We ARE Our Brother's Peeper

Much has been said about the virtues and vices of the current Internet fad, Social Networking, and I feel rather remiss in not bringing this to the attention of mankind by throwing in my own two cents on the subject. To make it short for those of you with limited attention spans because you have to get back to making sure your crop doesn't die in Farmland, I like the concept of social networking. I don't like the implementation of social networking. (Better hurry back now, the asparagus in the south 40 are drying up due to the drought!)

For the rest of you with lives and some curiosity about what I mean, please feel free to grab some coffee, unplug from the mindless tedium of examining the walls and posts of your friends to make sure none of them "tagged" you in an embarrassing photo and thereby sowing the seeds of the destruction of your professional career, sit back and read on.

I like the IDEA of social networking. A way to keep in touch with friends and family is great. I do it all the time. I call this technology e-mail, telephones (or, if you're a touch more modern, cell phones which then bring in texting and picture sharing over a phone), cards, letters and, occasionally, something called a "face-to-face" wherein the parties involved engage in a conversation without the use of any kind of technology. (You can add video conferencing, if you want. Same idea but without the touch, taste or smell and with the intervention of technology).

I know, I know, this kind of technology may be obsolete, time consuming and wasteful, but it gets the job done for me while preserving something I value quite a lot: PRIVACY. All of the forms of social networking I do are those in which I can specifically and deliberately moderate and control the type and amount of information I disclose to or share with others. I can even tell select, trusted individuals not to pass along particularly sensitive information to others and, by and large, they are good about complying with that request. In return, I do the same for them when asked.

This is how REAL LIFE works and I'm good with it. In fact, I'm so used to it that I've gotten quite adept at it. It takes me little time to stay in touch to the level or degree that I want and others feel the same about it.

But then came along MySpace, and and after that Facebook.

On the face of it (no pun intended. No, really, it wasn't intended. The title of this blog was, but not this time.) one would think that having a central place for a person to put up the events in their life where their family and friends can check to keep up would be a good thing. But let's examine that concept and the implementation of what has become modern Social Networking.

Rather than just a place to put up pretty pictures of the kids and turn a website into basically a static, high-tech equivalent of "home movie viewing night" (Oh the pictures of the kids were DARLING! Look, Little Mikey spit up again and I got it in video this time!), modern Social Networking has turned into an electronic window on EVERYTHING YOU DO. I'm not narcissistic enough to want to put out to the world at large EVERYTHING I do. The world at large does not need to know that much about me. I am not willing to share that much about me with the world at large. And yet, this is what Social Networking is: Sharing EVERYTHING about you with the world at large.

Let me say that again: You share EVERYTHING about you. The worse part is that you have little to no control over what you share, when you share it or with whom. Now, I know there are those who will look at the "privacy settings" (snort, choke, giggle hysterically at the thought of privacy controls on an electronic forum which automatically shares everything you do and often times resets those controls to release even more information you DIDN'T want released) and think they're being discrete or vigilant.

They're not.

The rule of thumb (and all of the other fingers, toes, elbows... in fact the whole body) is that once you put it out there, it's not yours anymore. It's not private. It's not secure. It belongs to whomever you put it out on and they can do with it what they please.

Let's look at one example: My own.

The date: September 26th, 2011.
The time: (Who the hell knows - in the afternoon, or evening I think. I don't keep track of minutia like that).
The place: My home computer.
The victim: Facebook.
The mission: To find out whether they are as fucked up as the reports say they are about privacy.

I WANTED to create an organization page to promote this blog. But they don't allow organizations to "network" there. Apparently, organizations must have a real person (singular, not plural, so even partnerships, you figure out who the senior partner is). Once I signed up, I could create one, but I had to sign up as an individual first.

Okay fine. Before signing up, I first signed up with a proxy server. A proxy server changes the Internet address you use to connect to the Internet (and thereby revealing your location in the world - within a few miles - to everyone else). They use this information to deliver you location-relevant ads and data. Your cell phone does much the same thing if you have Internet on it. They want to know where you REALLY are, it seems. Before I did anything, I thought to myself, "I don't want to share that." and took precautions.

I found out where that Internet location was, got a zip code from there and was set to continue.

