Facebook sucks. I know a lot of you use it, and thats fine. But it sucks. Mark Zuckerberg sucks. The whole damn thing sucks. It is an invasive data mining tool disguised as a people friendly applicarion… The ultimate social media app that one has to have a presence on today, along with maybe twitter. WTF? How did it spread like the cancer that it is?
Most companies now have a fb page, and if i want a coupon, or some special offer, i have to “like” the product. It’s like a big high school popularity contest, where everyone is begging to be liked. So I don’t like anyone or anything. I refuse. I turned off everyones access to my pages, and i just use it to communicate to the people i want . Bit i’m not telling everyone i know that i like Cheetos, or what medicines i’m taking or anything.
Do people realize how much info they are freely giving to fb? Fb is NOT collecting this data for your benefit. They are using it for THEIR benefit. They can sell it, they can slice and dice it, they have the largest databsse of personal data entered by the people themselves and they are using it as much as they can.
What is even more disturbing is that people post poctures of their kids, the kids names, ans where they live. Kids in turn have their own pages, with theor own likes and dislikes, pictures, where they live, go to school, who their friends are. I personally think it is removing the anonimity of people on the web to a level that is disturbing. Since people are idiots, shouldnt someone like the (perish the thought) govt. step in and defime what you can and cant reveal? Or better yet, how about fb police themselves and not wait for somwone else to do it for them? Has ther been any cases yet where some child was avducted by someone that used the information found on their fb pages? If not, it will happen soomer than later. But i guess we cant protect people from themselves.
I know this is probably a weak rant. I just find it to be an evil application that is growing out of comtrol. It concerns me that it can be Big Brother very soon, if it isnt there already, with all the information it has collected on millions around the world. And every product i see, every commercal on tv, has their facebook location. You cannot get away from this fuckin’ thing!
It offers a whole lot of very useful features, essentially for free. There’s no requirement to use your legal identity, and I know many people that have separate accounts for their social and professional sides. While the data mining gives Facebook money, this allows them to keep the site free, and I’ve found the data mining actually beneficial - FB is the only website I’ve found that actually has ads targeted specifically enough that Im interested in clicking on them.
There are a bunch of things I don’t like about FB, but I don’t see it as evil or especially dangerous for anyone that isn’t ridiculously careless or up to a lot of no good.
I don’t think of requiring you to like a page as more of a burden than having to subscribe to their newsletter.
I like Cheetos and I don’t care who knows it. I also don’t care who knows that I like the various books, games, movies, and other assorted products that I’ve clicked “like” for. A lot of it is so under-liked that it’s like I liked a Wikipedia stub.
Although there is something 1984-ish about Facebook. There are a couple portmanteaus-- Facebook, unfriend-- and pidgin language (which is not new to FB, but common to it) which makes reading it a bit reading Orwell’s newspeak.
facecrime - Orwell’s definition : “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.” link
Facecrime - Facebook’s definition: To be overly interested in a single topic and update about it too often, to allow oneself to be tagged in unflattering or compromising photos, to be the one who posts a meme that everyone has already seen.
It’s not so much that a single Big Brother is watching. Big Brother has bigger fish to fry than you. More like a lot of little Grundys… crap, the metaphor has fallen apart.
I don’t understand what the big deal is about collecting my information for targeted advertising. Ads are everywhere and there is no way to avoid them. So I would rather have macrobiotic lovers and yoga clothing sites target me than some stupid vampire shit or parenting crap that’s completely irrelevant and annoying to me.
I agree with this, but I also agree that Facebook does pretty much suck. I continue to use it daily, though. I think that’s why it sucks so badly… even though there are things I find objectionable about it, it has still ensnared me.
I deal with the privacy thing by not sharing things on Facebook that I wouldn’t like others knowing. My personal info threshold is pretty high in general, but I do hold back sometimes. It can be really disconcerting at times when some relative you hardly ever see greets you at a Christmas party with details about your current life that you forgot you posted on Facebook. I’ve posted a few times about being an atheist, for example. I keep waiting for that one to backfire.
Where do these targeted ads show up? I go to FB daily to play Words with Friends and the only ads I recall ever seeing are for other Zygnia games. Is Adblock Plus filtering it all out for me, or is my profile locked down enough that they can’t figure out what to try to sell me?
I jumped through the hoops to be allowed to quit, although apparently my profile is sitting there waiting for me to come back, but I am still getting fucking e-mail notifications telling me
“You have notifications pending”, or
“You’ve been invited to…”.
The other day I got an email notification of a fucking friend request.
Now, if my account is dormant, how the fuck can anyone click on my name to send me a request?
Facebook, I quit you, now why the fuck can’t you just quit me, and leave me the fuck alone?
On the one hand, it’s somewhat useful to see what my friends like. On the other hand, most of my friends will TELL me if they like Cheetos if I ask them. Or even if I don’t ask them. If I like a company, then generally I will spend money on that company’s products. Liking a company is so cheap and easy that it’s basically worthless, IMO.
I guess I should really check my Facebook page, I can’t remember the last time I checked it. I’ve got other timesuckers that are more interesting to me.
Thats the other thing. The last time i tried to do that, i had to delete each picture i had posted ONE AT A TIME. There is no reason for this other than to make deacing facebookmas painful as possible. And in my case it worked, because i never finished deleting my pictures, forgot abput it, and now every week or so i send a message to a friend or something.
I’m guilty of not killing the beast entirely. But now that so mqny of my friends and family use it exclusively to communicate, its almost impossible for me to shut down completely unless i dont want to hear from these people again. It is weird, but many folks wont give me their private or personal email address, and instead insist on using facebook “because they dont use their email accounts anymore for personal messages.”. Great.
I must purge myselfmof this beast and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps i will never be invited to another party or family function. I must learn to live with that.
There have been some issues with Facebook in regards to cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying, and workplace harassment. But other than that, Facebook is nearly 9 years old. If something terrible were to happen from me posting pictures of my kids, wouldn’t we know about it by now?
You do realize Facebook gives you a handy dandy link to delete your entire account, including photos, without you having to go in and delete them individually (Why would you even do it that way?). Link to Facebook help article on it.
Actually, there is. The terms of service require that you use your legal name, and you could conceivably be charged with a violation of the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act or similar state laws if you intentionally use a fake name.
I closed my Facebook account, then when I tried to open a different account for a charity I was volunteering with, there’s my old account being linked up again! Hey, Facebook, what if I don’t want my personal information being linked with a charity I’m helping out? How about that?
That’s the one thing that tempts me back to Facebook - family events that are only posted on Facebook so I don’t hear about them.
