My thoughts on an article “With friends like these…” [source]

Geez all this guy does is b!tch about the creators of facebook and how they’re all getting rich.

I find funny how he’s saying people are substituting dancing/talking/going out with facebook. Like really? Haven’t we all at some point or other decided to be solitary by either reading a book, or watching endless tv or playing a game (world of warcraft anyone) for hours on end instead of going out there and ‘socializing’? What is this guy, 10? Can’t you multitask? You can be on facebook, while you read, or watch tv, or you ARE with your friends (facebook mobile…)

I specially love the privacy thing at the end.

1. We will advertise at you: Everyone on the web does this. Did you know that gmail scans your emails to target ads to you?

2. You can’t delete anything: Of course, because they have something called BACKUPS!

3. Anyone can glance at your intimate confessions: because something got cached? Thats not a facebook specific issue!!! Because someone hacked into their database? Again, not something that may only happen to facebook. Because someone downloaded the content to their computer? Not even going to bother explaining that one.

4. Our marketing profile of you will be unbeatable: I think this is great. They created a system that ‘knows’ what I want to see. Amazon does this btw. And they did it first.

I obviously disagree with the article. The only thing I can maybe, possibly agree with is that they have a lot of information about you. What they do with that data is not up to us. But if you think about it for a bit, havn’t you given your information to other websites at some point or other? Amazon has your credit card AND address. Ebay, Paypal, BestBuy, FutureShop… How do we know they’re not showing/selling/giving that data to someone else?

Originally posted here on my blog.