The No. 1 Danger of Using Facebook <cite class="byline vcard"></cite>By Jared Spurbeck | Yahoo! Contributor Network – <abbr title="2011-09-24T20:14:00Z">4 hrs ago</abbr> tweet18 Share3 Email Print Spending too much time on it and neglecting other stuff? Your boss finding embarrassing photos? Nope, and nope. People have been getting obsessed with stuff long before Facebook, and "Facebook addictions" making the news now mostly because it's so new. Meanwhile, not everyone finds themselves turned down from a job because of embarrassing pictures, but every Facebook user is affected by the No. 1 danger. It's not Facebook addiction, in the sense that you need to get your fix like a shot of caffeine. It's Facebook dependency, in the sense that you need Facebook. And that a single, profit-driven corporation is becoming as much a part of our lives as email and the Internet. No one individual controls either of those, but Mark Zuckerberg holds the keys to Facebook. And he doesn't answer to you. A single point of failure The danger isn't that Facebook will stop working all of a sudden, a la Twitter's "fail whale." It's that a lot of power is being given to someone who wasn't elected, and who has no accountability to the people on Facebook. The only people Mark's accountable to are Facebook's investors, and they have only one request of him: Make money. That's why Facebook can experiment with stuff like its unpopular new "Timeline" system and make everyone who uses Facebook deal with it. Where are you going to go if you don't like Facebook? LiveJournal? Maybe that new thing Google is doing? Yeah, right. How are you going to see what your friends and favorite brands are up to if you're not on Facebook? Plus all your crops in Farmville will die! Having a Facebook account is like having a car. Everyone assumes you have one, and there are things you can't do and places you can't go if you don't. Even online games and websites' comment forms require you to have a Facebook account these days. Unless you want to give all that up, you're not allowed to stop using Facebook. And Facebook's not like other companies Not even other monopolies like AT&T and Verizon are in some places. Because to the phone companies, you're the customer, even if it's mostly because there's no one else you can buy from. But to many Internet companies, like Google and Facebook, you aren't the customer. You're the product. No, they're not grinding you up and making Soylent Green. They just need your eyeballs, because they're selling advertisers the right to put ads in front of them. And while there's nothing especially sinister about online advertising (please do click on one of our fine sponsors), in Facebook's case you can't just change the channel or go to a different website. You're the perfect, powerless, captive audience. And Facebook can censor what you say about it, too.
I don't have a facebook account And have no intentions of having one. Being a neo-luddite has some compensations I guess.
Facebook is awesome. When my employees call in sick, all I have to do is pull up their facebook page to determine if they are sick, hungover, still drunk, in a Mexican prison, going fishing, or at Sonic. Never friend your boss.
I don't text, twitter or tweet. I ain't on facebook, so I ain't posting diddly. If anything I would consider an phony facebook account started from a public library, and then later post to the whole world a picture of me wearing nothing but a mask mooning the world. That would be awesome!
I once tried Farcebook for awhile - after several real-life friends said we'd be able to keep in touch (what's wrong with telephone and E-mail!?). After several weeks, NONE of them ever contacted me through FB - but I kept getting all kinds of wackos coming out of the woodwork wanting to be 'friends'...... I cancelled out and haven't looked back. Cops love FB, tweeter and the other teenybopper sites - young people put all kinds of weird, stupid and illegal crap on there, thinking only they and their thousands of 'friends' can see it.
...their friends and their parents can see it . It's a must-have for parents (IMO). Not only do you know what's being talked about, but you get to "know" some of the kids' extended friends and other kids at school, who their friends are, and who you don't want your kids to hang around.
and it is a good Teachable Moment.... to teach your children about OPSec... and what to publish to the world, and what NOT to publish to ANYONE...... ..... YMMV....
Saiga 12 forums uses your facebook account to join. HELL NO! Under normal circumstances that'd be great, not in this gov.
I don't have photos of me on mine, nor any information, it was necessary to create a business page. My mom put up photos of me, I removed them from my name, but I'm sure they saved that information.
I must confess to using both Facebook and Twitter. I keep my facebook friends to only close friends and family. I don't play the games and block all the extra apps on Facebook. On twitter, I get my Red Wings fix and also get alot of interesting news. It is amazing what you can learn before it is on the news if you follow the right people. In addition to prepper groups I follow the NRA, Homeland Security, the Secret Service, and Fema. There are lots of press releases that never make the news. We all know the old saying "keep your friends close....". I also follow Survival Monkey. The key is that I never post anything anywhere online that I wouldn't be willing to show or say on National Television.
I use Facebook mostly for the games. I have over 1000 "friends" connected, all gamers. I never had any problem with it until family members found it via a photo of my dog, of all things. What was I gonna do, refuse mom's invite? Now I have to delete spam from my wall on a daily basis... all of it from my mom who seems convinced she can badger me into agreeing with her uber left wing views, Obama worship, and various other idiotic obsessions if only she posts enough crap on my wall. That woman could nag the Jews and Arabs into embracing each other as brothers, if only to get her to shut up for a day.
I don't facebook, and I have many who want me to. nope, not for me, gotta go dig my taters n sharpen my knife or shoot my guns.
I use FB daily. I don't care if my "Boss" sees it or not. I use it to promote my music, I use it to stay in-touch with friends and family. I use it to post my political views and social view-points. Could care less what anybody else thinks about it, but the entertainment value alone is worth the few little hassles.
