The creepiness that is Facebook

[Nordic]

Here's the bait I'm talking about. Two of my friends have "friended" her.

Weird shit.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id= ... 995&ref=nf

[82_28]

5 Ways Facebook Changed Dating (For The Worse)

Facebook can mess up your life in a whole bunch of ways. It can get you fired or evicted, plunge you into debt with its addictive games, and even (yeah, right) infect you with syphilis. We wouldn’t look at all of those as serious threats, but we all know from experience that one threat is real: Facebook makes dating far more complicated than it used to be.

You can cleverly use Facebook’s privacy settings to mitigate the pains, and you can even make an impossible-to-maintain rule that you won’t accept friend requests from people you’re dating, but it’s almost guaranteed that Facebook will somehow catch up to your budding relationship and challenge it with some confusion eventually.

The site can be a boon for dating in some ways too, of course, but for now we’re talking about how it makes things complicated. Here are five ways that Facebook’s erosion of personal boundaries and privacy has made finding security in love and sex more difficult.
1. Overanalyzing Will Drive You Crazy

He posted on your wall four times today — does that mean he’s too into you? She keeps posting status updates about the cute guys in her office — should you be worried that you’ll be outdone? You’ve hardly seen any updates on his profile since you had a fight — is he hiding the updates from you, is he so depressed that he’s not engaging, or is it just a coincidence? Why does she keep untagging herself from photos with you in them?

If you’re already feeling insecure or suspicious, your partner’s Facebook feed will do more than fuel the fire — it’ll pour about ten gallons of gasoline right on top of it.

It’s obviously best not to indulge any obsessive or stalking behaviors, but love (and lust) drive people to do silly things. Sometimes you just can’t help but wonder what this or that update means for your relationship. Chances are it means nothing, but that won’t stop those nagging insecurities.
2. You See All the Action Your Ex Is Getting

That guy just posted on her wall thanking her for the wonderful time they had last night, but she just broke up with you last week. Man, that smarts.

Most of the items on this list have something to do with privacy. In this case, it’s not your privacy, it’s hers. It’s tough to get over someone you’ve just lost, but it’s even harder when you know she’s having a smashing time without you. Facebook makes sure of that.

Maybe it’s important for Facebook users to carefully watch their feeds to make sure that nothing comes up that will cause any hurt to any exes, or maybe their exes are responsible for clicking “hide” in the news feed until they’re over it. If at least one of those things doesn’t happen, it can get painful for one person, minimum.
3. Relationships and Breakups Are Public

Dramatized in the above scene from the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, it’s the most classic Facebook dating dilemma: Who pulls the trigger to make a relationship official on Facebook first? It would be embarrassing if you declare yourself to be in a relationship and your (you thought) significant other doesn’t reciprocate.

Changing Facebook relationship status has, for better or worse, joined first date, first kiss, first night together, exclusivity talk, and first “I love you” on the list of important relationship milestones. It’s one of the most awkward milestones because it’s public by necessity.

That first status change isn’t the only challenge. When a relationship ends, how soon is it okay to switch back to single? Doing so right away seems callous, but holding on for too long makes you look fixated. And God forbid that somebody break the news that she’s dumping her partner by publicly switching her status over to “Single.” But we’ve all heard stories of that happening.

We’ve also heard stories of people seeing their dates switch to “In a Relationship” with someone else. That can’t feel good.
4. It’s a Record of Every Relationship Mistake You’ve Made

If he can’t help but snoop, he can look back and see all those consolation posts from friends about your last breakup. Maybe he’ll see your previous partner’s angry wall posts after you let him know that you wouldn’t be seeing him again. Maybe this new friend of yours will see your immature responses. Worst of all, he might see just how much of a loser your last man was and decide you’re playing in different leagues.

Facebook serves up a record of everything you’ve done since you created your profile. It’s best to carefully curate all that information to make sure none of it comes back to haunt you later, but that takes a lot of work, and some things are bound to slip through the cracks.

