I joined Facebook (FB) several years ago with simple aims. I wanted new, real-name private sources about Indonesia and Timor-Leste, subjects of two list projects I ran on Yahoo Groups. I was also frustrated about the limited options for private presentation of self (for myself and others) and direct communication on Friendster, then a key social networking player. For a while, FB managed to meet these needs to a partial degree which made it seem worth investment of my time.
This only occurred after a dismaying start, in which my account was quickly suspended, twice, for 'spam-like' activity (simply adding a few friends and posting a few links). FB's then spam detection robot was very amateurish. Finding relevant friends was hampered severely by a then requirement to join a single geographical network -- searching for friends outside was not permitted. (This lame attempt to create 'community' was later eliminated.) I did create several FB 'groups' akin to my Yahoo lists on Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Groups were open to all and adding members was all too easy -- friends on FB longer could simply invite all their friends to join a group. Through friending group members, I was slowly able to build my preferred network on FB, even though, as on Yahoo, few persons besides myself contributed to these 'groups.' On the other hand, I was besieged with requests to join 'fun' game applications.
In retrospect, I should have learned more from these early strange patterns which ultimately turned FB into the deeply flawed, dangerous and specious social networking site it has now unfortunately become.
1) The site owners and admins change the user interface capriciously and too frequently, often without announcement and without first ascertaining, through trials, user feedback. New users cannot possibly master the site even in a month and as a result wind up with settings they would not otherwise approve, even if they have the patience to locate and examine them. The link to the well-written help pages is so poorly placed that few know it exists. In any case, the help pages have grown to almost book-length size, a deterrent to their use.
2) The quality of the main programs which define and maintain the site is too often very poor, too slow, or too inclined to fail. Applications especially lose their original attractive simplicity as they monetize, and they sometimes simply are suddently drastically modified, abandoned or made to disappear. This includes even a major native FB app like the one controlling 'groups.' I had to re-write and adapt text for all the six groups I created and maintained on FB, an onerous task. Redundant and fad apps now are overwhelmingly numerous. It has become very hard to get enough friends to coordinate their apps.
3) On-site search of FB itself now ranges far and wide, revealing much private information of almost everyone on the site. Worse, recent major site revamps reproduce much of this information on the public internet through simple Google searches. All current users should try such external searches to gauge whether what they intended to remain private within a closed community is now public even to persons who are not FB members.
4) In its recent mandatory use of Microsoft's Bing to change words on the personal Info tab of user profiles into clickable links, everything on that tab is now publicly visible on the net. The only way to keep such material private is to write nothing there, or delete what one has already written there. This is a truly egregious violation of the presumption of privacy most people bring to social networking sites. Otherwise put, much of the 'social' part of one's profile must be self-destroyed if privacy is to be preserved. If this is not done and those public links are allowed to stand, one is no longer networking but broadcasting to all the major search engines. Worse, the links automatically generated are almost always repetitive, more often than not inappropriate, and grossly distort the presentation of self on which most social networkers initially focus. The main purpose of this change, expanding by at least a factor of three what is visible to the public from just the Info tab, is mainly to allow FB more room for the paid ads on which it depends. An irony advertisers have likely not yet realized is that personal profiles are generally just briefly scanned by new friends, then forgotten, with such social interactions as do occur originating mainly from the overwhelming News Feed. That in turn turns the site into the breeding ground for social trivia it is today.
5) I left FB with over 2,600 'friends.' This network could in theory be very valuable. But only a small fraction of these 2,600 friends ever read what I post on my Wall. That, for the longest time, was mainly information in the form of links. These postings do not appear in the news feeds of most of my friends. Few FBers post or read mainly substantive content, esp on the order of 5-15 per day from a friend like me. Instead, since they are there mostly to socialize, not to get subtantive information, they make use of a Hide Friend option in their news feeds on the default Home page, so that everything I do never appears in their feeds. A large majority of FBers have too many friends, often in the hundreds and upward, making Hiding Friends almost a necessity to keep one's sanity at the overload of stuff thrown at people while using the site. FB does not help matters by suggesting new friends to add during every new visit to Home. The more friends FBers have, the more opportunities FB has to sell ads and make more money.
FB resembles a good social networking site less and less with each passing day. It has become a money machine. Its socializing has become trivialized, and it is hostile to enough exposure for substantive content. In numerous ways, just a few remarked on here, it has deliberately gradually breached the privacy of all its members' data to the point that by now most of that data is public. The best way to protect yourself, and your friends, from further inevitable FB admin mischief is to delete your account.
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