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."

Ya think? As near as I can tell, Facebook's business model is to periodically chip away at privacy settings, wait for the inevitable blowup, maybe give up a little bit of what they changed, and then wait for the fuss to blow over. Then six months later do it all over again. Rinse and repeat. Slowly but surely, they'll be able to monetize every last bit of our lives and we'll all be so tired we won't even care. Or even notice.

I know I'm a dinosaur about this stuff, and maybe David Brin is right that privacy is a lost cause and we should all forget about thinking we have any, but I'm not ready to give in yet. I've been careful with Facebook in the past, but I think I'm going to be downright paranoid about it in the future.