I realized not long ago that the reactions to the facebook announcement that I am reading are so appealing to me because the world that Mr Zuckerberg and company want to build is a world I don't want to live in. And yet, it is the world that the next generation of kids seems to want to live in. I can't decide whether I should be horrified or just recognize their right to build that world.
I don't think the next generation of kids is aware of the implications, and issues, of Zuckerberg's plan. To them (or might I even say us), Facebook is a communications platform. It helps us talk to our friends, share interesting content, and enrich our lives. However, most importantly: the issues of no privacy haven't yet manifested themselves. When our job applications get turned down after they look at how outrageous our publicly viewable photos are on our profiles, then we'll start to understand.
I'd rather live in a world where people realize that pretty much everyone takes silly photos, and it doesn't have any effect on one's ability to perform a job.
Regardless, photos started off being visible to everyone at your school, which basically makes them accessible by anyone. There are no previous guarantees of privacy that have somehow changed. It's also very easy to set your privacy to your desired level.
In the context of job applications, it's not different at all. It's not hard to find someone who went to a given school and will look someone up for you. It was commonplace back when school networks were meaningful on Facebook.
That strikes me as likely to only be a problem during a transitional phase - once the hiring manager is somebody who's also a facebook addict and also knows there are some pictures on there from when he/she was younger in which stupid shit was being done, it'll go away.
Don't want pictures of yourself doing crazy shit? Don't do crazy shit. Want to live a life not worried about what some idiot employer is going to think about your lifestyle? Then do just that. Stop blaming Facebook for your lifestyle choices and your inability to live with them.
There's a world of difference between some friends seeing a kegstand picture, or your boss seeing it. In real life, segmenting your groups of connections is a natural and fairly easy thing to do. When your college buddies and your coworkers are both "facebook friends" the line is blurred in a way that does not represent real life. It's not obvious to everyone how much information they expose via their Facebook account.
when i grew up i did plenty of crazy shit. sometimes i still do. and i like sharing it with my friends.
but that doesn't mean i want to share it with all my family members, potential future colleagues, and employers. Facebook claims that i can control who i share it with, but in practice their constant changes to defaults, confusing user experience, and bugs mean that i can't.
Facebook has lied to me -- and their other 500,000,000 users. stop blaming me and letting them off the hook.
It's not necessarily the world that the next generation of kids want to live in ... it's the world that Zuckerberg et. al. think the next generation of kids want to live in.
There's some things that I think they're right about, in particular the focus on short messages for a generation that's grown up with texting as a primary form of communication. There's other areas where they're clearly wrong, most obviously privacy. The next generation of kids doesn't want their parents and potential future employers to be able to see everything they're doing any more than the we did. And all the surveys show that Facebook deeply misunderstands next-generation attitudes towards privacy more generally....
As much as I'm afraid of Facebook turning the internet into a walled garden, this post is pure FUD.
The OP complains that "You Can't Delete Messages." Hm, that sounds a lot like email. Everyone knows when you hit "send" on your email client you better mean what you wrote.
They then complain about how "Non-Facebook Friends Can E-mail You" and their main point seems to be that it's being used as a way to "bully more people into joining." That's an emotionally charged interpretation of a company trying to increase conversion rates. I have a feeling if Facebook were a YC startup they wouldn't be referred to as "bullies" for requiring user accounts.
In the "There Are No Subject Lines" section, the OP's main complaint seems to be that without subject lines, email search will become unusable. I don't understand why this would make much of a difference, but I don't think Facebook ever intended to compete with Gmail or Yahoo head on as a robust, productive email client. It's aimed at high school kids who couldn't be bothered with all the bells and whistles of Gmail and are used to viewing their lives in one constant stream, whether it be Facebook's news stream, Twitter, or text messaging. Another lame complaint.
The last section is about automatic friendships, which I have misgivings about myself, but I'm one of the rare individuals who thinks Facebook needs to be more open in the way that Twitter is, not more private and restrictive.
As a web developer and startup guy, I am just as worried about Facebook taking over the internet and ushering in a new age of walled-gardenism. On the same HN front page I saw this article on, there was another sensationalist headline, "Berners-Lee: Facebook 'threatens' web future", and both that and the headline of this article immediately appeal to my developers instincts.
However, I know FUD when I see it, and I'd rather admit and accept Facebook's continued dominance than delude myself by buying into poorly written articles that pander to us geeks.
I'm pretty sure that Hitler and the Black Plague are higher on the lists of "terrible events" than anything Facebook has ever done or has interest in doing.
I mean, really? There are people dying all over the world from civil war and hunger as we speak, and yet the fact that you can't take back Facebook messages pains everyone greatly that nothing can top it? We live in a giant echo chamber. Some perspective, please.
Every time I read a facebook story here or elsewhere, I get the overwhelming desire to delete my account. The only problem is that there may be people I want to interact with that I don't have other contact information for. The sad thing is that I don't remember.
I might just do it anyway…they can't be that important, right?
That was exactly my thought process when I ended up deleting my account. There were people who I wouldn't be able to contact, but then again, I never talked to them anyway even when Facebook made it convenient.
That's exactly the way I felt with "stuff", little things I collect saying to myself, "I'll need this some day". You know, a few old semi-functioning laptops, cable ends that I'm going to use (I swear!) on my next project, etc, etc.
I had a whole room filled with this crap, until I realized, when was the last time I actually used something from this stuff, whose sole reason for existence was for me to collect, to then someday use.
My answer was years - so I tossed it all a few months ago. You know how many times I've been working on a project and damned myself for throwing all of it out? Zero! Long story (sorry it's a slow day) short - sometimes you just gotta let go...
'if Facebook ever wants someone's e-mail address (under the pretense of "sharing photos" or "sending a message"), it's so the site can bully more people into joining. Don't fall for it.'
I am not on facebook now but I was registered there with my email. Sometime back I got a facebook invitation from a new friend and the invitation mail had links to facebook profiles of three others friends. The only way to trace these relationships was my email. I wondered how did they do that. Checking my email against contact lists of all the facebook users?
Those friends of yours imported their email address books into Facebook. Your email was in there, but you were not a user, and your friends did not invite you, until that last one did. When he decided to invite you, it was able to tell you about your three other friends.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/facebook-link-blockin...