To make things even more frustrating, you can’t modify the privacy settings for things you’ve already posted. You might have hidden that incriminating status update from your last boyfriend, but since your new one just friended you today, you’ll have to remember to go back and delete it if you’re afraid he’ll be browsing.
5. Other People’s Comments Will Make Your Date Jealous

This has caused many a breakup. Some people tend towards jealousy, and as with item #1 on this list, the flame of insecurity will get doused in gasoline.

Let’s say some girl has a bunch of innocuous guy friends who are innocently posting flirtatious messages on her wall. Most folks are okay with flirting, but some can’t handle it, and something about seeing it written out on Facebook makes it worse. That girl’s boyfriend will either become passive aggressive or burst out in jealous rage, setting the stage for the end of an otherwise positive relationship.

This one illustrates the same point as all the others: Facebook brings us too close to people too quickly. Dating is as much about maintaining healthy and safe boundaries as it is about intimacy — at least at first — and social networking makes that harder than ever. It’s not dissimilar to dating someone who works in your office; you can’t control the exposure you’ll have, and that can be a recipe for disaster.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/10/facebook-dating/

Just reading the above causes me to completely rest my case. Networking like facebook, passes the uncanny valley insofar as what humans evolved or were designed to do as far as "community" needs. We aren't supposed to know every little detail of someone's day to day life 3,000 miles away. Sure, we can call, telegraph, email, write a letter or even text a "hi". It's the automated nature of entities such as facebook that spook me out. Sure, you can also "communicate" with FB, but it is more set up to be an instrument of surveillance. IMO.

[justdrew]

facebook may be very near it's doom inflection point... It's getting ready to jump the shark. Physically throw the damn thing over the shark if need be. Tie it to the back of a rocket cycle and launch it. It just needs to go the way of friendster. and does anyone even have have anything to do with twitter anymore? Isn't it just a way for celebrities to make idiots of themselves now? Take one last look at facebook, then flush... hold the handle down a little extra while you're at it.

[Nordic]

Yeah, look at how quickly myspace plummeted in popularity.

This morning I got a "friend request" from an online pharmacy. First one of those ....

It's hard to see people giving it up at this point, tho. It's become a big part of people's lives, moreso than anything I've ever seen except the internet itself, when AOL first came out.

I think the things that Facebook does is going to get absorbed into the common functions of the Internet, so that Facebook itself won't be needed. Kind of the way AOL's functions that were unique to AOL become absorbed into the common experience.

[justdrew]

How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive
April 14th, 2010 by Matt Raymond

Have you ever sent out a “tweet” on the popular Twitter social media service? Congratulations: Your 140 characters or less will now be housed in the Library of Congress.

That’s right. Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. That’s a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions.

We thought it fitting to give the initial heads-up to the Twitter community itself via our own feed @librarycongress. (By the way, out of sheer coincidence, the announcement comes on the same day our own number of feed-followers has surpassed 50,000. I love serendipity!)

We will also be putting out a press release later with even more details and quotes. Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition. I’m no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. And I’m certain we’ll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive.

Just a few examples of important tweets in the past few years include the first-ever tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (http://twitter.com/jack/status/20), President Obama’s tweet about winning the 2008 election (http://twitter.com/barackobama/status/992176676), and a set of two tweets from a photojournalist who was arrested in Egypt and then freed because of a series of events set into motion by his use of Twitter (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/786571964) and (http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/787167620).

Twitter plans to make its own announcement today on its blog from “Chirp,” the Official Twitter Developer Conference, in San Francisco.

So if you think the Library of Congress is “just books,” think of this: The Library has been collecting materials from the web since it began harvesting congressional and presidential campaign websites in 2000. Today we hold more than 167 terabytes of web-based information, including legal blogs, websites of candidates for national office, and websites of Members of Congress.

We also operate the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program www.digitalpreservation.gov, which is pursuing a national strategy to collect, preserve and make available significant digital content, especially information that is created in digital form only, for current and future generations.

In other words, if you’re looking for a place where important historical and other information in digital form should be preserved for the long haul, we’re it!

if they wanted to preserve something of value, they should have archived all the damn geocities sites... but Nooooooo

[justdrew]

here's something... interesting... posthumous facebook pages...

