My Take on the Changes to Facebook

So, if you haven’t logged into facebook recently (and those of you who read this through facebook are already on, so you know what I am talking about), you will know that there is a new feature that keeps you posted on what your friends are doing on facebook. Remember, I said, your friends…. It will tell you if they have posted some new pictures, or perhaps made a comment on someone else’s wall.

Now, there are a lot of people who are opposed to these changes. Looking through my “news feed” I count no less than 5 or 6 groups with names like “The new F’book is F’ed up” or “The news reel is CREEPY and must be destroyed.” While its all well and good to be opposed to changes to a website, there’s some things you need to realize about all this stuff.

First off: Everything you put on Facebook is public, before or after news feeds. I think that every reasonable person will tell you that you should not put something you don’t want others to know on sites life Facebook or MySpace. Period. There’s always a way to find it. When you sign up for Facebook, if you read the Terms of Service (which you have to agree to), you will come across this paragraph:

Profile information you submit to Facebook will be available to users of Facebook who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings. This is primarily so your friends at other schools can find you and send a friend request. People who see your name in searches, however, will not be able to access your profile information unless they have a relationship to you (friend, friend of friend, member of your school’s network, etc.) that allows such access based on your privacy settings.

Hmmm… well, I think to me that says that the information on Facebook is officially public information.
Second thing: Everyone who claims that news feeds are a “violation of privacy” is wrong. See above.
Third thing: If you want, you can turn off certain parts of your news feed. If you don’t want people knowing that you posted on “Person A’s” wall, just go into your profile and click the “x” next to that item. Not too hard.
Fourth thing: Everyone who claims this makes “facebook stalking” easier is wrong. Unless you are “stalking” your actual friends, which is just weird. The only people who show up in your news feed are your friends, not random people you meet on the street.
Fifth thing: MySpace is not any better. Unless you go in and change settings, ANYONE can see your profile. They don’t have to go to the same university as you or be friends with you. Plus, the design of MySpace absolutely sucks.
Sixth thing: If anything, these new changes show you just how public your information is. People (including me) used to live with the thought that what you did was private. This all changed when I started with CYLC. They mentioned that they had looked at my MySpace and Facebook. Well, hopefully this will make people aware of the things they put on their profile.
Finally: If you are that pissed off over this, just cancel your account. If you want to stay in touch with your friends on Facebook, you have to play by Facebook’s rules. Its technically their website. They’re not forcing anyone to stay on it.

Anyway, there’s my rant. I think everyone is just being a bit irrational. Facebook never gave any semblence of privacy before, and that, my friends, has not changed.

I’m off to Oak Brook this afternoon until Sunday, and I probably won’t have internet during that time, so you’ll just have to sit tight and wait for more rants later.