Facebook has taken some hits for repeated changes to its privacy policy that seem to compromise user privacy to the benefit of advertisers.
Well-known users like Cory Doctorow have canceled their accounts. As Doctorow tweeted on May 14th: “Never made use of #Facebook, but #privacy awfulness from #Zuckerberg has prompted me to delete acct http://tinyurl.com/6rezxv.” And a movement is afoot to designate May 31st Quit Facebook Day.
On May 01, Gizmodo offered its top 10 list of reasons to quit facebook. You can find detailed instructions on how to quit facebook so you really quit it instead of only half quitting it. You can even automate the process by using the web 2.0 suicide machine, although, at the time of writing, its server has been hacked so it is temporarily unavailable.
On May 11, the New York Times offered space to Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s VP for public policy, to answer reader concerns regarding privacy issues. See Facebook Executive Answers Reader Questions. The next day, in a curious act of counterpoint, the Times posted a helpful diagram in a piece called Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options. This was followed two days later by a challenge to Facebook’s claim that it was making the web more open, correctly observing that the web is already open, and that social networks represent compromises to that initial open design.
Then there’s the question of Mark Zuckerberg’s capacity to engage in ethical behaviour. Essentially, 400,000,000 people are entrusting their personal information to a kid with no experience. Does this make sense? I wouldn’t use a phrase as strong as “mass-delusion” to describe our collective trust. But I would go so far as to suggest that the level of trust we repose in this Machiavellian nerd requires a certain suspension of disbelief. I’m not alleging that Zuckerberg is a horrible person. What I’m asserting with something approximating certainty is that any kid who attains a net worth of $4.0 bn in the blink of an eye is going to find himself subject to pressures and temptations which are nigh impossible to resist. We all are being silly if we believe otherwise.
I’m currently discerning whether or not to join the May 31st exodus. You can see me pictured above with my head covered in a stretched facebook logo as if I’m suffocating inside a green plastic facebook bag. What’s so suffocating about facebook? I think maybe it’s the reductive way in which friendship is treated on facebook. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never ever been able to communicate to friends the simple fact that they matter to me without looking them directly in the eye as I speak. Most facebook communication is a mere exchange of information, but that information gets confused for something else. And that’s precisely the kind of confusion you’d expect from some kid with no experience.
A gathering of friends on facebook is a lot like a gathering of friends at the West Edmonton Mall. It’s fun at first. But it’s a distracting environment filled with lots of opportunities to shop for things and to play games. So, in the end, you don’t spend a lot of time with your friends. And after a while, you discover that even when you do, the moments of connection aren’t real.
Maybe another way of putting it is that facebook is to blogging what Wal-Mart is to local retailing. Every community feels compelled to open a Wal-Mart, yet in the end, the giant chain eviscerates the local economy, putting small business people out of work and leaving the community looking dull and culturally flat.
Related posts:
May 19th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Hi, David! As per your request, I’m replying via your web site, which I look forward to perusing in detail this weekend. Anyway, I appreciate your concerns regarding Facebook, it is a monster, and I agree with your Wal-Mart analogy. I’ll tell you now why I won’t be quitting; through Facebook, I have found many long-lost friends (such as yourself), people whom I may never have found otherwise, and for that I am very grateful! Yes, much of the exchange is shallow and silly, but if one doesn’t lose sight of that, what’s the harm in sharing jokes or funny videos? I appreciate the diversion, and many posts are inspiring and thought-provoking. What I don’t appreciate so much about Facebook is the hoarding of “friends”; I haven’t mastered the graceful turn-down, other than informing people I really have never met face-to-face that I would rather hold off on our Facebook relationship until we have been introduced in person. Maybe that’s kind of anal for some people, but its a small way to control who gets to have access to me and my friends. I’m not so good about turning some people down who I barely know, for fear of insulting or offending them. Some people who I thought were to be in that category (the “hardly-know-you” friends) have actually turned out to be some of my favourite sources of entertainment and/or information, and I’m always happy to see people reply to my posts close friends or mere acquaintances. It may not be the deepest form of communicating, but its better than nothing sometimes! Especially for me, and I’m sure I speak for many of my colleagues in the music business, when you’re traveling a lot and are away from home, you can’t imagine how much a little sentence or two from someone you know can lift your spirits.
I don’t know how many people use Facebook as a substitute for real interpersonal exchanges. I for one don’t, but I have to say that I have met many, many wonderful and interesting people in my travels, and it would be impossible to maintain contact with all of them, as much as I would like to do so. This is a good compromise for me.
As for the privacy issues, I must admit my ignorance, I have not read all the postings out there, but I’m as careful as I can be about what is on my page.
I hope you won’t quit Facebook, as you’re one of the people I always look forward to encountering when I log on!
Can’t wait to read what you think of my little diatribe…
May 19th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
I think I have to agree with Maria – it’s a great way to keep in touch with or reconnect with friends from the past. It’s also been rather useful for advertising for the Orpheus Choir!
May 20th, 2010 at 2:30 am
That’s right, Tamiko. I have quite a few friends in the business who use Facebook to network and promote their events. Not a bad idea…
May 20th, 2010 at 10:49 am
Hi Maria, hardly a diatribe
I have to confess that I was delighted to be chatting on facebook with you over a coffee – me in Toronto and you in a train station in Nürnberg. Tamiko, I think it’s just weird that we’ve sometimes ended up chatting – you upstairs & me downstairs.
Almost all my fb friends are people I have a personal connection to in real life. There are a few exceptions, but those are mostly from fb introductions by mutual friends. To be honest, my experience on fb has been positive. None of the hostility that appears on the comments of news sites, and none of the impersonal (almost cold) feel of exchanges on twitter. I think, because I can control my circle of friends on fb, it ends up being an upbeat and supportive environment. Things are probably a little different for you, Maria, because there’s the public dimension to being a performer that almost demands you make yourself open to people you don’t know. Maybe it’s a matter of establishing clear boundaries – use Myspace for fans – facebook for personal friends. I don’t know.
As for privacy, if I were really concerned about that, I wouldn’t be blogging.
For me, the issue boils down to economics. A conscious decision was made years ago to make the internet a laisser faire environment. That has had ideological consequences that are very American in flavour. In the real world, it has taken American-style capitalism more than a hundred years to demonstrate that the trickle down theory is wrong – capital flows up. It becomes pooled in the hands of an ever-narrowing group of elites and the gap between rich and poor widens. The same effect has taken only ten years to establish itself on the internet.
But things could be different. Imagine what facebook would look like if it functioned like the CBC in Canada – a publicly managed service instead of a privately owned data-mine. The problem is: the internet is an international phenomenon, and the only international regulatory bodies we have are dominated by the ideologies that produced the problem in the first place.
Will I quit? As I say, I’m only thinking aloud here. Thanks for your input. The personal side of this is a powerful reason to stay.
May 22nd, 2010 at 9:12 am
You’re right about the trickle down theory, and I like your analogy with the CBC, if only it would be allowed to function as it should…
So I’m assuming I’ll be seeing you on Facebook after the deadline!
I’m going to comment on your Yonge St. post now…