The last week of April might as well be called expose the Bait-And-Switch week for Facebook. In a meeting with Anna Post, the great-granddaughter of etiquette queen Emily Post, she mentioned some do’s and don’ts of Facebook.
I suggest you just don’t. Don’t do it. They change their security settings every year, sometimes more than that, and each time they do so, they reset your security settings to benefit their business. People fail to see Facebook as a business because it’s social network based. In their blindness, they give away their personal information to rogue apps and to Facebook itself. Google couldn’t hope for a better model to acquire personal information on every living person.
That’s not to say that Facebook doesn’t have a place. When I have something to promote, more often a non-profit organization, Facebook becomes a central piece to advertise it. However, it’s something that I have to periodically maintain for no other reason than to fix back my security settings that Facebook changes at whim.
However, it turns out we can’t just do without Facebook. When businesses look up our information before or after an interview, they peer into the Facebook world. A sterile slate is met with skepticism, so it’s good to have a little activity. That’s where it would be wise to listen to Anna. Common sense things that extend personal courtesy to others through this social network medium. Don’t publicize your political or religious views (that essentially makes this entire website taboo) and don’t get into confrontations.
As far as I know, people aren’t alerted when you unfriend them or deny their friend request. Nevertheless, they often times find out by seeing who’s missing from your list of friends or if they’re suddenly denied access to see it. Although Matthew Stringer makes a good point about silent unfriending having a negative impact on your information feed (file under the keep your friends close and your enemies closer mentality), Anna has a stronger point that people look at who you friend and make real-life judgments based on it. I would even argue that information overload keeps you from knowing what your real acquaintances and social interests are up to.
So take an ounce of good with the pound of bad, but be careful. There are ways to clean up the security enough to not look like a recluse but still keep your private information private.
To read more about the recent security changes, check out the following links:
http://www.davidderrico.com/what-is-facebook-doing-with-your-info/
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline
see also
http://www.quitfacebookday.com
For me it’s more an issue of the attitude of the creator of Facebook and some of his mis-dealings with uConnect. Do you really want to contribute to this guy’s bottom line when even he says that his own Facebook users are “dumb [expletive redacted]?”
The other issue is in the technology. We already had a social network, or graph, before Facebook and MySpace. It’s called the internet. You create a website. You could even use blogging software such as WordPress. If you want to publicly follow someone, you add his/her blog to your blog-roll. If want to privately follow someone, you can subscribe to their RSS feed. Private messages were handled using email. What’s wrong with that? Is it really too difficult? I’d argue that learning these things is no more difficult to relearning Facebook every 9-12 months when they change the rules and reset your privacy settings. Using these technologies *you* own *your* work. *You* choose *your* tools.
It seems to me that the herd has once again chosen the easy way over the correct way. Website creation and blogging tools are improving by the day, and I’ll argue that there’s really no need for a single, centralized clearinghouse to locate friends. If the web were used as I have described, then you should be able to locate your friends using Google, Yahoo or Dogpile.