Facebook or Farcebook, Long Lost Virginity
Sometimes the reality that nearly every aspect of daily life is a commercial target in the land of the free enterprise and home of the brave new world becomes very tiring. The purity of sports lost its virginity many years ago but that hasn’t stopped the NFL or college sports from taking it to a lower level. With Barry Bonds impending trial baseball has a share in it too. And the other ‘professional’ sports are infected as well.
Not that the tech world or information highway should be expected to be immune to the wicked ways of some business models but it would have been nice if the longevity of purity in sport could have been duplicated in something like social networking. Since MySpace and Facebook, et al, have been defined as havens for sexual predators among other things the fact that Facebook would intrude on users by sending transaction details to others on their friends list is not a shocker. The apology from one of the apparent top dogs and claimed implementation of an opt-out arrangement is far too little an atonement that provides no more sincerity than a perp raising their hands when busted and ordered to do so. The only conclusion to draw or question to ask is what else are you doing, Mr Zuckerberg, besides the beacon program?
The program was criticized by progressive advocacy group Moveon.org, which quickly garnered nearly 70,000 signatures in opposition to the Beacon service for not having an adequate opt-out function. Zuckerberg announced in his apology that an opt-out is now possible.
The drive to transform every activity into revenue is becoming a sickness. It appears as if the the more ethics and governance issues are addressed by mission statements and departments charged with oversight the more instances of flagrant abusive practices are discovered. When every customer is reduced to a dollar sign it may simply be inevitable that the loss of ethical behavior follows.
As painful as this next item is it must be mentioned and then clarified. MoveOn dot org gathered 70000 signatures to pressure Facebook to ‘knock it off’ and while that is admirable, the article referenced in this post refers to MoveOn dot org as a progressive advocacy group. Let’s just say that may be giving MoveOn a little more credit than they deserve.
Some of the other items covered in the linked article are absurd. Number one, the average user is not likely to do much about the actions of others while engaging the internet. And without considerable skill and tools foiling the schemes of when using electronic technology is a lottery-sized probability at best. Most of what occurs is invisible to most users.
And comparing data about your online activity being presented to authorities via a third party as being more exposed than being able to challenge a direct subpoena with legal representation omits the very real possibility of a search warrant being executed and having no recourse to prevent your hard drive, etc., from being confiscated.
The bottom line is your activity on the net and everything associated with it is fair game for hackers and the long arm of the law not to mention any website you visit. It is too bad that little of what goes on these days is pure in form or free from misuse by others. It is more about who we are or what we are becoming rather than the battle between good and evil. But it feels better to consider yourself above all that and merely the target or victim of the guilty.