Of course, the FIRST thing they want you to do is agree to their Terms of Service.

I read them. Yes, yes I did. I've seen the Southpark episode and didn't want Zuckerman (the owner of Facebook) to turn me into a Facebook-inspired human-powered iPad. The thing that got me the most was the fact that you agree they can keep everything you post, upload or offer to them pretty much forever, and they can use it as they see fit.

Let me repeat this: THEY can use YOUR STUFF as THEY see fit - forever.

And you have to agree to this or you don't get to play in their little garden of horrors. I thought to myself that I'm glad I'm not going to be "me" or this could seriously fuck up my life in unimaginable ways. This is especially true for young kids (teens and early twenties) who have more life ahead of them to get fucked up than I do. I had already confirmed one rumor: Facebook keeps your stuff even if you "get rid of it". It's still there. Once you upload it, you can't get it back. You can't delete it. You can't do a do-over if you upload the "wrong thing". It's out there, it will remain out there and you will never know when, where or how that will be used by them.

So I clicked "I agree" and moved on. One of those little things you agree not to do was use a proxy server, but I had already figured out that my Facebook foray was going to be fast. I wasn't going to give them any real information anyhow. Why would I scruple to tell them where I really am?

Next it wanted to know things a resume would demand you put on it: Where do you live, what do you do, gender, date of birth and all of the normal things you usually tell an employer. Then it wanted me to put in hobbies, interests, movies I liked, books I had read, all of the other things you DON'T put on a resume.

I managed to resist the impulse to put in anything accurate. I listed my name as something other than my name, my occupation under the "other" category as "Gadfly" and everything else came from the "Guide To NOT Losing Your Identity Online" in that I told them nothing accurate. My date of birth was the wrong month, the wrong day and the wrong year (but over 13). My location was based on the Internet address from the Proxy Server I was using.

After about an hour of messing around, I managed to get it all set up. The "privacy" settings were hard to find, but once I did, I made sure that they were set to "Share with NO ONE."

As if that was going to help.

One of the things I found most annoying was the "People you might know" section. There was one person in it, who, of course, I had never heard of. I fail to understand how anyone could derive that a person with no true identity, no true age, no appearance, no other accurate information could possibly know anyone. But this poor person was sitting there in my "People you might know" section, urging me to "Friend" them. There was no "No thanks", "Go away", "Leave me the fuck alone", or "Get out of my People You May Know section!" button.

Facebook desperately needs an option other than "Like".

I discovered that if you want someone to go away, you can't do it wholesale. It's strictly a retail thing. Each person has their own individual like and don't like settings. That is, if you want to be left alone by people you don't actually INVITE, guess what? You have to tell the whole world to fuck off face to face, one at a time. Maybe this works for Facebook and it's fresh-faced fans, but for me it would be tiresome, tedious and time-consuming. Facebook needs a less open policy than allowing anyone to "Friend" you and you having to set the level of privacy you want for each one, one at a time.

(Keep in mind that privacy isn't, so when the whole exercise of not sharing with some people can be erased at the touch of an "upgrade" on the whim of some sociopath nutcase who decided being face to face to make friends was too much work, all of the things you may have done in the past to keep yourself "safe" may well be rendered moot at any time."

For someone with a couple of hundred "Friends" this kind of thing can take hours, or even days, to deal with. If you consider it can only take a single update to undo, one begins to see the problem with Social Networking.

But the most interesting (and scary) thing was yet to come. Once I got the account all set up (I even made up a nice, little graphic that meant "Destiny" for it) and was ready to FINALLY get on with my life, Facebook followed me EVERYWHERE I went online.

I post in a lot of comments threads in various news organization sites. Each one I visited while holding Facebook cookies in my cookie jar threw some stupid little pop-up urging me to "like" the site. Well, I knew that if I "Like"'d anything, it would immediately appear on my "wall" where anyone browsing my profile - whether friend or NOT - could see it. The same went for various business sites I occasionally visit. Everyone wanted to be "Like"'d.

