After 2 or maybe it is 3 years of a presence on facebook, I find myself seriously contemplating the destruction and removal of my account. Why? Because I'm very tired of the bait-and-switch, dishonest and disingenuous approach to protecting my personal information that facebook has. But it is a bit of a double-edged sword. It really IS great re-connecting with friends, being reminded of birthdays, and sharing some interesting (well, I think they are interesting) bits of information about myself and my family. But, I'm aghast at just how much information is being shared with people I do not know and I'm even more concerned with what those people might do with that information.
One of the things I do, in fact one of things I am an expert at, is the sizing and scaling of very large computer applications. I've designed and provisioned infrastructure to handle 100s of thousands of users, millions of 'documents' and dozens of geographically dispersed locations. While none of the deployments I have designed reach into the hundreds of millions of users like facebook does (there being very damn few of such applications) I do have enough experience to understand just how much money is involved in providing such a service. I'll not go into any detail here but for sure facebook has $10s of millions in hardware, further millions in data centres, and more millions on a monthly basis for power, HVAC, and network bandwidth to say nothing about the HR, legal, and other human-related costs. All of this and facebook doesn't charge for its services ... nor does it intend to provide it for free!
Rather, it SELLS ACCESS to its users and their information and it doesn't give a rat's ass who it sells that access to nor does it do anything (beyond some simple contract language) to prevent the entities who purchase such access to do whatever they like with the information. And BOY is there a lot of information!!!!
"If you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to worry about" ... ever heard that one? It's the cry of the ignorant, from folks who do not know or fully understand how the world really works. I remember well my friend Bjorn, now with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering I'm sure, a thinker if there ever was one, who said the same to me about police performing searches without sufficient warrants and seeing that information thrown out of court. In his mind "they were obviously guilty, OF COURSE the information is relevant and should be admissible in court".
It wasn't until I said to him "so, what would stop the police from making 20 or 200 or 2,000 searches under false pretenses, say raiding your place? Wouldn't the incentive be for them to ignore warrants knowing that they evidence would be used in any case?" ... it was only then that Bjorn realized why search warrants were needed, to protect the INNOCENT not the guilty. And what does that story have to do with facebook? Most people do not perform data mining, detailed demographic research, or otherwise deal with vast databases of information and so they simply do not have the information at hand to know what is and what is not possible. They don't know that they SHOULD be concerned!
There are the obvious dangers, the ones that so many of my younger friends and family indulge in, that of divulging in a public forum (and yes, facebook is a PUBLIC forum, no matter what your supposed privacy settings might indicate) highly personal information that might include embarrassing, dangerous, risky, or even illegal activity that could well be used against you years down the road. As a not at all far-fetched example, in the good, old USA that could well mean that health insurance will be denied when it is most needed because 20 years previously you mentioned that you got drunk a lot at parties and "that is the pre-existing condition that lead to your liver disease" or perhaps that when you wrote about how depressed you feel over the loss of your dog proves there was a pre-existing prevalence to depression and thus again your health insurance would be denied. These scenarios may seem crazy to some of you but to others they will ring all too true. However, that is not the most insidious nature of facebook and not the thing that is driving me away.
The real problem with facebook is that the information being retained and used there is vast and uncontrolled ... it is managed by a corporation that, like all other corporations, attempts to provide the product and services its customers wants ... the problem is that most people don't appreciate is that the customers are NOT the 300 million users but the hundreds of thousands of advertisers and "applications" that pay for the access to that information. This information lives forever and can be used by people in ways that nobody alive today can envision. You do not and cannot control that information, facebook does today and will forever.
So I definitely feel highly uncomfortable using facebook these days, but I'm also very much appreciative of some of the service it does provide. It is the first real computer application that I can share with (virtually) all my family, friends and acquaintances (previously only my geek friends could share the fun) and THAT is a good thing. Unfortunately, however, those same people are amongst the most vulnerable as they typically have the least understanding of the technology and (arguably) the most trusting of natures.
And therein lies the irony, in some people's mind my use of facebook is an endorsement of sorts; not of it's utility but of its security. But privacy and security are related and my privacy is NOT secure on facebook. I'm unsure what my final choice will be, but I have already downgraded the information I have on facebook and find that I use it less and less. I notice that is true in general, who knows? perhaps facebook will die similarly to myspace....