The Imaginary Part

I've written before about my thoughts on social networking websites and the data you want to give them. What I basically said is that they can do whatever the hell they like with the data provided that I'm keeping a careful watch on what data I give them. If I consciously approve it, it should be fine, right?

I've found that there are two major flaws with this approach when it comes to Facebook.

1. Other users can add factoids about you by tagging you in photos, status updates and notes.
2. Facebook is increasing the amount of information which is consolidated from friends-of-friends rather than people you have directly befriended (and implicitly assigned some level of trust).

These two points combine to give a rather nasty flow of information--people can tag you in a photo and this is by default broadcast to all of your friends--even friends who don't know the person who took the photo or tagged you.

The permissions for the Photos application are fairly coarse-grained: either it can publish to your stream or it cannot. Since it's not very useful if you upload an album and it doesn't appear in your stream this option will be turned on for the vast majority of users.

This is another case of Facebook having poor privacy control options and hoping to annoy us into sacrificing our privacy further.

The data which you have to be comfortable having available publicly on Facebook include not only those which you personally approve but everything which Facebook allows your friends to make known about you. Your friends are probably a trustworthy lot, but it's all relative. When most people you know are marked as Facebook friends, including work colleagues, possibly you don't want your mates' photos of you being drunk scrolling past.

It's just setting you up to be embarrassed, really. To create controversy. This is what Facebook wants--more gossip, more excitement in your social world.

Yet the thing which is still weighing on me most heavily is that my entire list of friends is completely publicly available. I said in an earlier post that we still don't know what the consequences are of having that information readily available and easily able to be harvested by robots.

The fact is that I want it both ways. I don't want to have to hide with whom I associate, but I don't want it to be consolidated and made readily available for robots to be able to pick through social networks and work out significant links. It's kinda creepy and possibly useful for marketers, somewhere, or stalkers or spies.

Facebook is actively working against giving us better control over our privacy. They know fully well that most users won't even care. Of the few who do, like me, fewer still will actually cease using the free and completely voluntary service.

Still I wonder whether I'd be better off ditching Facebook. Again. In reality the damage has been done, but the information about me already in the system and on the Internet at large will become redundant faster the sooner I stop the supply.

I may be okay with that information being out there. Just not broadcast to everyone that quickly and easily, please.