On Facebook…

Rebubulah by moe.
[audio:http://cryptical.nugs.net/moe/961003/moe961003_08_Rebubulah.mp3?nid=null]

Facebook has been making a lot of people uneasy recently, and I’m not exactly sure why.
Wait, let me rephrase that.
I understand why Facebook is making people feel uneasy, but this feeling is irrational.

Backstory:
On September 5th, Facebook introduced what they call the News Feed. It displays all of the recent activity of all of your facebook friends. So if one of your friends changes some info in their profile, writes on someone else’s wall, joins a group, etc; this event will be noted in your news feed.

Now, the main complaint from users is that the news feed invades their privacy. The reality is that they never had any ‘privacy’. The news feed only shows the information a user had alerady chosen to show. The only difference is that instead of having to schlep to a person’s user page to search for something new, we don’t even have to leave the main page.

As far as being ‘stalker central’ or ‘creepy’, I have no idea where this is coming from. Facebook has always made it incredibly easy to find information about people, and the news feed does not make this any easier. Unless you are worried about your friends stalking you, things have not changed. And if that is in fact what worries you, just remove that creepy person from your friends and your problem is solved. People who you have not friended on facebook still can’t see any more information than you had allowed them to see in the past.

Update: Facebook responded.

The fact is that if you are on a social networking site of any kind, whether it be facebook, myspace, or any other one of the hundreds of simillar sites, you have freely surrendered some of your privacy. If you’re not comfortable with that, then you may want to rethink joining.

Welcome to the internet, I can see you.

One thought on “On Facebook…”

  1. I agree with all your points.

    My complaints about the news feed are that it clutters all the pages, and that it gives me info about everything that everybody on my friend list does. I really don’t care what people my friends are adding to their friend lists. There are a number of people whose relationships can become “open relationships” and I would be entirely unaffected.

    That’s why stalking was better when you had to work at it – because you could be as selective about the information you looked up in the first place.

    Not that I’m a stalker or anything…

    Facebook has always been a haven for stalkers, just as much as MySpace or any chat room in the world. The problem is not the websites, it is the people (often children) signing up for them without understanding the hazards and implications of doing so.

    And I’m spent.

    P.S. Okay, maybe I am a stalker. What’s it to ya?

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