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Facebook = Dictatorship
I do not often get in to the habit of badmouthing companies. However, I've recently been aware of the privacy concerns that many people have echoed against facebook. These are legitimate concerns. What it all boils down to is trust and recently facebook has basically been spitting in the face of the people who have trusted the site for years. I won't go in to too much detail because you can read about this elsewhere from countless sources on the Internet. I even overheard a lengthy discussion about it on NPR radio a few days ago.
However, I originally accepted what facebook was doing. I started treating the service for what I thought it had become and treated everything that I had on there as being out in the open. I deleted my personal page (with trial and error) and later created a dummy account to help others find my web projects.
A week later, a came across an article that Leo Laporte had tweeted about. A radio station who had expressed their privacy concerns about facebook on facebook had their page disabled by facebook. Being an amateur content provider, this disgusted me. What major service in the history of the Internet has ever stooped so low as to ban users for bringing up concerns about said service on said service? Myspace wouldn't even care about this. They do what they do, and although they are similar, I have never felt the need to delete my account from there. I trust them in some capacity. Facebook has proven to me that they are nothing more than a power hungry organization that is not unlike the Chinese government (minus the whole execution thing because of those pesky U.S. laws).
In an attempt to inform the people that I had friended on facebook that I would likely be deleting my account, I linked to the article above and explained why. The message was promptly deleted by facebook. In return, I promptly deleted the last account that I will ever have there.
However, I originally accepted what facebook was doing. I started treating the service for what I thought it had become and treated everything that I had on there as being out in the open. I deleted my personal page (with trial and error) and later created a dummy account to help others find my web projects.
A week later, a came across an article that Leo Laporte had tweeted about. A radio station who had expressed their privacy concerns about facebook on facebook had their page disabled by facebook. Being an amateur content provider, this disgusted me. What major service in the history of the Internet has ever stooped so low as to ban users for bringing up concerns about said service on said service? Myspace wouldn't even care about this. They do what they do, and although they are similar, I have never felt the need to delete my account from there. I trust them in some capacity. Facebook has proven to me that they are nothing more than a power hungry organization that is not unlike the Chinese government (minus the whole execution thing because of those pesky U.S. laws).
In an attempt to inform the people that I had friended on facebook that I would likely be deleting my account, I linked to the article above and explained why. The message was promptly deleted by facebook. In return, I promptly deleted the last account that I will ever have there.
Comment
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Comment by Eric Fox on May 26, 2010 at 7:48pm -
Yes, I already determined long ago that anything online anywhere is open to everyone, so I only put online what I don't mind the world knowing.
However, what I hate about Facebook is that my account had been falsely flagged as being fake, and no one looked into it, even after an entire month of sending them messages about the situation. I had to make a whole new account.
It's one thing to give out sensitive info, it's another thing entirely to destroy an identity.
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Comment by Emmerich on May 26, 2010 at 10:15am -
Dmitri, it's not about that. I don't care what the general public finds out about me on the Internet because I know that I have actively worked to contain what is out there. I am a writer by practice, so some of my information needs to be out there. The problem is what the services themselves do with the information that you share with them. Facebook originally was a closed service. They one day decided to make everything open unless you knew what to do in their complicated privacy setting. Then they made no attempt to speak up about the privacy concerns that people had after this fact. Instead, they seem to be censoring any mention of that. It's not about just having my information out there, it's about not trusting a sleazy company that acts like a dictatorship. I believe that Chris' logic is flawed on this matter and I have the right to disagree whether this is his community or not and I would hope that my comments would not be taken down just because I disagree. In fact, he said in the video that he spoke of this in that it is OK to disagree with his statements. I respect him for that. What I don't respect is censorship. As the owner of this blog, I have the right to delete your comment. Wouldn't you turn a blind eye to this blog if I clicked the yellow X next to what you wrote? Imagine if I was SUPPOSED to be a respectable company. How would you feel to be swept under the rug as part of damage control?
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Comment by Sol McNally Aka : Dmitri Girl on May 26, 2010 at 7:54am -
By reading this all I can say is if you dont want people to know your information don't put it on the internet. Because no matter how secure you think any website is there is always someone looking for a way to get around security.
© 2012 Created by Chris Pirillo.
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