only thing FB can or will do if the developer doesn’t follow the rules is shut off their account. Then they can open another account and start again.
This has been true ever since apps were first allowed on FB.
The people here who post only what they are willing for the whole world to know have the right idea.
constant lurker
@Bill Murray: +10,000
Phoebe
@NobodySpecial: You can hide all farmville forever by putting your cursor over it, at which point a window pops up and gives you this option.
And you can delete the dating site ads — or any ads — and then have the pleasure of checking “offensive” when the pop up window wants to know why you don’t like it.
I can understand why some people don’t want to be found. As someone who has been to a million different schools and camps, I miss people sometimes and would like to be found by them. The people I don’t want finding me already know to keep their distance.
Litlebritdifrnt
I am very late to this party but I joined facebook at the urging of my dearest oldest friend in the whole world. Lynn and I go back to when we first met and bonded at age 11. I joined for her, and only her. I have since gained a whole bunch of friends from my old stomping grounds at the HGTV forums, and a bunch of my friends at my old secondary school. I do not however feel the need to update every five minutes. I visit when I can, or when I have something to say. Other than that you can say I am a facebook zombie and just sit out there for others to find.
Batocchio
I find Facebook useful for keeping in touch with people I don’t speak often with or speak in depth with otherwise – former classmates, former colleagues, former students… It’s good for that friendly acquaintance level. I try to avoid politics on FB and save that for blogs. FB can be useful, and I have reconnected with some folks I like, who post some interesting things. But I assume everything is public, despite my settings. I avoid “relationship status” and many other details because it’s just TMI…
Phoebe
@Batocchio: Another really good reason to avoid putting your relationship status is that if it changes, it doesn’t just change on your profile page, it goes out as a status update to all your friends’ pages. It’s like the town crier, going up and down the street with a bell, yelling that you are “in a relationship” or “now single”, and this you don’t know until it happens. Not a fan.
Gary Farber
@KDP: “Anne Laurie, hmmmm, fanzine fandom. Wonder who we know in common.”
Hello.
ME
I just closed my FB account recently.
I only had it a few months anyway, but in my field I truly *am* an expert.
That meant constant friend requests from people I didn’t know who sought me out for info or to be associated with me.
Instead of working, I was spending all my time dealing with comments, requests and having more work than I can already handle, it became a sort of advertising medium that worked in reverse: because I couldn’t adequately answer everyone’s question or maintain 5 simultaneous chats, people started talking s**t about me instead.
They took any rejection or ignored messages personally and considered me a snob.
Few people understand what it’s like when there’s one of you and thousands of others who want one thing or another from you.
True, my experience is unique, but it was an unexpected tangent.
Instead of allowing me to share my experience and exploits with other like-minded individuals, it became a ball and chain that I paid for with my time and rep. No thanks.
cschack
Facebook may have jumped the shark / nuked the fridge these days. When every story being written about you is negative, it’s a sign of trouble.
I like Facebook OK, as it’s easier to keep up with old friends (esp. since they’re spread all over the world) than it used to be; still, now that I have friends, relatives and co-workers among my friends, the fun is sort of gone. I
I don’t like their constant attack on privacy, but it’s free.
cschack
Facebook may have jumped the shark / nuked the fridge these days. When every story being written about you is negative, it’s a sign of trouble.
I like Facebook OK, as it’s easier to keep up with old friends (esp. since they’re spread all over the world) than it used to be; still, now that I have friends, relatives and co-workers among my friends, the fun is sort of gone.
I dunno. I could close my account without too much trouble, and I will at some point, but Facebook is free, and it’s where everybody are. Zuckerberg’s still a dick, though.
cschack
Apologies for the double post. Thought I was editing the first comment, not writing a new one.
Stevefah
I’m neither asocial nor technologically challenged, but I am 63.
Facebook is invaluable in connecting with people you haven’t seen or heard from in years. But it’s PUBLIC, people. Jeez.
Don’t put anything on ANY public forum that you wouldn’t want coming back to haunt you years from now.
If it goes online, someone somewhere will will have a copy of it.
If you’re not comfortable with that, then put your sabots back on, and retreat into your little cottage and read by rushlight. It is the 21st century. Try to keep up.
David K. M. Klaus
Interesting, and why I was so reluctant to get on FB for so long and why I finally did — and I, too, am 54 but am very net-savvy, which is part of why it took so long. But the opportunity to find lost people findable no other way was too tempting to continue to resist, and I’m no longer employable anyway. Inasmuch as I’ve always been public about what was important to me, and couldn’t go underground to literally save my life, worrying about who knows my lack of belief in life after death for reasons of physics and chemistry or minority-within-a-minority political and social preferences is a non-issue.
Stevefah
@The Tim Channel: “Better to stand up for something than to bend over for anything…” ROFL!
Butch
I won’t go near it, and my feeling was reinforced recently. I heard about a website called Spokeo; when I searched for myself, it announced that I don’t appear to exist. When I searched for the brother in law who is all over the social websites, I found on Spokeo his name, birthdate, name of wife and daughters, address, approximate income….
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Not knowing what field you’re in, but if you’re that in demand, you should probably be publishing a subscription based newsletter so you could leverage your reputation and expertise.
As for Facebook – it’s the work of Satan.
Original Lee
@Ross Hershberger: Amen. I actually wish I had been on FB earlier, as my family had been bugging me to do, because then I would have been able to friend my aunt before she passed away and would now be able to go back and revisit favorite posts. A cousin thoughtfully went through my aunt’s wall and pulled off posts she thought everyone would want to have and sent them to me as an e-mail, but I now realize how much context I’m missing that seeing her wall would help with. So now I’m on FB and have friended my whole family, and I don’t feel as if I’m being accidentally excluded from stuff that’s happening just because I happen to live on the opposite coast from everyone else.
I am very very careful about what I post on FB, but I guess the Farewell Cruel World for my FB account would be if they started to charge me for privacy settings.
ME
Re post 140.
What you said would generally be a wise statement and taken as such.
I agree.
Unfortunately, my experience is technically oriented and in the music biz.
There’s only two kinds of customers for what I do: unbelievably rich (who pay others to do their work anyway) and very broke starving musicians.
Feast or famine.
But the rich ones generally don’t waste their time on FB and the poor ones can’t or won’t pay for consultation.
With that said, keeping information from being copied and shared is very difficult. Even if published in book form.
I’ve had people send me things I’ve written over a decade ago.
All the info was intact, but my name deleted.
bago
The “right” to privacy is roughly estimable to the “right” of proper apostrophe usage. Sure, you can bring you’re best grammar nazi to the game, but at the end of the day some looser is going to ruin the intire enterprise.
bago
@Catsy: Into fingering random people on the internet then? Me too.
Kit
I have to say that a lot of the “OMG FACEBOOK PRIVACY RAEP” blog posts seem not to have actually looked very closely at the privacy settings. And the, you know, rules governing your information and content. It’s your shit first and foremost.
I use it because that’s where everybody is. I keep in contact with friends and relatives I would otherwise probably not talk to.