OK, this post is a long time coming. Facebook has been the whipping boy in the press lately and rightfully so. The people behind Facebook are effectively liars, assuring us one thing when we sign up but changing things around later. This is why I don't think it's about privacy, since so much of us don't care about privacy. We *want* the world to see our content--BUT when we can't control how it is used that is absolutely a bigger issue than privacy. So, don't let anyone say "I don't care about the privacy thing with Facebook." Correct them. Do they want to control their own content?
Here are eight ways the world is quickly coming to hate Facebook. Some of them may even be relevant to the way *you* use the site (stay tuned after for what I think we should do, rather than delete our FB accounts):
1) Here's an IM convo between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and an unnamed friend from the very earliest days of the new network:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks.
That's via an article last week on BusinessInsider.com reporting on how these IMs won't help Facebook's PR much. I first came across the comments on Brent Billock's Tumblr. It's a nice example of how Zuckerbergs morals have always been questionable--it's not a matter of him selling out later, but that he was a dickwad even when he was 19.
2) Here's an excerpt from an Aaron Sorkin-scripted screenplay for a movie that is slated for release this October:
Nice and brutal--that comes from a Newsweek blog post from May 13, 2010 that details a number of slings and arrows being thrown at Zuckerberg and Facebook. Not only is "The Social Network" movie coming out in October of 2010 going to be a total hit-piece on FB and Zuckerberg, but the Newsweek post talks about a letter from concerned Senators, a filing from 15 privacy groups and a lot more. It's definitely worth a read.
3) MoveOn.org is getting into the act and has given us a new thing to "move on" from: Facebook (remember when we were supposed to "Move On" from presidential infidelity? GOOD TIMES!). MoveOn.org presents a petition you can sign demanding that:
"Sites like Facebook must respect my privacy. They should not share information about me or my friends with other companies without my explicit permission"
Sounds reasonable enough--and here's a chart they include with the petition showing you what is now defaulted to public on your Facebook account:
[[posterous-content:pid___1]]What a mess! Want to see how to clean up that mess? That's #4.
4) Via my favorite chart-supplying blog, infographie.posterous.com comes this amazing flowchart that explains just where all of your privacy settings are. Originally it came from NYTimes.com. I've reposted it below (and on my Flickr) for your uh, pleasure (if you happen to be a flowchart masochist, that is):
5) An opinion piece on Wired.com calls Facebook out for what it has done: gone rogue! What's better is that the Wired.com piece calls for an open-source Facebok alternative. NICE. The good news is, someone's already answered the call for an open-source Facebook alternative. See #6.
6) Wired.com reports on a group of NYU students who are working on an open-source Facebook alternative called Diaspora. They've already set up a website: JoinDiaspora.com and it looks like they're a bit overwhelmed by the support being shown toward them. I hope they get programming FAST.
7) I suspect that even more folks will be Joining the Disaspora(.com) after checking out YourOpenBook.org, a site, I found thanks to a CTV.ca article from yesterday. What YourOpenBook.org does is show you just how easy it is to search Facebook and find content that many users might consider personal or private or both. Just do a search for "drunken mess" and see what comes up!
8) Finally, we have Time.com and their piece covering Quit Facebook Day. Yep, that's right, May 31, 2010 is Quit Facebook Day and you can read more about it at QuitFacebookDay.com. Not the most clever of names, but certainly a good idea. I'm all for a diaspora away from Facebook and always have been. However, I don't think we should all delete our accounts.
Here's my solution for dealing with the Facebook problem:
I am calling for a service that will post an update to my Facebook status every time I post somewhere else on the Internet. The status update should read like this:
I just posted something really cool on [SITENAME]! Why night head over, sign up and follow me there?
That's it. No link, no content, or even an excerpt--just the message that I am posting on a network OTHER than Facebook.
What better way to flip off Facebook and put pressure on your friends to join you? Not only does it function as a reminder to your Facebook friends that you are somewhere else, but it'll be more effective than deleting your account and leaving nothing behind. On top of that, it'll get your Facebook friends back for putting you through all those stupid Mafia Wars invites and idiotic "what Dawson's Creek character are you" quizes. And NO, I don't want to "like" something just because YOU do. STOP RECOMMENDING SHIT TO ME.
Sorry...
Of course, it's nice to have one place to share everything with everyone. Without Facebook, it's back to the wild, wild west-style Internet. One friend will be on Flickr, another on Photobucket, while your brother is over on some other damn photo site. I get that. But the only other solution I think we have at our disposal is to do what I've been doing ever since I joined Facebook: I lie.
Yes, that's right, my last name isn't really "Smith" and I'm not really 64 years-old. What I need to do now is take all my photos down and replace them with photos I don't own of people I don't know and add captions like "he's me having sex with the president."
Maybe someone should put up a site called "FuckWithFacebookDay.org" that would encourage folks to fill their Facebook accounts with copyrighted content. Well, it's ALL copyrighted content, isn't it? It's just that we individual users don't have the money to hire a lawyer to send a C&D to Facebook.
So, in the end, am I going to leave Facebook? I don't know yet. I just might.
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