Dear Facebookers,
I hope you’ve been having fun on the world’s most popular social network. I must admit, after learning to ignore useless apps and hiding unwanted nitwits from clouding my news feed, I’ve been enjoying myself as well. But this is not about how lame facebook is, or how awesome twitter is. Those are two cold truths you will never realise, and I’m okay with that. This is about Facebook, and how it’s treating your privacy. More importantly, why you should give a damn.
Most people are narcissistic attention seeking gargoyles, who’s sole goal is to get their activities seen by as many people as possible. Myself included. And Facebook seems to be the best place to do that. Had a wild party last night? Upload that album to Facebook and get a hundred likes and comments. You will of course complain about the number of notifications you had to deal with the next day, but deep down you’re smiling. Smiling wide.
Facebook wants to help you attain your goal, but trust me (rather, don’t trust them) they don’t really have the same intentions in mind. If Google wants to control you from the outside in, facebook has been going from the inside out.
But it’s a win-win situation, right? After all, Facebook is showing more of you, to the whole world. That’s a good thing. Fulfills that narcissistic ideal I pictured above. Wrong. Facebook wants to sell your privacy to advertisers. This is not traditional advertising, where the ad is brought to the user. It’s the other way round, and in its creepiest form. Imagine a company knowing where you’ve been, what you’re planning on doing, what you like, your location, your phone number, your relationship status. Facebook isn’t concerned with your life getting fished*. They’re worried about posting good quarterly results and they’re using your data to get to that.
You’re on some blog. It was just a meaningless gif of a cat jumping about. It has Facebook’s new ‘Like’ button. Little do you know, the website owner has been given the right to publish posts directly to your News Feed. There’s talk that if you like an ad on Facebook, the advertiser gets more than just access to your News Feed. A car company knows that you (the individual you) likes that particular car, and know your lifestyle, relationship status, and phone number, and could keep their call centres busy ringing your phone. This is right now, and without your permission; they aren’t going to hesitate in giving out more info in the future.
Let’s not forget about collateral.
You say something about your work. Your boss isn’t in your friends list. But he’s in your friend’s friends list. Taking into account Facebook’s new default privacy settings, he see’s your status. You’re fired.
Some guy is stalking you. He sends you a friend request. You ignore that. He befriends a friend of yours, and inadvertently gets access to all those pictures you’ve uploaded to facebook. Fish* that. With the default privacy setting for new users, a stalker doesn’t even have to sign up on facebook to see those pictures.
When it comes to Facebook, you have an illusion of privacy, while all your information is really shared across the web. When you say something, you think you’re saying it to your closest friends. When you upload something, you don’t realise the whole internet can see it. And you have a right to believe so. It was not like that when you signed up two years ago. Just that Facebook got greedy, and decided to pull down the curtains without asking anyone.
Facebook of course offers you a way out. You can customise the hell out of your privacy settings—there’s so many of them. And that’s the problem. There’s so many of them! Take a look at Facebook’s privacy settings. There are over 50 settings spread across 6 categories. Compare that with Twitter—public or private (and no sheepish fishing* around thereon). You might argue that this gives you more control. Bullshit. It’s meant to confuse and tire the user into succumbing to their corporate plan—the sellout of your privacy. Moreover, there are things that are beyond your control. Like how all those Like buttons are popping up on various websites, without your explicit permission.
You might say I’m a lunatic proclaiming an apocalypse because a light bulb went bust. Truth is, even Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks so. “A small fraction of our 400-million-plus active user base.”, says Zuckerberg. Yes, he’s not concerned about what I’ve just said. He’s just concerned that a small fraction of his userbase is aware of it. The tech community of course doesn’t let things slip by. The last time when Facebook wanted to legally own all your data, they fought back, and Facebook returned ownership rights.
There have been a number of recent articlesand posts that do a much better job than me at articulating what’s wrong with Facebook. We encourage you to read them and form your own opinions. I’m sure you won’t leave facebook no matter what. All I ask of you, is to be aware. Do consider going through your privacy settings thoroughly. Don’t allow permissions to suspicious applications. Consider the implications of your actions. Be smart. Trust your friends, but keep an eye out for when they might not really be your friends. And if you have to Like something, like this ‘note’. That’s safe (for now).
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