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 

Strike That, Reverse It.

Today, this happened. British Airways: Union Announces Strike

In 11 days, Mike and I are scheduled to be on a flight to Paris... on British Airways.

We bought our tickets well before November 2... there wasn't a union cloud in the sky then...

We're currently in limbo. Not officially canceled yet, so we can't rebook. Not officially cleared for flight, so we're not sure what to plan for.

In general, I support unions - I think they offer an ability to provide a safety-in-numbers net to protect the weakest members of the workforce when real abuse of labor is an issue driven by a insatiable drive for profit. In most situations in recent history and the strikes that have affected my day-to-day life, I've found it pretty easy to side with the folks doing the walk-out.

Unfortunately, in this situation I'm finding it difficult to back the employees in this decision when industry standards across the board indicate that these changes are not a threat to their health and safety and do not constitute an unfair work environment. The decisions that BA has made also do not appear to be driven by much else than to stay afloat under the current circumstances. I don't get the feeling - even in reading through the union's releases - that BA is doing something underhanded.

In my industry, layoffs have forced me to take on 3 times as much work with no additional compensation, no promises of bonuses and no pay raise in the coming year. We're fighting to stay afloat. I want us to stay afloat. It's not fun, but it's also not inhumane.

If airline industry standards are too low to constitute a healthy work environment or if industry standards were so low that all unionized airline attendants agreed they needed better, I likely would have supported a strike in which every unionized airline attendant would have participated, but they don't have that backing.

I get it. It sucks that you have one less person on a long flight where people are total douche bags who sneeze on you, don't say please or thank you and now everyone has to do a bit more work to cover for that. And I get that it sucks to not get your regularly expected pay raise or bonus. We all get it, because we're all dealing with it right now. Your biggest punch in the gut was to your customer - particularly me (the easiest person to get to hop on board with your labor dispute or any other hippie emotional cause.) I get it... but how about you don't pick the holidays to protest, and you wait for the trial date to get the law behind you (if they agree with you then the public will support you!) I'm finding it very hard to imagine how anyone at all wins here.

Economic Forecast for the Apocalypse

Last night I told Michael that my new retirement strategy would be to invest in tangible items that I could sell or trade in a post-apocalyptic world. Things like HAZMAT suits, gas masks, roller-skates, toilet paper, a fleet of trained dogs, solar panels, steel-toed Doc Martens, nano-machines and craploads of water. It's probably a good idea for me to work on my pocket desalination filters now so they'll be available at any time. I should also get a better grip on nano-technology as I'm pretty sure nanomachines will be the new gold. I don't want to contribute to any sort of post-apocalyptic violence, so you'll have to find other vendors if you're interested in guns or weaponry.

It's not that I think civilization will end any time soon or that I'll even live to see a post-apocalyptic world, but apparently I've got to have some sort of investment plan and as a non-economist, investing in a post-apocalyptic future seems to be the least risky strategy I've got.

I don't like risk. I especially don't like risk when it comes to my money. I work to get paid and I pay others for their work. I get that. I don't understand the other 75% of how I'm told making money works. Making money by letting it sit confuses me. I'm told that if I buy this stock now, put my money in this account now, invest in that thing now, it will be worth ten times more in 10, 15, 20 years. Magical capital. I don't doubt that it actually happens, but I just don't get how it's sustainable. The growth has to be endless for investment to be deemed profitable, right? But is endless growth possible? Isn't that where a crash or a burst comes in to level things again? Your regular boom and bust economy? I'm supposed to put my money in something that I'm told won't go bust and be ok with the risk that it actually will have to do that at some point and that I might get less money back that I put in? I'm supposed to keep afloat by jumping ship right before the bust and hopping on the next boom before it booms? I don't know how I feel about that.

I know I'm being paranoid. They'll say, "that's what risk management is for." And who am I supposed to trust for that information? The "experts"? The nameless person managing my 401K? They can't even decide amongst themselves what to do - they're familiar with the theory so maybe they have an intellectual advantage, but the bottom line is that they're gambling just as much as I am, right? In order for me to win, someone else has to lose, right? I don't care if it's a 401K or penny stocks - at the heart of it all, it's just a gamble. I don't like gambling. The last time I went to Vegas I went in thinking I'd be ok to lose $200. I lost my first $5, got sad, then won $20 and decided that I'd rather have $215 to spend on dinner than on this emotional roller coaster and quit.

