Because TheZuck isn’t rich enough? How about just focusing on making #Facebook more user friendly? I hate FB with my soul. It’s so noisy and hard to use compared to #Twitter, #Instagram and others. Even #Google+ is easier to use. #notkidding

Because TheZuck isn’t rich enough? How about just focusing on making #Facebook more user friendly? I hate FB with my soul. It’s so noisy and hard to use compared to #Twitter, #Instagram and others. Even #Google+ is easier to use. #notkidding

stoweboyd:

This is inevitable, because Facebook is the new AOL:

Rebecca Greenfield via The Atlantic Wire

Over the last month, Facebook has not only seen a 1.1 percent drop in U.S. users, but a decline in 14 of the 23 countries where it has 50 percent penetration, found an analyst using tracking software. Beyond numbers though, another metric, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, found over the last year the users that have stayed are less satisfied. Facebook scored a 61, which not only represents over a 7 percent decrease from one year ago, but puts it well below Google+.

The end will be sooner that most imagine: in three years, Facebook will be a has been.

Can’t happen soon enough.  I’m sort of thinking a sea change is in order for the whole of the social media landscape.  All the successful socnets are starting to make really dumb mistakes–like Twitter and it’s “discover” and “connect” tabs and making DMs so hard to get to.  Or Tumblr and it’s idiotic “pinned posts” and poor choices in sidebar ad content.  

“Sea change”–I’m using that phrase correctly, right?

My Take on the latest Facebook Mess (The one where it tracks you even if you’re logged out)

I posted a variant of this post earlier on Website666.com. Check it out if you want more context, but my commentary is more meaty here.

So, even if you log out, Facebook can still track you through the magic of cookies–those little “bread crumbs” that websites leave on your computer with info about your behavior on that site or other sites.

Well, this doesn’t surprise me too much.  After all, every one of us should be aware that we’re not Facebook’s customers. Facebook’s customers are advertisers.  We are Soylent Green fed to the advertisers–aka, what advertisers pay Facebook for is made of people. Our eyes, our traffic, our behavior patterns are what Facebook customers pay for.  This is how big brother really works.  It follows you where ever you go and knows whatever you do (online).  But it’s not government watching your every move, trying to control you and manipulate you, it’s big business.

If you don’t mind having your every move tracked and exploited by Facebook, they’ll be happy to provide you with a place to connect with friends and family and a place to post links, pictures and video that you can share with said friends and family and play really stupid, time-wasting games.

I hate to sound jaded, but I don’t know if Facebook being all KGB on our asses is that big of a deal.  I mean, so what? We’re being exploited.  So?  I mean, it’s lame we don’t get a bigger piece of Zuckerdouche’s financial pie (we just get the services Facebook offers, which are easily found elsewhere), but in the end, what are we losing?

I’m not saying we’re not losing anything, it’s just that I’m honestly not sure what it is.

I know I don’t like the feeling of being exploited, but capitalism already does that to us.  When we buy a $3 cup of coffee at Starbucks, we’re not just paying a mark-up, we’re paying a HUGE mark-up that has allowed Starbucks to expand around the world and its executives to get very rich.  I don’t blame vendors for mark-ups to cover costs and salaries, but Starbucks (and many other companies) don’t charge what they need to, they charge MUCH more.  How do you think Apple ended up with so much cash laying around?  Because they only charged you for what that iPhone in your pocket cost to make?  Hell no.

We’re all being exploited every day.  Personally, I don’t like it.  But what can I do? Capitalism is everywhere.

Ha! I almost typed “capitulationism” just then.  Well, I guess that sort of fits. :\

Speaking of business, buy my book, wouldja? Thanks!

Facebook だめです!Holy DNS Failure! Does this mean they’re getting nailed by a DDOS attack?

If Facebook can get taken down… NObody is safe!! O_O

100 Million Facebook Users Data Collated into One Giant-Ass File

The harvest has begun.. Ron Bowes is from Canada, and he is a security consultant. Just this week, Mr. Bowes changed the world as we know it, perhaps ever damning the word “privacy” into the trash heap of history. And how did he do it? Using the very data that people knowingly and happily gave up themselves on Facebook..

Bowes collated 100 million Facebook users’ names, addresses, and unique ID numberson a single 2.8 gig file and posted it online..Facebook also enabled this grand release of private data.

via coalspeaker.com

I would quit Facebook in a New York second if only I could convince my family and friends who treat the site like a religion to quit, too.

