F..k'd stands for Facebook'd
A friend of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg asked him, back in 2004, after the 19-year-old had casually mentioned in an online conversation that 4,000 people had uploaded their personal information to his fledgling website: "How did you manage that?" He typed back: "They just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'," then indiscreetly described them as "dumbfucks".The near future for US?
This week's reporting of that conversation, brushed off by Facebook but not denied, comes at an awkward time for the social networking site, whose 400 million members have made it the second most popular online destination behind Google.
Its privacy policies, inextricably coupled with it urging that we share our information with the world, have regularly hit the headlines, but in the past fortnight the privacy debate has developed into what some excitable commentators are calling a "firestorm of anger".
Prominent technology bloggers have publicly deleted their accounts, and an EU data protection body has issued a strongly worded statement criticising the website. Anyone busy using Facebook probably will not have noticed, and that is essentially the problem.
The biggest charge levelled against it is that users simply are not fully aware of changes that are regularly made about who can see our information, which search engines can catalogue that information, and which companies can advertise products to us based upon it. At the end of last year, certain categories of data belonging to over-18s were made visible to "everyone" (Facebook and non-Facebook users) by default.
This was presented in a benign, socially inclusive way, but it did not take long for concerned users to urgently forward instructions to their friends explaining how to revert these changes. In addition, more widespread use of Facebook Connect (a system where we can permit external websites to link to our Facebook account to improve the "user experience") has furrowed many brows, particularly when we see pictures of friends unexpectedly popping up next to gossip columns or cricket scores.
But the recently introduced "Instant Personalisation" service has pushed things too near the edge. Facebook describes it as "magical", but the wider consensus is "creepy": three websites (namely docs.com, pandora.com and yelp.com) now know that you are a Facebook user and welcome you as such on your first visit, unless you have specifically turned the option off within Facebook.
But making decisions and taking action over these privacy issues isn't easy. Facebook's commitment to providing "granular" privacy settings for each type of information results in a fiendishly complex system. About 50 settings are spread across several pages, with important and alarming-sounding sections such as "what your friends can share about you" buried within a submenu of a submenu.
Each external website you approve with Facebook Connect provides another potential information leak and yet another screen of privacy options, and the privacy policy governing all this runs to some 5,830 words.
People are choosing to close their accounts (another seven-step process that, ironically, does not actually delete your information from Facebook's servers.) Signups to the site have also reportedly slowed, albeit to a colossal 20 million per month.
But for many, Facebook has become indispensable. It is a one-stop address book; it is a diary of upcoming events, from gigs to birthdays to political rallies; it is a place to chat with friends when you are having an evening in, and it strengthens bonds between people who might have become estranged through laziness or forgetfulness.The Independent/UK
"We are all very afraid," Somchai Sanwong said as he manned the barricades, a few hundred yards from troop positions.
The redshirts have piles of rocks and Molotov cocktails stashed to hurl at troops when they finally advance. They also have gallons of motor vehicle oil to make the road slippery. Deeper inside the camp, sources say, the redshirts have dozens of M79 rocket-launched grenades. Several were fired last night at an inner-city police station.
"Obviously we're outgunned, outnumbered. In the worst case, if the soldiers come, we'll just burn the barricades," Somchai said.The Guardian/UK
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posted by Tom Nadeau at 9:04 AM
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