Chaudywogbaaga

Okay, I’m a Facebook holdout. I know that I would probably get sucked into it and I just don’t have the time for more hobbies. I maintain a few websites, black smith, metal cast, and RPG for fun. I’ve purposefully given up computer games long ago because I just don’t have time so I am very cautious about adding things to my roster of hobbies. I already spend way too much time reading science and tech articles that while I find fun, don’t usually end up having any value to me.

I get why people have Facebook accounts, it’s an easy way of keeping contact with friends in a mass mailing super directory kind of way. It makes keeping in touch easy, like sending a funny email to everyone in your address book. I just don’t have time for it.

So why do I say it’s scary? As anyone with an email account and no Facebook account can tell you, they send emails. A lot of them. “Come join us!” They cry as if you are causing all the people on Facebook torment because you’re not there to enrich their day. That I find annoying but not scary. It’s the email I just got that I found scary. Facebook is stalking me! An old school buddy just emailed me to join. In the email there was one friend that had already sent me an invite that has been permanently recorded in the Facebook servers.

Then there were nine other people that it said I might know. Two of them I didn’t recognize. Three of them were old co-workers. One is a good friend from my childhood. One is a current friend. One is my Brother. And one, is a person that I’ve had discussions about publishing books on Macs on a POD provider’s forum.

Facebook connected us from a forum? So they’re compiling every bit of data they can about me and I’m not even a member! If a person walked up to you and did all this research about you, figuring out all the people you know saying “I know these are all people you care about.” you could go to the police and have a restraining order put against them! Why is it OK for a company to do this? “It’s only marketing.” “That information is freely available, we just put it together.” No! If I collect that kind of information about someone I would be a stalker. The same should apply to a company.

Facebook, stop stalking me!