A curious melancholy infests the New Yorker’s profile. You wonder, for example, to what extent Zuckerberg actually possesses an interior life of his own. He doesn’t seem passionate about much in particular. At the age of 26, he bought a car but only after asking his friends for suggestions (he wanted something “safe, comfortable, not ostentatious” and ended up with an Acura TSX, which Wikipedia defines as “an entry-level luxury car”).
So, err... According to Wired, your interior life is best represented by your interest in cars?
I'm not sure Google's alleged "honest" interface is only a product of company culture: The launch of Buzz was the target of as much criticism as received by Facebook.
It might just be that social network interfaces interact with users more intimately, and thus are more problematic to toy around with.
Either way, Facebook's chameleon interface is definitely irritating. You can see some of their design anti-patterns here: http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/wiki/Home
Google almost always rolls back anti-patterns once it's clear people aren't fond of them.
Facebook unveils roughly 8 anti-patterns with every re-do and rolls back the most egregious 4. The result is Facebook get significantly worse with every iteration.
Most of the recent ones though, I've solved with NoScript and only browsing Facebook in a dedicated browser. (I really need to make something a little more robust; effectively a Facebook app running on a Webkit core that opens all external links in Firefox. That would sandbox the social graph, and let me read links out of Facebook normally.)
> a Facebook app running on a Webkit core that opens all external links in Firefox.
This sounds really nice, but doesn't facebook also do the sa=D-style redirects like google? (I've no way to check.) If so, it effectively becomes a nice cross-browser way of tracking you.
I don't know what OS you're using, but I believe this is possible with Fluid, an SSB app generator for Mac OS X that uses Webkit. I quit FB a while ago, but use it for other sites in a similar fashion.
It's hard to tell people what they should love and hate without coming off as petty. Yeah, you had some issue that bugged you and Facebook was involved. Your likes and dislikes are not everyone's. Some are happy to trade privacy for convenience, and some aren't. That's what freedom is about.
Because you can leave Google. You may not want to, and they do a great job of having features nobody else has, but if they piss you off enough, there's plenty of email providers.
Facebook, on the other hand, holds your social network hostage. We'll always resent any site that takes advantage of that.
I think you are overdramatizing Facebook's importance quite a little bit here. It's not like your friends will hate you when you quit and I have seen plenty of people quit online social networks while retaining their life just fine.
I could make up a similar argument the other way around: to me, services like Facebook provide little to no value; I can quit them just fine. I have communication details of a lifetime in Google, I store my documents with them, organize my calendar. (Note: I have heard Google's export features are quite okayish so that argument does not really hold.)
I think you're underestimating Facebook's social importance. Sure, your friends won't hate you, it won't be the end of the world, but there is a palpable sense of disconnect.
And there are more people who rely on Facebook for social connection, than people who rely on Google for business and finance (especially if you're talking about the under-25 crowd).
I believe your claims but is there any evidence to back it up (and is that possible on fuzzy metrics such as palpable sense of disconnect)?
From your other comments I understand you are from the US and I guess its a wholly different matter across the pond, but I for one cannot reproduce these effects here in Germany. Sure, most -- rough estimate: all -- of my contacts do have accounts on various social networks (me included) but we have never critically relied on it. It never gained quite as much traction as I always hear from Facebook.
Facebook? Why should I sign into Mark Zuckerberg’s site to download a presentation...somewhere else...it still felt like a kind of category error. This was Facebook pushing its nose too far into someone else’s business.
That's exactly what I don't like about Facebook being everywhere....my solution was to setup privoxy and expunge any script debris from Facebook and google.
Your time online should be slightly more productive and private.
Next “great” thing: logging in to our bank account with Facebook.
Yeah, Facebook was a smart idea, and, yeah, it deserves respect.
But its going too far.
I will not conform. I will not become part of this stupid machine.
I still use facebook, but I use it as a means to read articles from Wired, NPR, TED talks, etc.
The way "instant personalization" works is that when you a visit one of the few sites where this is turned on, you are automatically logged in using your Facebook account (if you have one) without asking you first. The lack of explicit consent for linking accounts on two different web sites together is the privacy violation.
Once you know about this you can turn off that feature in your Facebook settings.
can someone please give me the reason why people feel that facebook is "violating privacy" in a way that has nothing to do with the acceleration of technology?
So, err... According to Wired, your interior life is best represented by your interest in cars?