Ads that pop up on your screen might seem useful, or at worst, a nuisance. But they are much more than that. The bits and bytes about your life can easily be used against you. Whether you can obtain a job, credit or insurance can be based on your digital doppelgänger — and you may never know why you’ve been turned down.Meanwhile, Nick Bilton in the New York Times Bits blog wonders, Where's Our Cut?" (Bilton claims it's many Facebook users asking that question, not just him, but it's more fun to claim only Bilton wants to know.)
Without me, and the other 844,999,999 people poking, liking and sharing on the site, Facebook would look like a scene from the postapocalyptic movie “The Day After Tomorrow”: bleak, desolate and really quite sad. (Or MySpace, if that is easier to imagine.) Facebook surely would never be valued at anything close to $100 billion, which it very well could be in its coming initial public offering.I'm already on record as agreeing wholeheartedly with Andrews' point. However, Maciej Ceglowski was the first to bring it to my attention, and much more pithily:
Social networks exist to sell you crap.Andrews is just extending Ceglowski's original point.
In general I'm a reductionist when it comes to communication. I prefer to read rather than to listen or to watch, because reading lets me absorb information more rapidly. Where I'm not a reductionist, though, is in my relationships with good friends. Friendship is a part of life in which mere information about the other person is not enough to sustain the relationship. Talking with a friend is not just about exchanging information: it's also about facial expressions, gestures, laughter, flickering looks away or at me, subtle changes in the voice and posture, the taste of the food and drink we share. It's about the mood we create and the feelings we share.
Facebook friendships, though, are all about the information. Whether in written or image form, Facebook posts are information dumps. It's a reduction of friendship to merest acquaintanceship, if that. And that's why I have never had much interest in Facebook. I absorb enough information without being subjected to a torrent from people with whom I (and they) can't be bothered to maintain stronger ties.
That all said, am I sympathetic to Bilton's (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) plaint?
Nope.
Nobody forced Facebook's users to join, or to post, or to participate in any other way. Facebook's investors and staff set up an infrastructure, made it available to all without charge, and let fate run its course. Yes, it's the users who created the content that make Facebook at all interesting. However, they did so because they benefited from doing so. The benefits users derive have not disappeared or been reduced in magnitude because of Facebook's IPO.
What has changed is that the whole world now knows how much investors (whoever they are) think Facebook is worth.
Some of you might agree with Bilton on one point:
I for one would feel more comfortable with Facebook looking through my phonebook, wallet and underwear drawer if I knew I was going to get paid for it.Oh please.
Let me repeat: nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to upload your life to Facebook. You did it because it was free and because you got something out of it. Are you pissed Zuckerberg and company are getting (a lot) more? Oh well. Life sucks.
Are you chagrined that your personal information is such a profitable resource, and that somebody else is making the profit? Again, oh well. If you use reward cards, you've been giving up your shopping habits (and possibly other information, like your credit record) for years. There's this for rewards cards, though: at least you get some kind of tangible benefit in return.
Still, Facebook gave you what it promised. If you feel cheated, you should have thought a little harder before you agreed to use the service. Or get over your bitterness and marvel that you and your friends are worth so much.
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