I’m not usually too vocal about “techie things,” as I tend to follow/track pretty silently and nerd out in smaller circles. But, well, here we are. :)
A friend on Facebook was asking what the “big effing deal” was about the latest privacy policy changes. Here was my response:
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My biggest issue is that by DEFAULT my information is open to Everyone. That by DEFAULT I was opted-in to the “personalization” whatever. And that just turning it off, actually doesn’t stop the websites (yelp, mdocs cnn) from STILL collecting data about me. I have to go to each application and block it individually. That is EFFED up! I’m not an alarmist by any means, nor a conspiracy theorist, but the amount of data collected about us from this service is eery. Especially considering the erosion that has occurred over time relative to the amount of control that we have over our data. See a pretty brilliant visualization here:
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
as well as more on the issues (in charts) here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html
Even though I’m a firm believer that anything I say anywhere is public, it still irks me I’m so publicly being exploited and taken advantage of. On top of that, the policy is so confusing and convoluted that it’s almost impossible to understand. And I consider somewhat versed in this stuff.
My last two cents on the matter is that deleting an account should be simple. Start typing “delete” into Google and see what is the first suggestion. And that’s not just because Internet users are dummies. There are huge posts about the process required to delete your account. That is EFFED up! If there is a mutual trust between myself and a service, they should have no fear of me leaving them. But this feels like quite the opposite. It feels, at times, like a sick, co-dependent, dysfunctional relationship.
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FACEBOOK IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FACEBOOK.
I should add I’m still debating deleting my account. And that I was reminded of this via @JoyGarnett who RT’ed a tweet with this link: http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/facebook-apologists-miss-the-point-facebook-isnt-the-future.html