Sunday, May 09, 2010

About Facebook... Spring cleaning

Facebook used to be that private place where you share stuff with friends that you find hard to keep in contact with. Well, they are taking your private stuff and going public, giving advertisers and application developers full access to your private data, so they can make more money. It's like Facebook taking your data and selling them for pure profit. I won't dispute the fact that when you open an account, the legal statement you're forced to read states that FB owns all the data you posted on your profile. Well, sure it's fine the way they did it in the past. But now as they are going open, I am not comfortable with it.

It's a bait and switch tactic. Years ago, it's a locked down community. Facebook encouraged you to post as much private info as possible on the promise that your profile is only accessible to your friends. Thus you can control who sees what by going into the settings and choose who can see what, and make careful consideration when "Friending" someone. Well, not anymore. There's nothing wrong with going open. But sneakily playing bait and switch is just playing dirty.

I won't delete my profile as some friends are still using FB as an important contact tool. But I well be deleting most of my info, and avoiding posting stuff here. Photos would stay in my Flickr account as before, and all notes on the wall are synced from my blog as this one.

For Reference:
WIRED | Facebook's Gone Rogue

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