Back to Blogging
I don't remember exactly when it happened, but at some point I decided to give up on the blog and move to Facebook. That became my central place to share my thoughts, but it never felt right. Facebook is geared toward being a "social utility" in that it promotes extroverted sharing and communication among friends and peer groups, event planning, etc. It does a great job, but their philosophy on how people should interact doesn't match up with my own. They have also continually, in my opinion, abused the information that their members have entrusted to them. Things that were once private have been thrust into the public without consent or notice on more than one occasion. The last straw for me was when they announced that they would actively share information with other web sites that we visit so that those sites could "customize your experience." This would only be available on a few sites, like CNN, to start, but I can imagine where they're planning to go with this. Sure, you can opt-out, just like everything else, but they never asked me to opt-in to begin with. They just assume that everyone will welcome this and want to have CNN know who all their friends are, what their interests are, and what they had for dinner last night if it was posted in an update.
The reaction of many people I've talked with about Facebook has been that they give you the privacy controls and you can opt-out of their sharing programs. For me, that's simply not enough. They didn't have the courtesy to ask if I wanted to share that information with the outside world, so I no longer trust them. Anything that's marked private today can be made public tomorrow, and I'm not okay with that. Now, here I am posting about privacy on a blog, one of the most public forms of communication. The difference is that what I post here is public, I know it's public, and I expect the public to see it. If I want to share something with someone in private, I can do that directly with my friends via e-mail and have a reasonable expectation that they will not turn around and make it public. I do not have the same trust in Facebook.
So, we begin our journey anew in a venue I'm more comfortable with. If you want to follow my posts, I'd invite you to subscribe via RSS using your favorite news reader. I welcome comments as well. Comments are public and not moderated, but please feel free to let me know what you think. The website also has information on how to contact me if you'd like to leave a private note. Thanks!
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