Facebook Casualties

Maybe i'm turning into an old man, but i think there are probably better ways to communicate than Facebook.

Recently the ACLU has released a facebook app that demonstrates how much a single app can find out about your friends. If you're curious what i'm getting cranky about, and you use facebook, i suggest you try it out. (Either that really is the ACLU or a very clever social engineer impersonating the ACLU, but the point is the same.)

Since Facebook allows any app to see anything about anyone's friends, i've decided this is a severe privacy risk because i cannot control which applications i trust with my personal details. While Facebook is a great platform with alot of potential, Facebook's policies are not something i can live with. Rather than being a luddite and deleting my Facebook account, i've decided to start dropping people who use sensless applications without a reasonable privacy policy. These people i'm calling casualties.

I'm debating if i should start putting up a Wall of Shame, or if that would be an equal invasion of privacy. I guess for now i'll say i've already dropped a Fedora contributor. This is gonna get tricky once i start dropping family members.

3 flames:

Stephen Smoogen zei

I was going say the best thing to do would be to design a version of facebook that was designed with the following order:

A) Privacy
B) Security
C) Open
D) Fun

I think that would require a bit of thinking to get all 4 working together

bochecha zei

@Smooge:

Something like that ? :D
http://asocial.ws/

PS: I hope I didn't posted this message three times, I'm having issues with the fp.o openid :-/

Yankee zei

I'm going to be very blunt about this because this is something i think should be obvious to both of you know.

People go where the content is, whether it's a patent encumbered codec or a social network that destroys our rights to privacy. Naturally other people follow. IRC may be a better solution, but you still have an AIM or MSN account to chat with those people that don't use IRC. Mailing lists might be better, but you still use HTML based forums for those communities that don't understand the true power of mutt.

I've used facebook because that's where friends of mine are. The advantage to Facebook is that they can be innovative *because* the people, aka the content, is there. Alternatives don't work unless your friends are using it. Period.

It's not a technological problem.