NJKpopper also lived through the first algal bloom of FB, where suddenly all of one's high school, college, grad school and work acquaintances were dumped into the same fishbowl. Of course, in such an environment, all you can do is smile idiotically and say "Hi!". I even remember, although most of the world seems to have forgotten or erased this, that for a brief time, FB had a thumbs down option to dislike something, until it was removed after a couple of months. FB was much simpler then, however. Just a kind of electronic directory and picture-sharing service.
I first bailed on FB in 2012, when they forced users to accept the "Timeline" display of all activity on the site. And for years I never missed out.
Then, I was lured back in. I still don't think that was a mistake. There were some benefits to being able to tap into the massive communication platform that FB has become.
But, I still dislike the fishbowl aspect of FB. I still believe in the early vision of the open Internet, where everything is accessible and discoverable, but atomized and not closely tracked. If I post something here on my blog, only the NSA, FSB and a couple of close friends will read it. But if I post to FB, I know that it will not only be visible to all of my connections, but that it will be recommended to others and recorded in my profile for anyone who might browse my identity in the future.
And, frankly, the quality of interaction that FB encourages is just awful compared to what occurs in genuine human conversation, or solitary, long-form writing, or even solipsistic medium-form writing like blogs. So that is a big minus. And our time on this earth is limited.
What I discovered during my brief return to FB was a bit disturbing, however.
I do not like the detailed tracking that occurs via FB/Messenger, where everyone can see exactly how long it has been since you were last active, and not only whether, but when, you have viewed a message from someone else. This level of atomistic micromanagement is destructive of healthy, trusting, nurturing human relationships.
Although they are proposed as solutions to the privacy problem, the FB privacy controls are utterly nonsensical and untrustworthy. From the start, I have always assumed that anything I write on FB is basically equivalent to what I write on the public web, since even if privacy controls operate now, in the future they will either be breached by a hacker, or by FB itself.
But it is worse than that. Although many people block their Friends list from public view, if you "friend" someone, it turns out that you can actually view their entire Friend list while you are waiting for their response. So the Friends list is never actually private.
Secondly, the sheer amount of material that FB preserves is astounding. If you start to actually search, beyond what FB serves up to you, for information on any person, you will see that FB keeps everything. And given that most people accept the defaults of letting anything be visible by "Friends of Friends", all of that is essentially visible to the world.
It was actually such an incident that drove me off of FB the first time, when a long ago photograph was unexpectedly surfaced to FB. It was my prom photo, with my prom date, post-intoxication. I might post it here, and at least it will not be publically tagged for all to see via facial recognition. While professionals in the NSA and FSB have always had access to this information, only FB makes this kind of detrimental information available to amateurs and idiots of all stripes, which is why it is so awful.
This article on Capgras syndrome is really quite good on how our primate social brains begin to interact in odd ways with electronic simulacra. Worthy of more reflection.
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