Maybe I should bite the bullet and set the good example.  The problem with that is simple: FB as lame as it is, is great for networking.  Plus, it saves me money on business cards—I barely give them out. I just tell them the socnets I’m on and they find me if they want to.

I just wish Zuckerberg wasn’t such a douche with our stuff.

“Zuckerberg needs your data…”

“Zuckerberg needs your data. His business is built upon it. The most important thing to understand about Facebook is that you are not Facebook’s customer, you are its inventory. You are the product Facebook is selling. Facebook’s real customers are advertisers. You, as a Facebook member, are useful only because you can be packaged up and sold to advertisers. The more information Facebook can get from you, the more you are worth. In response, a FB spokesman told me: “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Lyons, on Facebook (via newsweek)

But isn’t this the same with any ad-supported service? MySpace? GMail? Etc?  Hell, even advertising on the old TV is built this way. It’s our behavior that is the product.

All that said, I wonder if most people understand this dynamic.  No one is getting “free hosting services” for their pics and status updates—they are getting hosting services in exchange for their pics and status updates.  Maybe not the literal content, but the behavior patterns behind the content is sold to advertisers.  How else are these sites supposed to remain “free”?

Zuckerberg’s Law of Information Sharing

Link: Zuckerberg’s Law of Information Sharing

newsweek:

soupsoup:

“I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before,” he said. “That means that people are using Facebook, and the applications and the ecosystem, more and more.”

Call it Zuckerberg’s Law.

We think sharing is great! Except maybe not so much when you’re being pushed to do it by large corporations whose business model depends on convincing you to not value that information you’re sharing as much as advertisers do.

Yeah, for me this has always been about control, not privacy.  I’ll share what *I* want and keep private what *I* choose.  Thanks.  Facebook has just proven that we need to question what we post to any network.  Like anyone else’s bottom line is different from Zuckerdouche’s?

Yahweh must have lied on his Facebook profile… (a very short musing)

You know how Facebook has power over us by knowing things like our real names (which they force us to give them)?  I remember reading someplace that, in the early days of Judeo-Christian history, Yahweh refused to tell anyone his real name because, he said, that would give people power over him.

8 ways the World Hates Facebook, why you should, too (it’s not about privacy–but control) and my solution!

OK, this post is a long time coming.  Facebook has been the whipping boy in the press lately and rightfully so. The people behind Facebook are effectively liars, assuring us one thing when we sign up but changing things around later.  This is why I don’t think it’s about privacy, since so much of us don’t care about privacy.  We *want* the world to see our content–BUT when we can’t control how it is used that is absolutely a bigger issue than privacy.  So, don’t let anyone say “I don’t care about the privacy thing with Facebook.” Correct them.  Do they want to control their own content?

Here are eight ways the world is quickly coming to hate Facebook. Some of them may even be relevant to the way *you* use the site (stay tuned after for what I think we should do, rather than delete our FB accounts):

1)  Here’s an IM convo between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and an unnamed friend from the very earliest days of the new network:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

That’s via an article last week on BusinessInsider.com reporting on how these IMs won’t help Facebook’s PR much.  I first came across the comments on Brent Billock’s Tumblr. It’s a nice example of how Zuckerbergs morals have always been questionable–it’s not a matter of him selling out later, but that he was a dickwad even when he was 19.

2) Here’s an excerpt from an Aaron Sorkin-scripted screenplay for a movie that is slated for release this October:

image

Nice and brutal–that comes from a Newsweek blog post from May 13, 2010 that details a number of slings and arrows being thrown at Zuckerberg and Facebook.  Not only is “The Social Network” movie coming out in October of 2010 going to be a total hit-piece on FB and Zuckerberg, but the Newsweek post talks about a letter from concerned Senators, a filing from 15 privacy groups and a lot more. It’s definitely worth a read.

3) MoveOn.org is getting into the act and has given us a new thing to “move on” from: Facebook (remember when we were supposed to “Move On” from presidential infidelity? GOOD TIMES!).  MoveOn.org presents a petition you can sign demanding that:

“Sites like Facebook must respect my privacy. They should not share information about me or my friends with other companies without my explicit permission”

Sounds reasonable enough–and here’s a chart they include with the petition showing you what is now defaulted to public on your Facebook account:

image

What a mess!  Want to see how to clean up that mess? That’s #4.

4) Via my favorite chart-supplying blog, infographie.posterous.com comes this amazing flowchart that explains just where all of your privacy settings are.  Originally it came from NYTimes.com. I’ve reposted it below (and on my Flickr) for your uh, pleasure (if you happen to be a flowchart masochist, that is):

image

5) An opinion piece on Wired.com calls Facebook out for what it has done: gone rogue!  What’s better is that the Wired.com piece calls for an open-source Facebok alternative.  NICE.  The good news is, someone’s already answered the call for an open-source Facebook alternative. See #6.