For example:
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tom-Forcade/1101613632

FYI... TOM FORCADE: UNSUNG HERO OF THE COUNTER-CULTURE

[The Consul]

My name is Charles Manson and based upon the 87 megabytes of cookies observing your every mouse move I believe that we should hook up. I love music (esp Beach Boys and Beatles), horror movies and group activities. I have friends with names like Axl. I like to play chess in cemeteries and, make my own tatoos. Watching other people bleed is a huge turn on. Upload my face. Lets do it. Die piggies, die - Charlie

[justdrew]

not pointing fingers but...

wow, does mentioning a yippie-type on the internet automatically generate/require a manson reference soon appear nearby? it's just ironic I guess.

[American Dream]

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefie ... ibitionism

Facebook, Privacy, and The New Exhibitionism

May 12, 2010
By Al Giordano



There is a mild disturbance in The Force these days – by that I mean Teh Internets – in that Facebook keeps moving the “privacy” carpet underneath its umpteen gazillion users: Information they’ve posted about themselves that was previously considered “private” (as if anything on the Internet really could be) has drifted into default public domains, which now puts the onus on those consumers to proactively change their Facebook “privacy settings” in order to keep their daily ravings, party photos and other content limited among a small circle of “friends.”

If you’re one of the four or five people out there that don’t use Facebook (probably because you knew all along it would go that way, or maybe because you, uh, have a life out there in the real world), apologies for devoting so much pixel space to this matter. But on the Internet, Facebook is what Joe Biden would call a BFD, and the reasons for that are interesting enough to me.

Now there is talk of exodus from Facebook. Maybe it will happen, or maybe not. As a 16-year Internet nomad, I don’t really care: On the Internet, something new frequently appears to replace what, last week, was “new.” But I think the “privacy” issue obscures a much larger societal shift, which is the subject of this essay: The New Exhibitionism.

Jacques Ellul wrote, prophetically in 1948, the radio age, that, “we live in an age of non-response.” The subsequent advent of new communications technologies like television and mass media only made that more true. The more “information” that has bombarded us with each passing day and year, the more isolated and alienated folks in the “developed world” have felt. TV played a big role in atomizing the nuclear family and the long tradition of conversation (which used to be the glue that held cultures and societies together). And the rest of capitalism and media did away with quaint concepts like “community.”

Increasingly, the individual – his and her ego, super ego and id – ended up floating out there no longer having a captive audience inside or outside the home or the community. The new technological distractions just proved more, well, distracting.

Along came the Internet and many of us thought, “Aha! Finally, a screen we can talk back to!” One of the buzzwords of the ‘90s and early ‘00s was the concept of “online community.” People sought out and found like-minded strangers and conversation shifted from oral to typed format. It was the simulacrum of “response” that had been missing from so many lives.

“Online communities” have risen and fallen in a relatively short period of history. In the 1990s, many Internet pioneers – especially on the West Coast – inhabited a space called The Well, where in ancient ASCII code (no photos or other images yet) we commented endlessly in short byte-sized phrases on each others’ comments: The New Illiterati! As the Internet became more popular a multitude of new “online communities” appeared, where people grouped with those that agreed with them politically, religiously, racially, sexually, or that shared other common interests, traits or obsessions. That, of course, sped up the market niching of society into homogeneous groups (for which the only antidote - community organizing - has thankfully experienced a resurgence).

The advent of online photos and images brought with it the concept of having a personal “avatar,” a graphic representation of one’s self in these “communities.” I opine that was a key turning point leading to the situation I am about to describe. The Internet evolved beyond being a cheaper long distance communications service to the place where we talk not just with strangers, but with our actual friends, neighbors, family members, even next-door neighbors and often those who live under the same roof. Why go all the way down the hall or knock on a door when we can type, “Honey, coffee’s ready” from the kitchen?

The personal avatar calcified quickly into our business and holiday card, storefront, and stage: Everybody suddenly had an actor to play our selves online (in the sense that Quentin Crisp said of John Hurt, “he is my representative on Earth”). The avatar – much like in the blockbuster movie by the same name – became a signifier for one’s presence in a new, often more immediately gratifying, “reality,” where it didn’t take too much cleverness or artistic skill to finally have a personal audience, that sensation of “response” that Ellul flagged as the next great yearning of the species.

