Dan Conley

I’d like to get outraged over the Facebook debacle, but I just can’t. It’s bad, yes, but… so? How is it not to be expected? Will people suddenly leave the site in droves? I did finally ditch my Myspace account a year or two back, but at this point Facebook seems almost like a necessary convenience, since everyone you know will be posting their pictures, videos and life updates there (my mom signed up after Neil was born because she was sick of missing the photos Elizabeth was uploading).

I’ve had this conversation with unnamed female friend X who’s named regularly elsewhere on my blog before, but Geekdad (a perfect site for me if there ever were one) says it best:

The lesson here is that you should only put data on the internet that you are comfortable with being shared, viewed or sold by people that are not you. In this era of social media and sharing, there have been so many cases of just blatant ignorance. What do you think will happen if you put inappropriate pictures on Facebook when your boss is on your friend list? Nothing? This isn’t the era of anonymous postings in forums and BBS chat rooms anymore.

It’s… interesting being on the friend’s list of my younger cousin, who will put up… interesting bits of news about herself (her sister at least used to have her AIM name private but gave out her phone number, at least to friends).

There was a quote that got tweeted (still a remarkably silly word) around this morning, which I saw from @kgs who retweeted @starkness and I think originated from @benhuh (Provenance, motherfucker. Do you know it??): “Facebook has become like AOL; it’s like training wheels for the internet. It’s a safe place, except for your privacy.” (edited for capitalization and not needing <140 characters).