Facebook; Part Two of Three

There have also been countless studies showing that high traffic users of Facebook have diminished social and interactive skills and smaller vocabularies.  A more recent study claimed that it promotes poor memory.  From the journal Psychological Science, they suggested that the act of uploading photos to Facebook may actually diminish what we remember about objects being photographed.  People just pull out their cameras and they just don't pay attention to what they're even looking at, like just capturing the photo is more important than actually being there.

There are so many reasons to dislike Facebook:
Zuckerberg stole it for one.  He is nothing more than a thief and plagiarist.
It is a breeding ground for drug dealing, prostitution, burglary and underage sex.  24 year old David Bradt of Colonie, NY was arrested for using FaceBook to meet with teenage high school girls for sex and to sell them drugs.
It advertises what you own and when is a good time for burglars to visit you.
People post pictures of other people without their permission. 
It promotes depression because we think other people are having more fun than we are.
It cuts productivity in the work place and in peoples' personal time.  Forbes reports that nearly half a trillion dollars is lost in productivity each year because of Facebook.
Facebook steals people's data.  This occurs frequently, especially when they have a "glitch" and everyone's privacy settings are reverted to open.  Wake up Facebook users you are being exploited.
It destroys the lives of people too stupid to know what NOT to put up there or, friending their bosses or friends of their boss.  There was a local story of a man who called in sick then posted pictures of himself at a ball game.  Guess who saw the picture?  Guess who got fired?
Lastly, it promotes stalking and has turned our society into voyeurs.  C'mon, you know you've done it.

It is no secret that Facebook's data mining and relentless exploitation of users is for their own profit.  Facebook gathers a lot of information about us and sells that information.  Why do you think it is free to the user?  They get your address, birth-date, information about your friends, your mothers maiden name, the name of your pets and other information we use for passwords and security.

 On August 29, 2013, Facebook posted a blog post about changes to its privacy policy, known as its Data Use Policy.  The changes were, according to the Washington Post, that that users’ name, profile picture and information such as brands they like can be used for “commercial, sponsored or related content.” An example of this would be that a business or other company could pay Facebook to display an individual users’ name and/or profile picture without compensating individual users or getting their permission.

There is another "Facebook-type page" called Zurker and thier members' IP addresses are not stored permanently by Zurker.  While search engine DuckDuckGo is known for not storing IP addresses, Zurker is the first social network to actually take this step.  They expunge your IP information  from the logs within 72 hours. Therefore, if - for example - a government agency were to compel Zurker by court order to furnish the activity log of a particular member, that log would not contain the IP addresses of the member, making it substantially more difficult to identify the individual's name and location. Identifying a users' identity is the singular reason court orders are sought by law enforcement when cracking down on whistle-blowers.  Facebook General Counsel Ted Ullyot said the Facebook requests in the second half of last year from law enforcement sought data about somewhere between 18,000 and 19,000 individual Facebook accounts.

Zurker is taking this step because in these times, when government intrusion into the lives of citizens is basically unrestricted, it is important to provide members with a shield of privacy. Freedom of Speech is not Freedom of Speech if (a) it is censored, or (b) if the speaker is at risk of losing his/her personal liberty because of what he/she said. In an ideal world, in which the government could be trusted, expunging IP addresses from logs would not be necessary, but unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world.  As an activist and community democracy protester I applaud Zurker for this move .

As I said, Facebook promotes crime, gets people fired, wastes time and promotes stalking.  It is also a haven for bullying, online exploitation and hate speech.  Just go to any media outlet Facebook page and read some of the comments from good people like you and me.  Most of us wouldn't speak like that in public but for some reason we think that the world wide web is anonymous.

I once heard a homily about Facebook.  The pastor said "It is true, the scripture verse in Matthew which says "Who can add one day to his life by worrying?" One of my sins is envy." the cleric went on to say. "I envy people who are proclaiming on the Internet how glorious there relationship is. I should not be "following" other people too much on the Internet. That is a big temptation these days. You’re out on vacation and you want to make your friends back home jealous, so you post every detail of your itinerary on Facebook, you tweet about it on Twitter and you check yourself in on Foursquare. It’s natural. We all want to brag about how much fun we’re having.  In reality, you are providing information which can easily make you a target for burglars."

Social networks have become part of our daily lives, but people need to consider the risks of posting their location on these sites. Facebook burglaries are real and growing in popularity.  You may think that checking in at the airport is a nice way to let your friends and family know that you’re going on holiday, but in reality you are also letting people know that your home is empty and an easy target.  If you want to share your holiday plans, don’t do it in real time, wait until you are home.

Facebook has added features like a scrolling update of comments friends have made on others’ pages. Although it may be fun to see what your friends are saying to people you don’t know, that also means that people you don’t know may be able to see some of your updates -- including the ones that say, "Can’t wait to leave for Hawaii tomorrow.”

Although, who needs to fear Facebook when your iPhone automatically transmits GPS location data, which experts say can easily be used to track a user's location if it is uploaded onto a site like a blog that doesn't remove the information.

Oh Big Brother, how did you get in when we were not looking?