Friday, April 23, 2010

They're not making this any easier...

(click image for full size)

So, every now and then in a dark hour of weakness I consider actually joining Facebook. I know, I know, crazy, eh? I guess it's something to do with staying in touch with some of the people we will be leaving behind in June. Noble, but the crack-team at Facebook Inc. (or whatever they call themselves) keep coming up with reasons to keep my information as far from their web-service as possible.

Unmitigated Facebook employee access to ALL your content and data mining not enough? Removal of privacy settings not cutting it? How about the latest "privacy blunder" [read:"intentional upgrade"] from Facebook:


The gist: Outside affiliates (advertisers, corporations, etc.) now have "free-reign" with your data. Oh, and most users apparently still don't care (or know) according to FB growth stats. If you're one of the one who does but don't want to join me in the surrounding wasteland of not-Farmvile you might want to give this a read.

Don't tell me "but my stuff is set to private so I'm safe," cause you obviously enjoy reconfiguring and hunting down all the policy changes everytime they press "reset" on your ability to control your own data and trying to adapt to the [pointless?] reconfiguring of user experience. That, and it's right up there with the whole "my email password may not be great, but there's nothing important in there anyway" statement.

You know what, though: if Hipsters started doing the whole "no-facebook" thing my non-conformititis might just go all ouroboros on itself, implode, and force me to make a profile (or "pro-ff" as some pronounce it). If so, expect a cartoon profile-pic, no personally identifying information (except for the incessant tagging by other users), and a "strictly business" approach to updates. Ummm...

This post isn't directed at anyone in particular: just something I wanted to say.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:


~Jon

1 comment:

R said...

Don't bother with facebook. So not worth it, the year I've been on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9_amg-Aos4