Facebook turned that audience – of individuals known and unknown to us in off-screen life – into “friends,” a deceptive and somewhat pathetic concept, as this South Park excerpt so deliciously excoriates:



Facebook and other “online communities” became the places to vent, complain, float ideas, and look for the conversation that the media age had largely silenced. Sometimes you just want to say aloud what you cooked for yourself today because no one was around to eat it. But as the “online community” became more crowded and more “friends” were competing for the attention of mutual “friends,” mere venting, or posting photos of your cat, weren’t getting so much response as before. And so people’s avatars had to become more interesting, witty, appear as more complex, and develop, additionally, as stunt actors, pulling off daredevil trapeze acts of varied kinds.

In sum, to maintain that simulacrum of “response,” one had to show vulnerability and risk, as my favorite performance artist - and a huge influence over the authentic journalism renaissance - Penny Arcade described in a 2008 interview for her anthology: Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews (2009, Semiotext(e)/MIT Press). The secret to her assemblage of a real live audience and community, mostly under the radar of the media gatekeepers and critics, was, she said, that in her performances she put herself at emotional and sometimes physical risk:

“A lot of younger people who’d work with me would see me talk directly to the audience, and they’d go, ‘Oh, I can do that.’ But they didn’t understand the level of integrity you have to bring to talking directly to the audience. Because …it doesn’t work unless you’re really at risk.”

This dynamic led more and more users of Facebook and other “online communities” to type things aloud that they probably wouldn’t say on the street or in the workplace, even though those reading them were slaving away in the next-door office cubicle and reading them from that illusory distance. They would type things that others, upon reading, would think, sure, but I would never say that in public! One married couple I know online, for example, posts all the time on Facebook about the hardships of parenthood. And since the kids are too young yet to read what they type, some of it comes off as deliciously harsh about the “little darlings.” That makes for compelling reading and generates comment and response from others with similar experiences. But when one day the wife began complaining online about her husband’s snoring, sending him links in full Facebook view to anti-snore products, and an army of women with similar complaints weighed in mercilessly on the theme, I really felt sorry for the guy. It was great Internet, but also, it seemed, too much information, not something that really belonged outside the comfort and privacy of the hearth.

I’m guilty of that TMI factor as well. I think most participants in “online communities” are. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and see something I typed there the night before and think, “oh, my, did I really say that aloud?” Like many others, I’ve used Facebook to flirt, to cajole, to reward, to punish, and to show vulnerability and risk which is sometimes sincere but other times completely fabricated stage acting because I know my audience and what it wants.

Truth is, I don’t feel that vulnerable on Facebook because I’ve never labored under the illusion that my avatar or online representation is the real me. It’s just those pieces and strands of my life that are outside of my deepest core. I see it more as a place to develop material and improvise "on stage" with participatory feedback from the audience. And it is also, obviously, an organizing tool for off-screen events, concerts, sales, business and such, and a kind of phone book listing for long lost friends to find each other.

The danger for everyone comes if we begin to consider that online representation to be “the real me.” But I’m not really “Al Giordano.” I just play him on the Internet. And a very few people have ever gotten in close enough, in daily life outside the screen, to know the real Al, because that guy does have borders and visas to be stamped before somebody can enter.

But I sense that many of my Facebook audience, er, “friends,” suffer under an illusion that they are their avatars, and this is why Facebook’s moving the privacy chains has them so upset. They’ve shown actual risk and emotional vulnerability, exposed what they consider to be their true selves. And the thought of that suddenly becoming public domain is understandably terrifying: when the avatar has no clothes.

All that said, I don’t think this “privacy” flap is going to kill Facebook quite yet. As vulnerable as many people feel after airing their dirty laundry there, that experience has also been immensely satisfying to them; a guilty or or negative pleasure, which is what defines "sublime." It used to be that the place one would say things and do things to themselves and others they would never do in public was the family. But that’s all gone in the developed world now, extinct. Now it is Facebook and other online sites like it. If I had a nickel for every time I’d read somebody typing the words “my Facebook family” I wouldn’t have to regularly ask readers to support Narco News or The Field with donations.

