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lostcarparkI think the title says it all, but I'll try to explain how I feel about it.
From day one, I have been asking "what is it for?" and I'm still not sure what the answer is. It can be quite useful for finding old friends, then looking at their friends to find out who on their list I also know. There are a few people from school and college I've got back in touch with that way.
The various applications are supposed to make it useful, but I find most of them are just annoying. No I don't wantto be a zombie, a vampire, a warewolf, or whatever else someone thinks of. If I want to buy someone a pint, I'll do it down the pub where it's a lot more satisfying. And what's with all these wall things and other messengy things?
My problem is that I get a message saying someone has sent me a message, but in order to read this message, I have to install an application to let me read it. The first thing this application does (after insisting I share my personal information with it) is to spamall my friends and ask them to install the app too. Excuse me, but I respect my friends too much to ask them to install something I haven't even tried yet. Once I've got through all that, I find the message is a puppy dog and it wants me to see what happens if I forward it to all my friends. Thanks.
Could you imagine if we got emails telling us we had a message, but in order to read it we needed to download and install an application. We'd say, "no way, it's probably virus-infested spyware." However, when it's on a website it's supposed to be okay. The only difference is that it's our personal information rather than our PC that's at risk.
As I've hinted already, I have privacy concerns. Their privacy policy makes interesting reading...
Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.
Well, I'm sure they're only trying to be helpful, but this sort of thing makes me feel a little uneasy.
But even if we assume that Facebook themselves are completely trustworthy (which is a big assumption), what about all the third party writers of FaceBook applications? I expect the vast majority are honest and above board, but it only takes one bad lemon to write a "useful" app, then leave it sitting harvesting data for a couple of months, then they have a nice little stockpile of information to do as they see fit with. They probably can't access email addresses directly, but there's plenty of personal information they can access directly through Facebook, and more they can collect through the application. Believe me, there will be a big story about a rogue Facebook application developer in 2008.
Of course, Facebook will be collecting this post to provide me with a more personalised experience.
From day one, I have been asking "what is it for?" and I'm still not sure what the answer is. It can be quite useful for finding old friends, then looking at their friends to find out who on their list I also know. There are a few people from school and college I've got back in touch with that way.
The various applications are supposed to make it useful, but I find most of them are just annoying. No I don't wantto be a zombie, a vampire, a warewolf, or whatever else someone thinks of. If I want to buy someone a pint, I'll do it down the pub where it's a lot more satisfying. And what's with all these wall things and other messengy things?
My problem is that I get a message saying someone has sent me a message, but in order to read this message, I have to install an application to let me read it. The first thing this application does (after insisting I share my personal information with it) is to spamall my friends and ask them to install the app too. Excuse me, but I respect my friends too much to ask them to install something I haven't even tried yet. Once I've got through all that, I find the message is a puppy dog and it wants me to see what happens if I forward it to all my friends. Thanks.
Could you imagine if we got emails telling us we had a message, but in order to read it we needed to download and install an application. We'd say, "no way, it's probably virus-infested spyware." However, when it's on a website it's supposed to be okay. The only difference is that it's our personal information rather than our PC that's at risk.
As I've hinted already, I have privacy concerns. Their privacy policy makes interesting reading...
Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.
Well, I'm sure they're only trying to be helpful, but this sort of thing makes me feel a little uneasy.
But even if we assume that Facebook themselves are completely trustworthy (which is a big assumption), what about all the third party writers of FaceBook applications? I expect the vast majority are honest and above board, but it only takes one bad lemon to write a "useful" app, then leave it sitting harvesting data for a couple of months, then they have a nice little stockpile of information to do as they see fit with. They probably can't access email addresses directly, but there's plenty of personal information they can access directly through Facebook, and more they can collect through the application. Believe me, there will be a big story about a rogue Facebook application developer in 2008.
Of course, Facebook will be collecting this post to provide me with a more personalised experience.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 12:00 pm (UTC)And I am shocked by the number of people taken in by the numerous "forward this" things. See what happens when you press forward? It bloody forwards, what did you expect?!
There are some great apps out there, like the Scrabulous one. I'm currently annoyed by the ones that started well, and then started to send me adverts for their other apps that I have no interest in, and started to get in the way of me interacting with them until I spammed at least one friend. As for the zombies and werewolves, sheesh - can we say "pyramid scheme"?
I do find it useful for an overview of what various people are doing all collected in one place. The status thing is dumb but fun, as are the images and applications like the graffiti stuff.
The problem is it needs intelligent developers and intelligent users and we're failing on both. Most apps are buggy - clicking links often sends you to random parts of the app where you didn't want to be. I swear that at least one of the walls doesn't take account of who the user asks to send things to and sometimes defaults to a "send to all" which is well out of order. But I do despair of the number of things I've received that tell me that something will appear on my screen if I forward it to a given number of people, or scams that people send on, certain that if they fulfill their duty to spam the world then their account won't be deleted.
Look around the blogosphere for recent news of Facebook data scraping and a well known blogger type, Robert Scoble I think, who got banned for it. The perpetrator? A Plaxo app...
