Friday, March 18, 2011

Does Anyone Else Think this is Creepy as Hell?

My Facebook wall looks different than most because I diligently delete every automated message Facebook posts on my behalf.  You'll never find a link to a comment I wrote on someone else's wall and you'll never see that I've just become friends with someone.  I think it's creepy and weird that every move I make is tabulated and published without my permission (the option to opt out of these notifications disappeared many months ago), which is why I delete them as soon as the stories pop up.

Equally important is that a list of links about comments and/or new friends leads to an aesthetically crappy looking wall.  And an uninteresting one, too.  Because I'm a narcissist who finds herself fascinating, sometimes I go down my wall and read through old conversations.  It's so much easier to do that when you don't have to scroll through a bunch of crap to get to the interesting stuff.

Anyway, it's bad enough that everything you do is recorded and that there's no way, except manual removal, to stop it, but I've noticed that Facebook has actually upped the privacy-invasion level lately, so you wind up seeing things like this:


Seriously?  No one at Facebook thought a notification like that might cross some invisible boundary of information sharing?  This is why Mark Zuckerberg should not be in charge of anything.

10 comments:

  1. I saw this this morning and thought it was REALLY strange! Especially because it came up on my news feed

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  2. And that's another thing!! There's nothing I can do to make it disappear from the news feed, even when it's not on my wall! :( I feel like Facebook is trying to narrate my life story for me. Grrr.

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  3. i think zuck aspires to be the voice-over guy from the wonder years.

    im still pissed that facebook has no option to not allow people to tag you in pictures without you accepting it first. i have family on my page; i dont need a drunken sumi doing the robot pic to surface without my consent!

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  4. You used to be able to do that didnt you Sumi?

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  5. and yet still people aren't searching for other tools to connect but stay there ... I'm always happy when I see those things that I'm a) not on there with my passport name and b) don't have anything on there that leads to my real life
    Call me paranoid - but sometimes you gotta be careful who has your information (tho admittably I'm rather naive with Xing - don't know if you guys know that one)

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  6. erm that anon is me (Sasha)

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  7. Sasha, I agree completely. It really is a conundrum for me because the amount of communication that goes on over there makes it nearly impossible for me to even consider getting off of it. And I have all sorts of other social networking profiles, but never use them because no one else I know is active on them.

    I'm less worried about my personal info with Facebook than many other sites because the privacy controls there are so customizable. What I do worry about is when those privacy settings change (which they do often) and I don't find out until some time has passed.

    Anyway, it's interesting that we're having this conversation now because just yesterday, Celina (from the Ireland entry!) deleted her Facebook profile because she was sick of it all. I like to complain, but the cold truth is that I might not have even known about the pub crawl run where I met the gentleman above were it not for Facebook...so as long as it remains the communication method of choice for the people I hang out with (which it undoubtedly is) I'll be on there... (Complaining all the while... :D)

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  8. hahaha PG for me it's exactly the other way round ... at least when it comes to people from school or college or smth > NO ONE IS ON ANY NETWORKING SITE (yep I had to scream that) and if it weren't for some friends who tortured me to make me go on xing,asw and FB - I wouldn't be in them too xD

    Sasha

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  9. Yes, I do think that FB has gone too far & it is very creepy that everyone I have "friended" on FB can see every single little bitty thing I do, & why would they want to read every single little bitty thing I do is the damn question, as well. In answer to my own question, they DON'T.

    So, yes, Zuck sucks, to use your previous phrase, PG.

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  10. i saw this too! It is kinda strage that facebook do this!

    NRM

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