Arrivederci, Facebook
I’ve finally bitten the bullet and divorced the bowel-achingly tedious Facebook. I’ve ‘deactivated’ my relationship with her. I got sick to the gills with her constant banging on. ‘Justin, come and look at this’, she kept saying. ‘Justin, come and do this’, she kept suggesting. Join that, poke this, invite the other. Nag, nag, bloody nag.
It makes me laugh that there are thousands of people out there who are screaming at the tops of their lungs that they’d rather go to bed with John Prescott than submit their details to an ID card database, but there they are cheerfully fessing up to their political affiliations, educational histories, reading and viewing habits, what they’re doing at the weekend and all the rest on a ’social network’ which is, get this, AN ENORMOUS BLOODY DATABASE.
I was one of them. Not any more. So there.
Posted on November 12th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Fair point, but, er….doesn’t running a blog entail giving away just as much information about yourself?
Surely it’s all about how the information is organised, though, and who does the organising.
Amen!
but, er….doesn’t running a blog entail giving away just as much information about yourself?
er, no.
ID cards —> Compulsory
Facebook —> Voluntary
I know you’re not a supporter of the NIR, but why the fatuous comparison with a networking website?
I think Paul does have a point to an extent - there are lots of people happy to give away all and sundry on their blogs - but I’d argue it’d be much harder to data-mine blogs to derive the kind of information a query on the Facebook database would take seconds to produce.
Er, Ian, that was precisely my point. People are complaining about the coercion of the NIR while happily submitting their identities to Facebook of their own volition. What happens if a less benign organisation decides it likes the look of that fat, juicy database and tries a buy-out?
“it’d be much harder to data-mine blogs to derive the kind of information a query on the Facebook database would take seconds to produce.”
I’m not an expert on Facebook, but aren’t you only able to access the personal information of your “friends”? So, if someone hasn’t approved you as their “friend”, all you’re able to see is their name and picture?
Justin: What happens if a less benign organisation decides it likes the look of that fat, juicy database and tries a buy-out?
You mean a little like this?
I actually haven’t posted my phone number or home address on Facebook. I can’t fathom why anyone would, other than if they needed them to be public so that people could do business with them. However, I find it to be a way of sharing details a bit more personal than I would on my public blog with a select group of friends and acquaintances, and they include family, a few old school friends and a few blog readers and other online friends. I wouldn’t dream of posting family photos on my blog, nor even name family members. Then again, one or two of my Facebook buddies use completely false names.
By the way, posting any personal details over the net isn’t secure if by “secure” you mean the government can’t get hold of them. How else would they know if you’ve been downloading child porn or instructions on how to make bombs?
Dangghd.
You’re almost as bad a gag-thief as that kleptomaniac flying rodent.
Sqllrrb.
Another thing about Facebook that really got on my tits was them asking you for your date of birth during sign-up. Many sites do this, but not all of them then go on the display that birthdate in your fucking profile without asking. Cocks.
Erm, they do let you choose whether they show your birthdate, Tim.
I see your issues, Justin but it is voluntary - one can put as much or as little on Facebook as they want. They can remove information, withold it and, from my understanding, limit who sees it (to Facebook engineers and friends, one would assume if you so wish).
The difference compared to ID cards is that I have a choice whether I wish to waste my life on Faceboko. I have no choice in whether or not I can carry an ID card, become criminalised if I don’t carry one and the government assumes that it can take the information.
RS
I don’t think you become criminalised for not carrying an ID card, just fined - it’s a civil offence. Refusing to pay the fine, of course, could eventually lead to jail, but they seem to have been careful to avoid the prospect of ID Card Martyrs being dragged off by the Old Bill.
I’m still not having one though.
Facebook - welcome to my curmudgeonly world, guys, I never signed up in the first place. Friends, who needs them?
Hi. Long time reader, first time caller or commenter or whatever. Love your blog, biggest fan etc etc. Any way, why am I here? Oh yes.
