Facebook's been changing features, interfaces and privacy settings at such a startling frequency that it's hard for even the most technologically savvy among us to keep up with it, leaving those millions of boomers that they so aggressively courted and snared, defenseless, ripe for the picking. It's not unlike what ChoicePoint took fire for: profiting from individuals' private data without properly informing them. In a way, what Facebook is doing is worse, because they're feigning permission while constantly changing the rules, resetting users' privacy defaults to open and available to third parties every time they change the interface and Terms of Service, forcing their users to retool any real privacy over and over again in hopes that they won't get it done, the way an insurance provider denies claims over and over in hopes of tiring their customer into just paying the damn bill. It's hard not to think they're doing this intentionally, that it's their strategy for gaining access to our information for financial gain.
Now, more than ever, it should be obvious to us that commercial interests will succumb to greed and abuse, in one way or another, unless forced to be good citizens by authority or oversight. Sometimes we accept our vulnerability. We tolerate abuses by companies like BP or Massey because what they provide is so valuable to us that we look the other way if it's what we have to do to keep the price down, much like we try not to notice the carnage on our highways out of blind love for driving cars. Maybe some of this is going to change now, but trends, by definition, precede the consumer protection they require. Facebook, or its founder, has engaged in a series of actions, from the beginning, that prove them to be untrustworthy, and Dan Yoder's piece on BusinessInsider.com 10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account details it much better than I can, complete with links for each transgression (h/t @Phil_Rubin).
Of course, I'm not deleting my Facebook account (see Nicholas Carlson's 10 Reasons You'll Never Quit Facebook), but that doesn't mean I'll stop kicking and screaming (okay, whining) about the Scurrilous Facebookery, their bait and switch, luring with privacy and then taking it away once they've got you. What bothers me the most is the bad interface. In time, the law will stop Facebook from doing what they're trying to do with our private information, but only our finding another option can save us from the really shitty functionality. Where we were once able to craft our profile using words, now our entire profile is comprised of links to other Facebook pages. It gets worse. When one of my "jobs" led to a dead end link, I took them up on their offer to "Create a page," only to discover after doing so that the newly created page wouldn't be the default landing page for the profile link that started the whole thing in the first place. I can fix it, but, like trying to determine the order in which profile links appear, particularly important with jobs and schools, it's not easy or obvious. It's bad enough that they want to use all that we've told them about our likes and dislikes to amass wealth, but they broke the hell out of Facebook. It no longer works very well.
Of course, there's an opportunity here for someone to fill the void, perhaps particularly among Boomers. I wrote about the future of web apps and the trend pendulum in this post, considering the fact that the "old folks" had "invaded" Facebook, speculating that "the tweens and teens, are developing their ways of interacting outside the view of their parents, just like teenagers have done forever, and I have no doubt that the young ones' places to play online will evolve in a new direction where we're not." So, where are they going so they can say and do things they don't want their parents to see? Places like Formspring, where they ask questions ("Do I look fat in this picture?"), which are then answered anonymously by other members. No way that can go wrong, right?
Ultimately, I have to hope that if our government is going to bestow citizenship on corporations, that we as a society will find some way to make these corporations responsible members of society. We'll try public shaming first, or maybe even vote with our feet, but ultimately, our courts and legislatures will make them behave, or not (h/t American Zombie).
Peace, out, y'all.
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