Falling Out of Facebook

Photo by opensourceway, opensource.com via Flickr. Created by Ruth Suehle

When I first joined Facebook, my tagline was "I hate Facebook."

A year into my Facebook addiction, I realized my old tagline wasn't true anymore and I changed it to "I love nachos."  This is still true.  I REALLY love nachos.  

The strange thing is that I'm starting to find truth in my old tagline again.

With the roll out of the new Facebook Timeline, I've been seriously contemplating a significant reduction in my participation on the site.  As Facebook has applied changes over the last year, I've realized that my privacy features are not completely under my control and as a result I've (believe it or not) reduced my participation on the site.

About a year ago, I created a profile for Apple and decided that I wouldn't friend her so I could confirm that my privacy settings were correct. The "View As" option on FB didn't have a "Friends of Friends" setting and I had been getting strange comments in person about stuff on my profile from people I wasn't friends with.  

Looking at my page from Apple's profile, I was often stunned by the amount of stuff that showed up on my profile even though I had everything (except a few albums and my friends list) set to "Friends Only."  

For example, my wall is set to "Friends Only,"  but viewing my page from Apple's profile, I could see a number of posts because I had tagged other people in those posts. Apple was friends with one of the people I had tagged, and as a result, she could see my original wall post and all the comments that followed. 

I realized that my privacy setting no longer guaranteed that my wall posts were only for my Friends. I had to also rely on the privacy settings of my friends to keep my wall conversations private and my privacy was only as good as the privacy settings of my Facebook friends.

After that discovery, I went through and removed all the tags on my wall posts as far back as I could find. It seemed to solve the problem.  I had already been filtering tag requests for photos and wall posts, but I hadn't really considered that the tags I made on posts on my own wall were as public as the people I tagged in them.

There have also been a few strange moments where I had commented on a post of a friend's wall and subsequently had 3 of my friends - who had no direct connection to the original poster - make comments in response to my comment on the original post.  

The "D commented on Smitty Smith's photo" line showed up in the Ticker and even though my friends didn't know Smitty Smith, they were now a part of a conversation on his wall.  Smitty had just converted to the new timeline and  didn't realize he needed to adjust all of his privacy settings for every individual post. Now people he didn't know were having a conversation on his page and my comment on his page was completely viewable to anyone that decided to look at his page that day.

In the older versions of Facebook, you could tweak your settings so that comments on other people's walls or pictures didn't show up on your wall or in the news feed even if they were on a public page.   Someone would have to go to that public page, like it, and then search for my comment to see it. Facebook now serves up those public comments to your friends on a platter. 

Remember when you'd read comments on other people's pictures and not be able to understand what was happening in the conversation because people were responding to questions that didn't appear on your screen?  That was because the mystery person had their privacy settings set up so that people that were not friends with them couldn't see ANYTHING they wrote ANYWHERE on the site.  I want that back. 

I understand that my comments on public pages are public - just as this blog is public. I would just prefer that I could control how those conversations are broadcast to my extended network - I'd like the option to turn off the feed to the ticker, turn off comment tracking and to selectively accept specific tags.  I would prefer that there be an option to keep myself cloaked in privacy even when participating on a public page.  

I have no problem gushing about my Doctor Who fanaticism among other Doctor Who fans on a fan page, but most of my Facebook friends are not Doctor Who fans and I don't need them seeing every comment I make on a post about an episode they never watched and don't care about. 

I end up having to assume that everything I post anywhere on Facebook is probably public and permanent even if I never intended it to be so.  I have to choose to participate publicly or not participate in the community at all.  I've been choosing not to participate at all.  

I don't think I'll quit Facebook when my profile is forced to transition to Timeline (because I think it's important to stay in touch with changing tech) I just think I will find myself removing everything from it rather than risk a privacy fumble. I had to do this with over 300 blog entries I deleted on my old MySpace profile after their MySpace 2.0 made blogs public even if the profile itself was private. I did save a copy of all of them before deleting and likewise, I will probably just export a copy of my Facebook page for my own use before I start deleting pictures and posts.  

It's a shame, because I loved sharing with my friends - I just don't like unintentionally sharing with everyone else and their mother because a mutual friend happened to comment on my photo or tag me in a wall post.

I know Facebook is free - but so is my e-mail.  If my e-mail policy suddenly changed and I had to mark every message in my inbox "private" or else it would be shared with all the people in my address book, I think I would cancel my e-mail account without hesitation.  

I know that I am not the consumer in the Facebook relationship, I am the product being sold.  The more I share, the more free information I give to Facebook to sell to its advertisers and sponsors. On top of all the unexpected sharing,  the app-linking drives me nuts, I hate the "Highlighted Stories" in the feed, I hate the Ticker features, and I don't play games or participate in polls. I don't know if Facebook is the best social networking site for me anymore anyway.  

What I'm getting at is that it's not so long Facebook... it's just, I'll see you way less Facebook, and you'll see me way less. 

Besides, I have Pinterest to kill time now.

If you're looking for privacy info and resources related to Facebook, check out this site: http://epic.org/privacy/facebook/in_re_facebook_ii.html 

Beeeeeeeez

It's hot enough today that I'd rather not run my AC and risk overheating my lovely antique car.  It's pretty much your standard Southern California day and there's a nice cool breeze constantly moving things around outside.  It makes me want to turn up the tunes, fly past the scenery and just feel the air mess up my hair.  It's pretty much the only time I ever enjoy driving.

Days like today are also the days that bees like to go for a swarm.  They get all hot and bothered, I imagine, because all the humans are out...doing things. Bees have such short tempers, you know.

I've actually plowed through a swarm of bees in my car three times in the last couple years, so days like today are the days where I imagine myself, trapped in my car with 1/3 of a swarming hive, being stung and attacked by bees because I couldn't get my automatic windows to roll up before the impending collision of swarm and car. 

I end up driving down the road, with all my windows down, feeling the wind only to quickly roll them up if I drive by what appears to be a hive friendly tree or bee bustling plant.  I scan the horizon for that telltale grey moving cloud and imagine what exactly I would do if I couldn't get out of it's path and how long it would take me to get my windows up in time.

So I practice. I push the buttons and have all 4 windows roll up.  It's safe inside my cabin. 

And also, hot.   Very hot.

Remembering how awesome the weather outside is and how it's still not hot enough to warrant turning on the AC, I roll down 3 windows instead of all 4. Because of energy.  Or something - somehow getting 3 windows up is actually faster than all 4.  Trust me.  I've tested it.

Of course, at some point, the breeze will pick up and a handful of leaves will brush past my passenger side window and I'll see it out of the corner of my eye and immediately think OH. EM.GEE. IT'S A SWARM AND THEY ARE HERE TO KILL ME.  I'll repeat the process and up go all the windows.

Moments later, I'll be driving around again, I'll have two strategically open windows, until a car buzzes by sounding suspiciously like a giant bee... and eventually I'll be down to one window by the time I get home.

I don't think I was ever paranoid about swarming bees getting into my my car until I drove through a swarm of bees.  The sound and sight of hundreds of tiny little bee bodies slammed and squished against your windows and doors is upsetting and frightening. I felt guilty and sad for the little hunny bugs, but at the same time I was desperate to quell the growing panic from imagining a lone survivor of my drive-by, clinging for dear life to the outside of my car and trying to work his way into my cabin through the air conditioning vents to take his revenge.  Right on my jugular before heading to join his pals in honey heaven.

What a sad cycle of violence, right? Also, I'm sure my childhood spent watching Killer Bees on TV didn't help.

 A hive of bees in the park outside my parent's house.