We purchased our home back in 2007 - right as the real estate bubble was gently pin pricked and the air was slowly being released. We thought we were buying at a good time - the research you'd do on the net in late 2006 would yield two very strong opinions - 1) the bubble would burst and real estate would collapse any day now so plan on renting for the next 15 years or 2) the bubble would slowly let some air but bounce back again - the price drop would be temporary and it would be a good time to buy. Reliable sources for both opinions thrived.

In either case, it didn't matter too much for us because we weren't looking at a place as an investment. Everyone (literally) we talked to about buying a place told us we wouldn't be living in the same place in 5 years but we didn't want to assume that and instead looked for a place we loved. We found that place (I still love it) and decided to buy.

I read every. single. document. Anything that I needed to sign, I read twice - once at home and once again in the Realtors office. Most of the people we dealt with were fine with it, but our loan guy was a massive douche bag although he didn't seem that way at first - he was an older guy with many years of experience in the field. He was very friendly, knowledgeable and he met with us as often as we needed to discuss our loan options. We weren't sub-prime applicants, but the loans he was showing us were on were definitely on the creative end of the loan spectrum. We had to request to see a normal fixed interest loan. He somehow calculated that based on our incomes we could apply for a loan that was about $200,000 higher than the max we had set for ourselves when we came in (thankfully we didn't buy into the bigger loan thing.)

During our closing there was a specific document that they asked us to sign that indicated that we knew our loan was a "balloon loan." Our loan was NOT a balloon loan. I looked at the escrow woman and told her this is not our loan. The loan guy was sitting in the room. He said, "that's just a standard form, everyone signs it." I asked, "do we have a balloon loan?" he responded, "no." I reread the document and looked at Michael and said "I'm not going to sign this. We don't have a balloon loan." The loan guy got angry! He looked at me and said "Do you want to lose the house? You have to sign that or you can't close escrow and you won't get the loan. It's not a big deal, you just sign it, it doesn't mean you have a balloon loan!" In my head I flashed back to the moment where I asked the loan guy if he would recommend the same type of loan we were getting for his own children (he had told us about his children and his new grand child) he said yes, without a doubt. I looked back at the escrow lady and told her I couldn't sign that document. The loan guy huffed, got up and left the room pissed. The escrow lady read the document herself and then hand wrote something on the document indicating that we did not have a balloon loan and had us sign the page under her handwriting and stamp. That worked, we closed, we owned our home. I decided the loan guy was a douche bag and I probably should not have trusted him at all.

As the real estate bubble continued to leak out air and eventually pop, more information on these predatory loans started coming to the surface. While we were doing ok with our purchase, I did feel sympathy for the people out there who were losing their homes when their out of control loans came due and the market was not turning a profit anymore. Having gone through the process, I know that they most likely trusted what the "expert" had told them. Internet people were calling them stupid for not knowing better and blamed the homeowners for the collapse of the market. I agree in part - they should have read and understood all the terms of their loans and the documents they signed, BUT I understand how intimidating it can be as a non-expert when you've got the pro telling you that this is the way to invest and that you're just being a paranoid idiot if you don't follow their advice. It can be kind of hard to tell the expert they're wrong.

I can do all the research I want on WebMD when I have a weird cramp. I can pull up all my symptoms and do what I think is a pretty effective self diagnosis, but when I go into my doctor and she tells me my cramp is not due to the Maple Syrup Urine Disease (it's real, look it up) I'm going to believe the expert. To me, it's pretty much the same thing. I think that when you're dealing with money instead of lives though, it's a little easier for the "experts" to dismiss the danger signs when they're going to make more money off a little risk with my investment.

So, thanks, but no thanks. Post-apocalyptic nanotechnology FTW. Uhhhmmm... anyone know how I can get my hands on some nano-machines? I pay a pretty penny... or will trade for magical capital.

I've Been a Bad Bad Blogger

Ok. I've been bad. I missed Friday AND Monday blogs in June. Fail. I'll have to make up blogs in blog-cram-school over the weekend.

