Under Construction 
Facebook was number 3 behind google and YouTube, with 150 million unique visitors in the U.S. in March 2012, according to QuantCast.com. Problems: As far as I am concerned Facebook Zucks. Facebook not only has a bad user interface and privacy issues, but it uses a lot of deception and social engineering to get you to give up more private information. Many of my most trusted IT colleagues don't use facebook, because of the many problems.
The bad user interface may actually be a tactic to promote the last goal. By making delete and change commands hard to find and use or non-existant, they get you to leave information you put up on the spur of the moment that you'd like to change later. Even if you mark entries as public, other people have to join facebook, but not necessarily be your friend to see them. Other social networking sites treat public as public, you don't have to join them to see public information. As far as I'm concerned Mark Zuckerberg is the Bernie Madoff of the Internet. However, I got sucked in because of family and friends.
How it works (or worked in 2009): I was in the IT business for almost 40 years and still am maintaining this site. It was standard procedure for most of that time when you created some information you had an Add/Edit/Delete function associated with it. Facebook (and some of the other new apps) seem to think that people only want to add things, edit and delete are very hard to find. Maybe that's why there is so much junk on the web.
Problems with Facebook: Many of my most trusted IT colleagues don't use facebook, because of the many problems. I have some real problems with Facebook and can't understand it's popularity. Maybe I'm just behind the times since I retired 5 years ago. I have been developing web sites since 1995; When I developed a similar internal corporate site were people could post professional background information and notes on the projects they were working on. It became the most popular part of our corporate web. If I was smarter I'd be rich now.
In addition to trying to get access to your email account and address book there are many other issues. When I get a friend request email and don't recognize the name and click on it, I am sent to a friend suggestions page not the page for the persion who made the friend request. Friend requests are at the end of the list. Any high school kid knows this is a stupid user interface unless you are trying to trick people into building more links than they need. When I went to add a photo to an album is showed me a small version of one face which was too small to identify and asked me to identify it. I couldn't just post the photo to my album. Legal Problems: Below are just a few of the many complaints against Facebook. In 2006 the Students Against Facebook News Feed group, with over 740,000 members, got Facebook to add new privacy features. See recommended privacy settings below.
A 2010 Wall Street Journal article stated, "Many of the most popular applications, or "apps," on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information - in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names - to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies." Facebook's 2010 privacy policy is longer than that of other social networks, even exceeding the U.S. Constitution. See NY Times Article.
In November 2011 Facebook agreed to a Federal Trade Commission order that bars Facebook from deceiving consumers about its privacy practices and requires it to submit to monitoring for 20 years. The sanction stems from privacy setting changes that Facebook made in December 2009, without asking users' permission. In May 2011 emails were sent to journalists and bloggers making critical allegations about Google's privacy policies; however it was later discovered that the anti-Google campaign, conducted by PR giant Burson-Marsteller, was paid for by Facebook in what CNN referred to as "a new level skullduggery" and which Daily Beast called a "clumsy smear."
In August 2011 the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) started an investigation after receiving 16 complaints by europe-v-facebook.org which was founded by a group of Austrian students. According to Silicon Alley Insider (SAI) at Business Insider, "An early instant messenger exchange Mark had with a college friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room, went as follows:"
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Just ask.
I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
I don't know why.
They "trust me"
Dumb fucks.
Some Harvard classmates won a suit claiming Zuckerberg stole the facebook idea from them. With a $64M settlement.
See:
Some useful tips: (These may be obsolete since they keep changing their interface) Post stuff about yourself: Profile > Status 420 character Profile > Note unlimited Edit Edit picture caption. Profile > click on picture > click on the pencilTo link into the facebook page for an organization you may belong to you can go to their facebook page and click "Like" at the top of the page. Facebook doesn't notify people when you don't acknowledge friend requests or remove tags Recommended Privacy (as of March 2011): Accounts > Privacy Settings Custom: Minimum friends only Create blocked list of friends you don't want to see everything you do Posts by me: friends only, except blocked list Post stuff about yourself: Profile > Status 420 charactere Profile > Note unlimited Create a list of friends for messages, Custom privacy settings... Accounts > Edit Friends >All Friends > +Create a list Account > Privacy Settings > Custom > preview my profile Profile > Edit Profile > Featured People - Identify relationships family To remove a friend: Go to their page and click unfriend Profiles > Photos - See photos of you tagged Account > Privacy Settings > "Apps and Websites" > Public Search Account Settings > Notifications - Can get email with certain posts on your site Can click box to right of post on news page to block things like all posts, games, .. (It's enabled by default) |
