Five fine reasons to forget Facebook

Although you can still find me there, I’ve deactivated my account more than once, and there are still a number of reasons that I’m not very fond of Facebook. I thought it worthwhile recording the five main factors that make me say I really don’t like Facebook very much….

1. I still don’t like your terms, Facebook.

Here’s a story I wrote in early 2009, about why I was suspending my facebook account after they proposed a change in their terms of service. The company has failed repeatedly to win my confidence. I don’t want them to own my stuff – I am happy to let them use it to share with my network, but not to own it, sell it, hustle it, rehash it and generally just take things.

By the way, that’s my photo of Mark Zuckerberg – the winning caption was “Yeah, we change our TOS so much we are now known as AboutFace-book.”

Here’s a nice quote:- -

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

You do know what irrevocable and perpetual mean, don’t you, Mr Faust?

2. I know you’re going to sell what you learn about me to people who want to sell me stuff.

The fact that I like Simple Minds, live in Edinburgh and have read ‘The Black Swan’ is something I mention in the context of facebook because I’m intending those facts to be of interest to my friends and associates on facebook. But you’re going to take all that kind of information, and use it to place ‘appropriate and relevant’ content in front of me. Like ‘Hurry! offer ends Thurs’ for Sky TV. And the more I tell, the more you sell.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Online social-networking service Facebook Inc., which recently boasted that it had topped 500 million users, will pull in an estimated $1.28 billion in advertising spending this year, according to a report published Thursday by eMarker.

What’s in it for me then? Where’s the reciprocity, the give-and-take? Where are my rewards?

3. I don’t think you take important things seriously.

Earlier this year, a few people raised concerns about protecting young people using facebook, after the jailing of a sex offender who kidnapped, raped and murdered a 17-year old girl he befriended on Facebook by posing as a teenage boy. They suggested a ‘panic button’ be made available, so that an operative online could be alerted when someone felt unsafe, or threatened by the behaviour of another facebook user.

The initial response was (18 March 2010, BBC): ‘Facebook rules out ‘panic button‘ – then (13 April 2010) ‘Police back Facebook panic call‘ and then finally, after UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre Ceop, the government law enforcement agency tasked with tracking down sex offenders, spent months negotiating with Facebook, we finally saw (12 July 2010) ‘Facebook unveils child safety ‘panic button’‘.

Let’s see. March April May June July. And only with a government agency leaning on you. Outstanding.

4. You’re never going to give me anything useful. You’re always full of crap.

I don’t want to poke people. Or throw sheep at them. Or run a toy farm. Or have them tell me about great real estate companies I can ‘friend’ or ‘like’.

And I seem to get a lot of this kind of stuff which I can’t say is hugely relevant to me: -

“Good day! Amongst all the personal & business life transformation events I’ve ever attended in the past two decades, I’m about to attend the most powerful one… “

5. Next time you get hacked, and I mean hacked properly, you’ll be out of business.

I’m amazed to see I’m linking to a Daily Mail article – but here we have it: – ” | Mail Online”">Cyber-criminals steal identity of one of the world’s top security chiefs using Facebook”

And remember the small matter of those 100 million personal details made availabel on Pirate Bay?

Facebook, the social networking site and its founder Mark Zuckerberg are under pressure over its’ privacy settings after an online security consultant Ron Bowles who allegedly used a simple code to collect data from the site, published the information on the worlds’ largest file sharing website Pirate Bay.

But of course it’s safe to chat with friends in Facebook privately, so no need to worry there. Oops, perhaps not: -

“A glitch in Facebook security may allow your friends to view your chat history and pending friend requests without your knowledge or permission. This should make you think twice about the juicy gossip you choose to share over the “secure” Facebook messenger.”

In conclusion, here’s my favourite page on facebook.