Plus, this blog is going to suck because I forgot what I originally wanted to write about so I'm just filling up space hoping it will come back to me.

It won't.

I cried a lot watching a movie tonight. I cry easily watching movies. I'm not regularly a crybaby but movies or TV can really get me. I totally shut down the outside world and give in. It doesn't matter if it's a terrible movie or a great movie... tug at my heartstrings with the right formula and I'll cry. Usually this involves some sort of uplifting or tragic parent-child moment... or a dog getting hurt... or a dog getting his feelings hurt. Also, if I cry, the movie can still suck big time... so my emotional involvement doesn't necessarily mean I like the movie. (Case and point "Harry Potter and The One Where That Kid Dies and His Dad Cries." That was the official title, right? Hate that movie.)

Tonight I watched "Ma Vie En Rose" (not to be confused with "La Vie En Rose") about a seven year old kid with a gender identity crisis growing up in a very loving family that just has no idea how to deal with his issues. It was portrayed so realistically with characters that you could easily identify with. Anyway, this isn't a movie review but it moved me to tears and I still liked the movie.

There are movies that make me cry so much that I can never watch again (The Green Mile, Dumbo and Glory. If you need me to explain, I will.) There are movies that I'm embarrassed to admit they made me cry (Anchor Man) and movies I cried in that I'm bitter I wasted my tears on (probably too many for me to list.)

So, tomorrow, I will have puffy swollen eyelids - which will suck. I love how red and plump my lips get when I cry... why can't they stay like that for a day after crying and my eyelids go down to normal? So lame.

SPAM. A lot.

I don't get SPAM.

We'll I get it.

I just don't understand it.

Does anyone actually make money off SPAM e-mails? Does anyone actually buy anything they get in a SPAM e-mail? This stuff is ridiculous and who actually goes for it?

I don't have a friend named "Nina" who wants to send me an e-mail about that "thing we talked about last night" and the "pills that will help." And even if I did have a friend named Nina and we talked about a thing and the pills, wouldn't she have given me the info over the phone? At least the name of the pills over the phone? And if I was friends with her and she was selling me this crap, wouldn't she come over to my house to show me this stuff and maybe hang out for a little bit? Isn't that what friends do? Maybe she lives out of state, you say. Fine. I suppose then she could e-mail me the info about the pills and the thing since she couldn't come over and she probably didn't have the details with her while she was driving home from work when we talked last night.

Wouldn't it have been nicer if Nina at least spelled my name correctly - I mean, we are friends, right? Or maybe she could at least have written an introductory paragraph about some of the other things we talked about and about how much she misses me and that she wishes she could move back to California and that she's sorry she forgot to call me on my birthday AND THEN get into the link and the pills that changed her life.

It might also help if Nina had a better grasp of my gender and realized that I don't need these pills. Maybe she's thinking Mike needs them - but isn't that kind of offensive? I mean, sure, we're friends, but Nina doesn't know Mike that well and he doesn't need those pills, but even if he did, it's not something I'd be comfortable talking about with her anyway. We aren't that close. I feel like she's being too invasive. I would never click on her stupid link. And I think it's about time I ended this toxic friendship.

Marked as SPAM. Beat that Nina.

Then there's that guy from my class who is always e-mailing me about the change in times for my final exams. Thank goodness. What a nice guy to let me know about that stuff. Who isn't stressing out about final exam times!? I need to check that stuff out ASAP.

WOW! There's no info on the test time but you're telling me that my final is about JLo's naked butt? Sweet. I'm going to totally ace this test! All I have to do is click on this link you sent me here... wait. Wait a second you sneaky snake... I graduated from college about 6 years ago! You almost got me! Almost!

Stupid stupid stupid.

How is it at all possible to make any money with stuff like that? How does it make any sense? Who comes up with these ridiculous e-mails (and maybe I should get a job there - because I can be pretty ridiculous)? It's a thousand times worse than the paper equivalent. Your paper junk mail at least attempts to look official and trick you into an unnecessary purchase. These SPAM e-mails don't even try.

All I can say is thank goodness GMail has a killer SPAM filter.

Ok. Rant over.