Second Thoughts on Facebook
April 2, 2018
I’ve written about Facebook before (see here). Since the Cambridge Analytica stuffcame out, I think I’ve reached a turning point, where I’m curbing my engagement significantly. I don’t think I’ll go so far as to #DeleteFacebook, but I do think that for all the good that the Book of Face may provide, I think they’ve been extraordinarily cavalier about everyone’s privacy for *years*. I don’t think they deserve the attention we give them, so I’m cutting mine back. Sure, I’ll post some, and I’ll maintain my author page (please Like it!) (see the irony there?), but my personal use will continue its downward trajectory.
Let me be clear, I really don’t trust the company or it’s platform, while I recognise that there is value there to be had, and that for some people, it’s the only way to find out what’s going on at soccer club or your kid’s school. As such, one of the things I’ve done is isolate my desktop use of Facebook to it’s own browser (Firefox), and further isolated it by using Firefox’s Facebook Container Extension.
If you’ve had second thoughts about Facebook, or want to know more about what’s going on with this whole disaster (and I use the term deliberately), here are some articles for you (in no particular order, although the first one is the funniest, and has the great line, “If only Mark Zuckerberg cared about the privacy of the rest of the world as much as he did his own.”) Happy reading.
It’s Weirdly Hard to Steal Mark Zuckerberg’s Trash.
Mark Zuckerberg Thinks We’re Idiots.
Facebook never earned your trust and now we’re all paying the price “There was no Facebook data breach. You gave them the data, and they gave it away — all according to plan.”
Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and our personal data(this one’s a pretty good explainer).
Delete Your Facebook: The only way to win the social game is not to play. (Also a good explainer.)
How to Lie to Facebook.
12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech. Note: not specifically Facebook, but you really should understand all this.
As they said on Hill Street Blues, let’s be careful out there.
