Like It Or Not, We’re All On Facebook

So I was sitting at the computer about a month ago, having an instant messaging conversation with a friend, which I do from time to time when I can’t visit in person or when someone else is using the phone, when he suddenly veered to another topic:

“So tell me, are you on Facebook yet?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, so he explained that it was an online social networking thing where you put up a profile and personal info, and your friends and acquaintances can do the same, etc.

I failed to see the point. I already know who my friends are, and some of their other friends, and as for the friends they have that I don’t know about, who cares? But something about this personal info on the web bothered me more. My son had a situation where he carelessly divulged a bit too much personal bio on his webspace, and the result was an unlisted phone number to try and counter the daily death threat calls.

“Nope, don’t think I’d ever join that sorta thing,” I said. “I’m too guarded of my personal info and I like being a private guy. I just don’t see the point, unless you’re trying to look up old flames and maybe hook up.”

That afternoon, the wife casually remarks, “So I joined Facebook, but I don’t get the point…” The coincidence was a bit bothersome. “Okay,” I said, “so what is it then?” She showed me her profile, which oddly enough under preferences listed “Women, Men, and Random Play”. She showed me how she has a “wall” that her “friends” can write on, and her friends included old high school classmates, etc. “So you can see each other’s friends?” I asked. “Yes…” she clicked on one of her friends (we’ve been together seven years and I have never once heard mention of or met this person), and up pops a gallery of those person’s friends. One of them was a hairy guy wearing only a towel. “So if you can see her friends, and she can see yours, then logically, her friends can see you too, right?” I asked. “Yes”.

“So who’s this towelled Ron Jeremy clone?” I ask. She has no idea. “But honey, he can see you, your first and last name, even where you live, and who your associations are. Doesn’t that bother you? Especially when you’re advertising you like Women, Men, and Random Play? You need to tell me something about your preferences, dear? Maybe about us?”

(Since I started writing this, apparently, after some bad press, Facebook has revamped the security so users can only see profiles of other users when they have been given permission.)

The whole thing makes sense if you see its purpose as a tool for people wanting to locate old crushes or find new romances, or even for identity thieves, stalkers or maybe private investigators. But if you fit into none of the above categories, it’s all pretty pointless. You know who your friends are already.

Next day, my brother arrives from out of town. In the course of his visit, he leans over to my computer and decides to show us some of his website and personal photos. Photos stored where?

Facebook. I slowly felt the creeping horrors.

There was all his personal info on display. As he’s moving the mouse pointer over the photo of him proposing to his then future wife, the people’s names in the photo popped up, including his. “Hey, what’s that all about?” he asks. Oddly, he hadn’t tagged those people. Someone else in Facebook had. More on that in a bit.

His wife had a Facebook profile too. That was it. My resolve was steeled against it.

Let me be absolutely frank. Someone you know in name and maybe talked to a couple of times is NOT a friend. Aristotle posited that the number of true friends a man will have in the course of a lifetime can be counted upon the fingers of one hand, and he was absolutely right. When the chips are down, all the others we ‘know’ are termed ‘acquaintances’. And a friend of a friend of a friend is not even an acquaintance.

And as for ‘reconnecting’ with relations from past days: sometimes those people are in the past for a reason. Those individuals you really have no desire to find again or be found by. You don’t want, and shouldn’t have to face the customary interrogation as to who you are now and what you’ve done with your time since high school, especially by people you avoided in the first place.

And I’ve seen the kind of exchanges that go on in the wife’s and her friend’s Facebook pages. Users ‘poke’ each other, write on other user’s ‘walls’ and ‘buy each other drinks’, and blather on about their noisy but pointless everyday life. Its all complete adolescent drivel.

But even more insidious is what I have discovered from looking deeper into the Facebook phenomenon. How many users have actually read the agreement when they signed up? Are they aware that Facebook claims posession and exclusive rights to ALL content posted – including the right to retain your personal information, even if you leave, and sell it to third parties? When email addresses are used to send unasked-for Facebook invites, those addresses – regardless of whether the invite is accepted – are still retained by advertisers. The smorgasbord of marketing data that can be harvested from this morass of personal tastes and habits is pure gold to advertisers – your preferred soft drink, soap, and flavour of coffee might be innocuous enough, but what about your sexual preferences, recent purchases, etc? Anybody thought of demanding royalties or compensation from that personal info being used by marketers to make tons of cash?

Not to mention other people who might make use of your life’s happenings. “Hmm, seems Bob just bought a new plasma TV and he’s going to Florida for a week. Think I’ll head over there with my pickup truck…”

Let’s momentarily toss some conspiracy theory into the brew here, too. There’s the rumored connection between Facebook and the CIA and IAO, who want a database of personal details for everyone on the planet, including social affiliations, bill payments, banking info, property holdings, online habits, sexual preferences, interests and hobbies, etc. European travellers already have to give exactly this information to authorities as a requirement for entering the United States. Remember the NSA’s ongoing and contoversial wiretapping program to record and analyse all phone calls made within the U.S.? So this is not necessarily paranoia. There is a big push to document who you are, who you know, and what you’re up to. Social networking sites are essentially an enumeration of people online and their connection to persons of interest. The intelligence industry would be fools to not exploit it.

But enough cloak-and-dagger musings.

I have nothing to worry about, I’m not on Facebook. Right?

Wrong. I’m not a member of Facebook, but I’m on Facebook. In fact, millions of other people who are not members of Facebook are on it too, without their knowledge. Here’s how.

I was speaking to my real-life friend Dave recently. He told me my wife was on Amanda’s Facebook. Amanda, whom I’ve never met, is his roommate’s girlfriend. Dave saw my wife’s picture in Amanda’s photos, with her name tagged on it.

I came home and told my wife. “Amanda who?” she said. I told her the last name. “I’m not on her book, she’s not on mine,” she said. Oh yes, honey, you are. Pictures of a party she had gone to, years ago.

And I am tagged in photos posted by my brother and others. (It’s OK, Bro, I forgive you.) My connections to each person and something about me can then be inferred through the social web. Thing is, I never gave my permission for my image to be dispersed or shared around that way. Which brings me to the question of legality.

Seems to me, under Canadian law at least, no one may use or publish your image without your express consent. This is why media photographers ask if they can take your picture first. I guarantee that almost no one appearing in a Facebook photo was a) asked for their permission (usually someone who doesn’t want to be photographed just says no or steps out of the frame), or b) was advised that their image may be published on Facebook where it would be tagged with their name and could be accessed by millions of users. My wife asked for pictures of our children to be removed from other user’s Facebooks. So far they haven’t been.

So, are you on Facebook? If the answer is ‘no, I haven’t joined’, go check it out anyhow. You might just discover that you are.

I guess its easier for the public to just go with the crowd, sign up to Facebook, spill their life story online and type a stream of useless chaff onto each other’s walls, all blissfully ignorant and content to be ‘connected’ rather than address these issues.

By the way, if any of my friends read this and want to discuss it, there are some cool social networking tools I use. One is called the ‘Phone’, and the others are termed ‘Going For Coffee’ or ‘Visiting’. Socially, these activities are more complicated and personal than using Facebook, requiring such advanced skills as ‘The Art Of Conversation’, but it’s the only way for me.

ADDITIONAL August 4th 2007: See this article, which supports my privacy question about social networking sites: “Online Snooping Gets Creepy”, Time online magazine:

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1649121,00.html