6) Wired.com reports on a group of NYU students who are working on an open-source Facebook alternative called Diaspora. They’ve already set up a website: JoinDiaspora.com and it looks like they’re a bit overwhelmed by the support being shown toward them. I hope they get programming FAST.

7) I suspect that even more folks will be Joining the Disaspora(.com) after checking out YourOpenBook.org, a site, I found thanks to a CTV.ca article from yesterday. What YourOpenBook.org does is show you just how easy it is to search Facebook and find content that many users might consider personal or private or both.  Just do a search for “drunken mess” and see what comes up!

8) Finally, we have Time.com and their piece covering Quit Facebook Day.  Yep, that’s right, May 31, 2010 is Quit Facebook Day and you can read more about it at QuitFacebookDay.com. Not the most clever of names, but certainly a good idea. I’m all for a diaspora away from Facebook and always have been.  However, I don’t think we should all delete our accounts.

Here’s my solution for dealing with the Facebook problem:

I am calling for a service that will post an update to my Facebook status every time I post somewhere else on the Internet.  The status update should read like this:

I just posted something really cool on [SITENAME]!  Why night head over, sign up and follow me there?

That’s it. No link, no content, or even an excerpt–just the message that I am posting on a network OTHER than Facebook.

What better way to flip off Facebook and put pressure on your friends to join you? Not only does it function as a reminder to your Facebook friends that you are somewhere else, but it’ll be more effective than deleting your account and leaving nothing behind.  On top of that, it’ll get your Facebook friends back for putting you through all those stupid Mafia Wars invites and idiotic “what Dawson’s Creek character are you” quizes.  And NO, I don’t want to “like” something just because YOU do. STOP RECOMMENDING SHIT TO ME.

Sorry…

Of course, it’s nice to have one place to share everything with everyone.  Without Facebook, it’s back to the wild, wild west-style Internet.  One friend will be on Flickr, another on Photobucket, while your brother is over on some other damn photo site. I get that.  But the only other solution I think we have at our disposal is to do what I’ve been doing ever since I joined Facebook: I lie.

Yes, that’s right, my last name isn’t really “Smith” and I’m not really 64 years-old.  What I need to do now is take all my photos down and replace them with photos I don’t own of people I don’t know and add captions like “he’s me having sex with the president.”

Maybe someone should put up a site called “FuckWithFacebookDay.org” that would encourage folks to fill their Facebook accounts with copyrighted content.  Well, it’s ALL copyrighted content, isn’t it? It’s just that we individual users don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to send a C&D to Facebook.

So, in the end, am I going to leave Facebook?  I don’t know yet.  I just might.

More Facebook “Fun” making it tempting to Stop Facebooking… (not that I was that active, anyway)

Facebook Glitch Brings New Privacy Worries

By JENNA WORTHAM
Published: May 5, 2010

On Wednesday, users discovered a glitch that gave them access to supposedly private information in the accounts of their Facebook friends, like chat conversations.

Not long before, Facebook had introduced changes that essentially forced users to choose between making information about their interests available to anyone or removing it altogether.

Although Facebook quickly moved to close the security hole on Wednesday, the breach heightened a feeling among many users that it was becoming hard to trust the service to protect their personal information.

“Facebook has become more scary than fun,” said Jeffrey P. Ament, 35, a government contractor who lives in Rockville, Md.

Mr. Ament said he was so fed up with Facebook that he deleted his account this week after three years of using the service. “Every week there seems to be a new privacy update or change, and I just can’t keep up with it.”

via NYTimes.com

This has been my attitude toward Facebook for, what feels like, years now. These latest problems, a Gizmodo rant I posted about the other day, and, quite honestly, the stories of others who share the same “can’t keep up” feelings as myself, are making me consider leaving Facebook. Or at the very least, emptying all of my content from them and no longer posting there. Thanks to Rohit Khare’s post over at TechCrunch today, I’ve learned that there are a few ways to leave Facebook.

I’m sick of this sheeple mentality from other folks who just roll with the tide and put up with anything just because something is convenient. Facebook is NOT convenient when every few months they move everything and change the ToS. Speaking of Facebook’s Terms of Service, did you know Facebook is trying to make violations of it’s ToS a crime??

I think I smell this week’s EFFYOU.