Michael Arrington, the TechCrunch founder and and technology muckraker extraordinaire, has just put Facebook over the coals for some anti-Google PR, and he’s acting as if he’s surprised to see such aggressive and underhanded behavior from Facebook.
And if you don't think they are, you're wrong.
Michael’s naive. He doesn’t understand how threatening Facebook really is. Facebook’s behavior threatens everyone, including you.
Although Facebook seems innocent, “an easy place to communicate with friends,” its ownership of our time and our social lives is the result of an aggressive plan to dominate the online world. Facebook doesn’t just want to know everything about you, your friends, and your family; they want to use that in every way possible to dominate the internet and make money. While that’s fine and good for companies in an open market-driven economy, the extent to which they’re trying to do this surreptitiously while looking innocent is quite new.
It’s shocking that even skeptical insiders like Michael Arrington remain in love with the company and eager to buy into its “nice guy” messages:
“I’ve been patient with Facebook over the years as they’ve had their privacy stumbles. They’re forging new ground, and it’s not an exaggeration to say they’re changing the world’s notions on what privacy is. Give them time. They’ll figure it out eventually.”
Seriously? Facebook isn’t trying to figure out privacy. They’re trying to figure out how to murder it and dispose of the body before people catch on that current and potential employers, creditors, and lawyers will pay big bucks to know all the details of what was once part of your private life.
So is Arrington right that Facebook is essentially looking out for you, or is the truth more like what Julian Assange said recently:
“Facebook is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented.”
Arrington or Assange: whose take on Facebook privacy is correct?
Facebook’s insistence that users provide their and their friends’ real personal information (and can kick them off if they don’t) shows what lies on the road ahead. Analysis of what’s going on on the top five million websites today makes Facebook’s drive to first dominate, then open up and control not only your social graph but your entire online life, very clear: they want to know everywhere you go, as Danny Sullivan points out in his estimate of Facebook integrations crossing the 2,000,000 site mark. It’s very 1984.
What can you do about Facebook watching you everywhere you go, insisting on knowing your personal information and your real-life friends, and making them complicit in their game? Take a look at what you’ve put out there, and start using some privacy enhancing tools even when you’re not on Facebook. Treat everything you post online as though there’s a chance it will end up on the cover of the New York Times. Ask yourself if you’d be comfortable with the world seeing it. If not, stop; if so, post away.
You’re forgetting one thing. Besides the fact that Facebook is in this game to win money, they also have the greatest view on human behaviour and human networks and how they all interlink. And that is much more dangerous than the barebook fact of making money. They’re making connections.
Facebook is a business. Nothing is for free…
Agreed, but most users are naive about the tradeoff. They don’t understand that their online activity is being tracked and their data being mined; it’s insidious, and they don’t expect it. They don’t realize what they’re giving away. We want people to understand the tradeoff and make an educated decision on whether the Facebook experience is worth the privacy invasion. For some, it is. For others, it certainly isn’t.
I use facebook for business only. I just don’t like the idea of posting personal conversations and information in a place that has no regard for privacy and makes information available to anyone, really. It’s like talking on a mega phone everywhere you go. Why would I do that?
You’re smart to approach it like that. With most people, however, they feel protected by the lack of in-person contact online and often do or say things they wouldn’t otherwise, and it can come back to bite them.
I agree with all statements presented here regarding the privacy issues and devious practices that Facebook employs. While they may draw the most attention because of their shear size, as rated by subscriber counts, they are not even close to being the only corporation or business that practices this art of personal thievery and reselling or trafficking of human souls just to make a buck.
While there are thousands of companies doing the same thing, ones that pop into my head at the moment are: Apple, Google, Yahoo, Alexa, Double-click, all major banks, grocery stores (your discount card), credit, gas & retailer cards, etc.. Any iPhone or Android based phone or tablet comes with GPS & tower triangulation tracking turned on by default. Apps such as “Latitude” and other similar 3rd party applications sell you on how cool it is to know where your friends, family & anyone else is at any given moment, but they don’t tell you how they sell that information to any low-life marketing database company that will throw money their way.
How about the outsourcing of customer service centers to any country (except for ours)? Your personal information, including SSN, is now in the hands of “most likely” a future enemy of the United States. Since we terrorize any country that doesn’t let us create a slave nation out of them or rape their natural resources, you can count on us pissing off India and the Philippines sometime down the road.
But enough, self-opinionated ramblings from yous truly. The only solid, truthful, proven cartel of scumbag, self-serving, privacy-stealing, bloodsuckers is those you think are here to protect you.. our good-ole-government! The cliche of “shit flows downhill” is dead-on accurate! So grab a turd and stay afloat my friends.. and stay clear of the whirlpool!