That was pretty much the last straw for me. I signed in, "Deleted" my account, deleted the cookies and haven't been back. I say I "Deleted" the account because that's what the option was, but it didn't "delete" it. The account can't be deleted - just suspended. Remember those Terms of Service that let them keep everything you give them? That's right. They "suspend" your account so that if you have Account Deleting Remorse, you can re-activate it again anytime just by signing into your account. How long do they keep it suspended? The data doth not say. It could be for as little as a month, but it's likely forever, like the ToS agreement said.

So my foray into Facebook was finished. Even though I put in nothing that can lead back to me, I still felt violated and in need of a four hour shower.

What did I learn in all of this? Well, for one, Facebook is evil. The concept of sharing one's life with others has been turned into a farce - a constantly streaming overload of intimate and not so intimate details which no mentally stable and healthy person ever needs to know about anyone else. Least you think this is just a trivial matter consider these facts:

You don't really know everyone you "friend". Maybe some of you are careful about that, but probably not. You don't know who who looks at your "wall" - which details your life with such precision, people can find out the patterns of your life and location so well, they can stalk you, know when you're not home and rob you or simply observe you for whatever twisted reason they may have.

And you have almost no control over that.

Even your friends can screw you over. You're all linked together. If any of your friends tag their photos as you, and someone checks out your Facebook page, then the ones of your friends, your topless dance at that private party you over-indulged that one time five years ago may become the REAL reason your boss wants you fired from your dream job - even though it wasn't on the company time or the company dime.

It can all be summed up in one acronym: TMI. Too Much Information.

Your life is laid bare for anyone to peruse and you can do little to nothing to keep it to yourself.

So why is it this way? Money, of course. All of that information out there about you can be used by Facebook to direct advertisers to you thereby monetizing your life for their benefit. The data is useful to businesses, police agencies, spy agencies and other such folks whom Facebook cares to share your data with. Remember, they can use it howsoever they see fit.

The really sad part is how enthusiastically Facebook users embrace the raping of their privacy, lives and futures. It's probably ignorance on their parts. Possibly it's the "it can't happen to ME" mentality the young are afflicted with for too long. The only other option left is "I don't care", which means you have given up all desire to control what people know about you and have abdicated any chance to avoid criminal activity.

The only defense against this is to not get involved in it at all, ever. If you're not on Facebook, your friends can't tag their photos and link them to you. Maybe your name will come up, maybe not. Normally, people don't include full names and locations, but it's possible. However by removing ones' self from Facebook you remove 90% of the danger of that level of "Social Networking".

By not being on Facebook, no one will know whether you like something without you telling them. You can also avoid the up-and-coming feature everyone's talking about (which I didn't experience since it wasn't implemented for newbies by then): The Timeline.

The Timeline is supposed to be just that. It's supposed to be a convenient way of seeing what you did and when you did it.

This will make it FAR easier for criminals to decipher your patterns, learn where you are, hunt you down and rob you of that new iPhone you bragged about getting, wait until you are due to leave home on vacation and rob you blind (because he's seen the pictures of your home you posted by posting family photos and knows in advance what he wants and where it is), or even follow you as any good stalking pervert will.

Before, they had to actually work at things to make a timeline to find your habits and patterns in order to use them to their advantage. Now, Facebook will do that for them. It will also generate gigatons of metadata to follow people around, learn their habits and bother you even more with "relevant ads" wherever you happen to be.

And all the while you, and your friends, are willing and eager accomplices to all of this simply by signing up for a Facebook account.

Now, I know that it's entirely possible you found my blog through someone else's Facebook account. I recently enabled the "like" feature on the blog so it could be liked. This may make me some kind of hypocrite except for the fact I'm writing this blog so soon after doing that. As it turns out, I don't need a Facebook account to promote it in any way. I just need others to promote it by liking it. But at the same time, I'm urging everyone to suspend their Facebook accounts and never, ever, sign into them again.

If you like by blog, fine, bookmark it or add it to your favorites. You can sign up to get an e-mail when I post a new one if you want to keep track. But dump the Facebook ASAP. Even without the stupid games, it's a time suck of epic proportions, it's violating you in ways you don't even know about yet and, assuming you have a future life you want to live to distance yourself from any past youthful indiscretions, is simply a privacy time bomb lurking out there ready for one Wall view to screw up a lifetime of hard work.

Failing that, go ahead and "Like" the blog. If you can't save yourself, maybe by doing that, you can save someone else.