Facebook: When Will It End?
The questions that people have pondered as of late about personal data being exposed through Facebook have brought up some really interesting articles. There was an article several days ago from Wired about the “accidental” exposure of email addresses, and the glitch that allowed you to see your friend’s personal chats using a tool that was supposed to help you be more secure. Jamie Zawinski posted to his Livejournal with information showing that Facebook exposes your friend’s email address (encoded in Base64) in all of the notification emails you get. Matt McKeon posted a most-excellent visual interpretation of how much of your information has been exposed by default using Facebook over the years.
When is this going to end? I really don’t want to wake up one morning, attempt to buy something on Amazon, and have it pop up saying it can just use the data it already knows about me from Facebook to fill out my billing and shipping information, along with my preferred payment method – when I didn’t give it access to. I don’t want to log into Netflix and have it pop up saying it’s gone through my Facebook friend’s profiles and found movie recommendations for me – when I didn’t give it access to. I don’t want to go to CVS and the pharmacist already have drugs for me because Facebook notified them of a status update I made about being ill. But over time, it seems that’s what Facebook is aiming for. The ability to be “all-knowing” about every user they have, and to let anyone have access to that information if they’re willing to pay for it.
It was bad enough everyone decided it was “fun” to let their friends (read: the Internet) know their exact location so they can “level up” in a game. I’m sure Facebook used that data wherever it could. These games are exactly what Facebook wants: a great way to disguise their ability to farm as much data about you as possible in order to make money off of you just living your life. Nice.
A lot of people complained about Google doing the same thing. But there’s a fairly large difference. Most of the stuff Google does is opt-in. You’re not required to join Orkut because you have a GMail account, but you could. You don’t have to use Google Calendar because you have a GMail account, but you could. You don’t have to allow Google Buzz to aggregate your Twitter, Facebook, Picasa, etc., but you could. Not so much with Facebook. You have to constantly keep an eye on what you need to opt-out of, if it’s even an option for you to do so.
I already have friends who are deleting their accounts and cutting their losses with Facebook. Some people ask “what alternative do we have to keep in touch with friends the way we do on Facebook?” Good question. There isn’t one. The only collective of services that comes close would be some type of Twitter + Livejournal + MySpace thing. And even then, it’s clunky and much more difficult to follow. But really, what do most people use Facebook for? The status updates. If you change your address, that’s a status update. If you change your relationship status, that’s a status update. If you post a set of pictures, that’s a status update (“I’m posting pictures, check them out!” is what you’re telling people). Everything you do to your profile is done to tell everyone else about it. Twitter can do just that. Sure you may need to use a photo-hosting service like Picasa or Flickr, and a video-hosting service like YouTube so you can keep your stuff in collections and link to them. But companies like Remember the Milk and Evernote already allow you to opt-in and let them read your tweets so you can automatically post information to them to make things easier. Twitpic instantly replaces your “mobile uploads” gallery. There’s plenty of mobile apps and desktop apps to follow Twitter and keep yourself connected.
The point is, if you rip away all of the fat, fluff, and cruft that’s accumulated on Facebook over the years, you get to the bare essentials of what it is and you realize that there are other services out there for you. Services that do just as good, if not a better job of sharing that information without sharing all of your information when you don’t want them to. Think about how much your privacy is worth.
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