Facebook is one of the reasons that led me to open this blog.
I've often been thinking about facebook recent success and my conclusion is that facebook is an instrument that can and should be avoided. Maybe every social networking website has to be avoided.
Everyone has facebook, why I do not? Why do I hate it? It's cool. Am I strange?
Maybe, but I discovered that many people actually hate facebook, even though that is a tiny faction compared to the majority.
There are many reasons for which I deleted my facebook account and I'll try to explain some of them. I already know that most of you will disagree with me or will just think: "Duck the privacy, facebook is fun".
That's fine, if for "fun" you mean "addiction, waste of time, stalking, be stalked, tolerating plenty of ads and invites, permitting that your personal data are sold, strutting about having hundreds of 'friends', playing silly games" and so on...
I'm not being drastic. Facebook, for some people, could be seriously dangerous, and do not think that you're definitely safe.
A small example: weeks ago I've read about a crazy guy that stole a notebook from a woman "to login into facebook" and has been jailed.
I don't know the psychological mechanisms involved by the use of a social networking, but honestly it smells fishy to me.
But let's start from the very beginning:
I was a facebook user last year. I've heard about facebook here in London, I don't remember if someone has ever mentioned it before in Italy, but it's unlikely.
I was in London around last September and it was quite exciting having a "book with all the people you have met", in which you can chat, leave messages on the wall, keep in touch with everyone you want, share links, photos and videos.
These are the only things that i still appreciate about it, but they are meaningless when the system doesn't care about you and your privacy, even if you are its source of money.
It cannot be that much money, you can be wondering, but it is more than a billion (and the founder has also been sued for stealing the idea of facebook... a great idea, to be developed, needs luck and a clever mind).
Anyway, facebook was cool and user-friendly, innovative. One thing that I never liked were that stupid games or tests that I admit, were very attracting, but the first time i received one and I decided to click on it, I saw the "Privacy request" and i said NO. It was the first and the last time i clicked on that games or tests.
Anyway, facebook was good and i used it more and more, at the point to check it daily and when i wanted to relax a bit. Without really knowing it, I was already depending on facebook.
However, I've always felt something wrong with it, something slightly insidious... "Nevermind, it should be just an impression" and I continued facebooking for a while.
That's some months ago that I realized how pathetic it was. I realized what facebook really was.
I can do a survey, just having a quick look on the computer displays in a cluster room at UCL: 60% of the students are wasting their life on facebook. It's not so bad if they were chatting or talking with someone, but most of them they were "spying" other guys photos.
But on facebook the word "spy" doesn't exist. It is called sharing... What a fantastic thing, sharing something with the entire world... unfortunately something that should be private. "Whatever, I have got nothing to hide", neither your privacy? It's not so funny to be tagged on a shameful photo that everyone can see.
It's so easy to destroy one person's life on facebook. Just disseminating something he doesn't want to do so, but also divulging fake news about someone.
I was also fed (RSS) on one of the most interesting blogs I actually read: "Il disinformatico" (I recommend it, if you understand Italian) and Paolo Attivissimo, the founder, gives a lot of reasons to be against facebook.
All these revelations convinced me to delete my facebook account, and now I don't regret that choice.
To be clear, I'm not writing to convince to delete your facebook account, even if I assure you that would be better, but just to let you think more about it and above all using it prudently. Basically, use your brain when you are on facebook.
In fact, I don't hate people who are on facebook, but how most of people get use of it, wasting time on games, being happy to be spied and feeling cool.
Initially the idea of facebook was not bad at all. Unfortunately, in not so much time, facebook became more and more popular (also in Italy) in the younger generation.
Nowadays, facebook is popular all over the world, and I'm just asking myself when it will be more popular than some brands like Coca-cola or Microsoft (maybe it is).
This is not good, obviously and its popularity led people to be addicted (and unfortunately it charms adolescents, that are too young to be involved in something like facebook) and to get the attention of the media and of companies that are only after money.
One of the result is that there is a huge number of groups in facebook and should have been better if most of them would never existed.
There are groups about companies that use facebook as free advertisement, groups that inspire violence and other things that is better not talking about (if you're asking right now, yes, facebook has also be sued for this, but if you have money, a trial is like a midge for you).
On the whole, I've never liked facebook groups... I've been in very few groups and I have always hated invitations (oh, god, how I hated them)... but you should forgive me, because i couldn't resist to the "Pepe means perfect" group!
Facebook's popularity led also to some funny (and very interesting, according to me) projects, like the Whopper Sacrifice. The project was easy: with every deleted friend (whom would have received a message like: you have been sacrificed for a sandwich), burger king decided to offer a free sandwich. This experiment worked so well that this project was forced to close (they gave 232,566 free sandwiches in a week).
This is very interesting because it is clear how much does a "friend" worth on facebook. They're just contacts (as they were always called before), not friends.
By the way, I conclude here (if not I would speak endlessly about facebook) with the last try of cheat by Mark Zuckerberg. He tried to sell to some companies user's data to do marketing researches (that were, without any doubt, very powerful on facebook), but he has been fortunately forced to change his mind, because of the groups of protest:
try to sell customer's privacy for money (privacy that is already well-violated, since simply googling you can find someone's friends and interests). No further comments.
In conclusion, you have an idea of what I think of facebook. If you want to know if I'll be back on facebook sometime, my answer is: maybe, if something will improve or if it will be necessary, now I'm too disgusted to commit this error again. I'm opening this blog to underline that there are other methods to keep in touch with people, to share multimedia and have fun in a bit more productive way, and blogs are a very good method to share ideas.
Thanks for your attention, negative or positive comments are welcomed!
Take care.