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 04:57 pm (UTC)In theory, getting an overview of what people are doing could be useful, but when three quarters of the messages tell me someone has installed or uninstalled some application, joined or left some group, or become friends with someone I've never heard of, it limits the usefulness.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 01:39 pm (UTC)Scrabulous
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 03:41 pm (UTC)I hate the culture of forward-this-on. It goes against all my instincts. And - newspapers? They harvest data about you from newspapers?
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 04:01 pm (UTC)a why i don't touch facebook
b guess you missed the news lately
http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/advisory/FGA-2007-16.html and
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/08/facebook_blocks_secret_crush/
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 06:36 pm (UTC)reasons why
1 friends who 'invite me to join' get the usual
"friends don't supply my details like my e-mail to website's I havn't expressly permitted them to" flame
2 some real friends have invited some created for this purpous addresses to facebook and myspazz etc so i can tell the instant they sell out their userbase to a spammer
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 04:35 pm (UTC)Not at all - what they're trying to do is find out as much as possible about you so that the ads they shove in your face are most likely to followed. This is the same reason that Google want to track what you've searched for.
That's assuming you don't hold to the interesting story that ended up in the New Zealand Herald last year, which posited that Facebook was actually a continuation of an original CIA project designed to build profiles based on people's internet presence.
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534&pnum=0 for the story.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-10 10:53 pm (UTC)Facebook should be closed down for good.
Date: 2008-06-15 07:37 pm (UTC)Everybody knows that spammers and the like, Fraudsters etc regularly carry out dictionary attacks and name searchs on social networking sites. such as Facebook and similar sites. They do this to find names and email addresses.
I have been working in I.T for 20 years and I believe I am qualified to talk on this issue. You do not have to be a whizz-kid like me to do it either. It is so easy to do.
Spammers then use the results attacks to trap unwary people into parting with their money.
Curiously enough Facebook seem very quiet on this issue. I wonder if anyone has ever sued them, because they have lost money as a result of somebody seeing their name on Facebook. Proving it would be easy, you just have to know where to look and what to look for.
Facebook would go running screaming to the hills if it ever happened. It is a very dangerous world we now live in and you have to be safe.
If you do not believe what I say, just go an look at www.419eaters.com to see the growth of fraud, some of which is due to Facebook and similar sites. the original 419 scammers, employ teams of people to search such sites for information, So not allowing nicknames is asking for trouble. It is also taking away a human right.
This would explain the increase in SPAM receved and logged by me shortly after I joined Facebook. Personally I think Facebook should be banned, without delay.
It is extremely dangerous in this day and age to actively prevent users from having any sort of anominity at all.
Both my accounts were disabled on Facebook. It is naive to even think that ereryone is a good guy on such sites. These site are a hotbed for crooks.
I wonder if Facebook would compensate me if someone ran up a debt in my name after seeing it on Facebook. Somehow I don't think they would care less. In fact I know they wouldn't. They would just carry on enforcing their stupid rule !!
Whenever you ask them why they do not allow any kind of user protection, you are given the run-around and eventually your account is disabled. This is their common policy. They never actually give you an answer. REferring you to their terms and conditions is not actually an answer.
I simply have no clue as to why this is - It's wrong and Facebook should be taken down without delay.
If I am on the net chatting away - I want my anonyminity thank you very much, it is my right and Facebook therefore are taking away my right to my anoniminity by enforcing their rule in the way they do.
There is simply nothing wrong with having a nickname, whether you are aged 8 or 80.
I would love to see someone sue their arses off - Bye Bye Facebook.
forget posting on a virtual wall - send REAL post and stick it on a REAL wall! :-)
Date: 2009-03-09 09:15 pm (UTC)The thing that tipped the scales for me though was the rise of a new type of spamming, where people write notes and tag-spam you with them. They answer some crappy chain mail which instructs them to tag 25 of their friends and talk bullshit.
I view tagging is a highly personal thing on facebook, and usually I presume that as I was tagged by someone who is a friend, there must be something vitally important to me in it, or perhaps I am IN the note they send me.
But no, invariably I'm not in there at all, but it's some self-obsessed monologue or some other chain crap, that, if it were in my email I would disregard.
By tagging me in it, it catches my attention and wastes my time. Why would people I have chosen to call my friends send me spam? I have no idea.
As a result of this constant spamming by people I thought in real life were not morons, I decided that it was better to remember my friends as people that I actually like and respect, and not as idiots who send me crap that wastes my time, and so the decision to close my facebook account was made.
I must admit it's been the best decision I've ever made, and although I sometimes think it would be respectful to open my account again and make it easier for my real friends to contact me again, I figure that if they really did want to contact me it's no real effort to pick up the phone or open their email program.
Alternatively they could (and you could) send me a REAL post to post on my REAL wall, at www.myrealwall.com where I decided to post REAL letters. Anyone's welcome to post on my REAL wall, but I can almost guarantee that the cost of a stamp and the effort of having to put pen to paper will deter most people.
now THAT's spam filtering!