A friend of mine just sent me one of those fun invitations to join facebook.com.
I guess I don't make this site and blog well enough known, as nobody seems to know that it's here. It makes me sad, but I'll get over it.
I don't understand the purpose of facebook, really, other than to gather lots of personal information on people so they can sell it or something. I mean, why would I put something up on the Internet only to make it private so nobody can see it? Please don't tell me that you honestly trust in facebook to protect private data? And if you're willing to trust that data to someone as untrustworthy as facebook, why not just post it on a public site ... unless, of course, you want to help facebook increase its user base.
Sound paranoid? Check out this quote from their terms of service: "By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof ..."
Basically, once you post something to facebook, you no longer own it.
How about this from the privacy policy: "Facebook reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications."
Which I read to mean, "By signing up, you agree to let facebook spam you."
It's interesting overall. I think what facebook is doing is collecting marketing data about people and selling it to folks (such as movie and record companies ... you know, "85% of our members are talking about the latest album from the latest band" or whatever)
In their privacy policy, they mention that they're doing this, but claim that, "... we don't tell the movie company who you are." (exact quote). If my preferences and my opinions aren't who I am, then what is? When did my name and email address become more important than my opinions in identifying me?
Anyway, I won't be signing up with Facebook ... not because I don't like the people who are on facebook, but because I find their terms suspect and counter to my philosophy on life. I'm also easily accessible via email, and when I want others to know my opinion, I'll blog about it here.