Another Facebook Post

Really just a link.

And a quote:

Facebook is a great service. I have a profile, and so does nearly everyone I know under the age of 60.

However, Facebook hasn't always managed its users' data well. In the beginning, it restricted the visibility of a user's personal information to just their friends and their "network" (college or school). Over the past couple of years, the default privacy settings for a Facebook user's personal information have become more and more permissive. They've also changed how your personal information is classified several times, sometimes in a manner that has been confusing for their users. This has largely been part of Facebook's effort to correlate, publish, and monetize their social graph: a massive database of entities and links that covers everything from where you live to the movies you like and the people you trust.

Updates to Where's Wiebe

Between helping with the kids, I had a pretty fun Saturday updating the blog.  Here's what's new:

1. I played around with the blog template and got a color scheme that I think I like.  
2. Added "Sources" which is really the blogs I frequent the most.  It's also what give me 'the inspiration' for most of my posts.  I'll probably add a few more things like this when I get around to it.
3. Made two 'sub-blogs' that link right into the main "Where's Wiebe' Blog.  The first is a video game blog.  I figure that as I play games, I'll post my thoughts on them here.  Over the past few years, this has been one of my primary source of entertainment.  I don't know that will always be true (I've taken breaks from video games that have lasted for years), but I suspect that it probably will.  Why not capture my thoughts in the moment.  Here's a link to the blog: What's Wiebe Playing.  There's also one in the top right hand side of the page.
4. The second 'sub-blog' is a book blog.  I've moved from watching TV on the train during my commute to reading books.  I'm surprised that it's keeping my interest because it's been a while since I regularly read books.  My interest right now tends towards behavioral economics, but I'll move from that I suspect.  This is just a place to capture my thoughts as I finish the books.  I did some back filling today with my most recent reads.  Here's a link to the blog: What's Wiebe Reading.  There's also one in the top right hand side of the page.

Not sure where I'll go next with this blog, but I think that's it for the weekend.

Kevin Drum on Facebook

Is Facebook Evil?

The more I read about Facebook, the more I really don't like Facebook. I'm way behind the curve on this stuff, but the other day I read a post about privacy settings and realized just how little I know about it. I've always been pretty sparse with my Facebook account, so I'm not really worried about my darkest secrets becoming public or anything, but after reading this and then following the links I went in and changed a whole bunch of settings that had made my preferences available to third parties at Facebook's whim. I had no idea these settings even existed. Then today I read this. "There is something seriously wrong with their business ethics," says Thomas Baekdal, "when they even contemplate publishing content that was previously marked private."