Bloody hell. Why do I always miss the boat or bandwagon or other from of social transport? I was just going to join up because it all looked harmless enough and now I am forced to think! (Not something I like to do until mid afternoon). I hate having to think for myself. Justin, tell me what I should do. I leave all my decision making in your very capable hands - after all, you did tell me to leave a comment if I wanted to, and here I am …
Welcome, Nobnatt and congratulations on popping your commenting cherry. By all means sign up just, as some of the guys in this thread suggest, be wary of what and how much personal info you put on there. It will, however, become a pain in the arse if you let it.
I have other reservations as well - the terms and conditions talk about sharing data with third parties and Facebook assume rights over any information put on there. They can basically do what they like with it.
Sorry Larry, in tribute to Facebook, I’m claiming an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such jokes for any purpose.
(I didn’t nick it, honest.)
Facebook is the new 1939 census!
(Godwin Award Winner 2007)
Eh?
As per the Snob, I’m (more or less) ok with facebook, as I choose how much to divulge. If you’re that interested, you can find out a juicy bit of gossip about me, but I’ll have nobody to blame but myself. My biggest problem with it is how spammy it gets.
As for ID cards, they can go swing. I feel strongly enough to go to jail over the issue.
Sorry to be tedious, but it is the fundamental difference between voluntary and compulsory that is the key. As I’ve said to all the people who say “but you give lots of details to all those credit card companies” - I can choose not to if I like, and in fact choose not to in the case of the all the various high street loyalty cards. Ditto driving licences. Ditto, even, passports.
Yes, there are all the practical issues with ID cards around who can see the information and what it could be used for, but the basic problem is the compulsion.
never joined it in the first place.
Justin… come back and BE MY FRIEND! I’m sorry to sound a note of pathetic bandwagon jumping, social trend consuming reactionism but I use Facebook for nearly all my social happenings and have had approximately 5 reunions with long-lost pals through it, only ONE of which was an unmitigated disaster. All hail the mighty Facebook, don’t scrooge me out of my simple pleasures please.
RS: They do give you the choice, but (at least when I signed up) they gave no indication at sign-up that your profile would display this by default without your permission.
Looks like no-one’s seen the latest privacy-busting wheeze Facebook has come up with? Beacon, they call it - when you do something on a site that’s signed up with Beacon you’ll get a little note pop up saying it’s been posted to your newsfeed (I had it today when making a donation at Kiva). You can opt out of it being posted, but you can’t opt out of the information being transmitted to Facebook, so far as I’m aware. Amazon is in, and so is eBay. There’s stories about it GigaOM and TechCrunch that you can find by Googling ‘facebook beacon privacy’, and this is good too: http://www.bspcn.com/2007/11/09/block-facebook-beacon/
It’s enough for me - I’m out of there in the next day or two.
Recently Facebook has been asking people to upload copies of their ID to prove copyright. Such a large amount of data on one database cannot go unregulated even under existing data protection legislation. Users have no real control on how their data is used and anyone who has heard Facebook executives speak at a conference realizes very quickly that this is an organization with ambitions far more scary than the clean cut college image they cultivate. Since they jumped into bed with Microsoft they have become quite arrogant.
[...] Chicken Yoghurt has jumped off the (band) wagon: I’ve finally bitten the bullet and divorced the bowel-achingly tedious Facebook. I’ve ‘deactivated’ my relationship with her. I got sick to the gills with her constant banging on. ‘Justin, come and look at this’, she kept saying. ‘Justin, come and do this’, she kept suggesting. Join that, poke this, invite the other. Nag, nag, bloody nag. [...]
Claire: Er, no. Call me, baby!
Sorry Justin, I’ll explain that rather obtuse comparison - I’ve heard rumblings about Facebook being the covert manifestiation of the Bush administration’s aborted Total Information Awareness programme (as directed by John Poindexter). Specifically, I didn’t sign up to a Facebook account as I didn’t like it asking me questions about religious beliefs and political affiliations. It felt like I was innocently filling in the 1939 census, hence the incredibly tenuous Nazi analagy, hence the Godwin Award. I should probably do some work.
Aha, I got the comparison but wasn’t sure who you were giving the award to. Sorted.
[...] Quite [...]
I have virtually everything bar my inside leg measurement on my website, but I still feel like I have greater control of it than I would on Facebook.
Might be an appropriate juncture to remind folks of this: http://www.pledgebank.com/ID-Boycott