Truth is – as every artist and creator knows – exhibitionism is fun! And extremely satisfying: It is, in fact, a basic human need that is experiencing a renaissance, which has democratized the artist’s impulse beyond the smaller circle of those of us who obsessively develop our arts as a craft.
And exhibitionism is totally addictive. And people need addictions, which are the fourth human instinct after the searches for oxygen, food/water and sex have been quenched: Intoxication, in a word, which comes from many directions beyond the traditional intoxicants that are ingested, injected or smoked. Show me someone in recovery from drugs or alcohol and I’ll show you someone who found a more compelling or healthier addiction. But they still need a regular “fix” of one kind or another. That’s what being human is.

The democratization of public or semi-public exhibitionism has thrown traditional concerns about “personal privacy” out the window. Who needs the CIA anymore when everybody is out there blurting the kinds of secrets it used to take surveillance to discover? Privacy didn’t disappear because Big Brother took it away. We gave it away! Freely! It fell aside to a greater impulse: the need to expose ourselves in public, to have an audience, and to keep it.
Facebook, sooner or later, will surely whither and give way to newer online outlets, just as others fell before it. But my hunch is that it won’t happen because people are really all that concerned about their “privacy.” They are concerned about their “identity” as individuals – at least that which they project in public – and part of many people’s identity is that they want to be seen as caring about their personal privacy. After all, it makes us more interesting, more sought after, if others feel we have something worthwhile to hide.

Outside of illegal acts (most people engage in one or another, at least now and then) what is left that individuals really need to hide in order to preserve themselves and thrive? And even the illegal acts – say, smoking pot – are no longer legally problematic for those of the income level that brings them a computer and Internet access. The house may no longer be a home, but it is still a bunker that the cops don’t typically enter merely because someone posts a Facebook status update or a photo that shows that he just took a bong hit. No, that treatment is reserved for the poor and for those who have to leave the house - or don't have one - to seek their fix.

And so a lot of the public angst right now about Facebook’s encroaching upon what was previously on default “private” setting is not, in my opinion, authentic concern about privacy. It is, rather, just another song and dance by our avatars, trying to show others that we care deeply about privacy and therefore we must lead very interesting lives off screen. It is an especially difficult challenge now posed to those confused that their avatars are honest representations of themselves.

There are still, in this day and age, people who are truly clandestine, who really do dangerous and exciting or felonious things out there in the real world. Most of them are either very poor or very rich and therefore are "off the grid" by circumstance or by fortress. But typically, they are not on Facebook. Or, if they are, they kept that stuff carefully cloaked all along, much in the way that a fugitive from justice will never run a red light or break the speed limit.

The rest of us might yearn for days gone by when privacy existed, but the impulse to expose ourselves has simply proved a stronger human instinct. To every man and woman, a stage, and an audience: Welcome to the New Exhibitionism

[American Dream]

http://www.nypress.com/article-21235-no ... atter.html

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Not a Private Matter

Social networking applications seem like fun and games, but MATT HARVEY investigates what it means when we willingly reveal all our personal information to our corporate pals.

By Matt Harvey
.......

NOT TOO LONG ago, if someone were spying on you, you’d feel creeped out. Protests were joined, organizations created, battles fought to protect one’s civil liberties. But now the concept of personal privacy is nearly dead. That’s right: Millions of Americans are obsessively spying on themselves for fun.
At the moment it may mostly be a group of tech-consumed city dwellers, but the New York-centric social networking application Foursquare—which invites you to report your own movements to the Web via a smart phone—has racked up a million users virtually overnight.

Drew Grant, a 25-year-old media blogger, explained how she signed up before the app went viral and admits to feeling “left out” when she’s not checked in. Even George Orwell, who raised the specter of evil Big Brother keeping tabs on everyone 24/7, would have blushed when she happily admits, “Its like an omniscient tool.” Oh, she also plans to tattoo a Foursquare icon soon.

Bill Brown, a privacy activist who produced a guerilla version of 1984 in the subway to protest Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance of public space, says he’s shelved mentions of Big Brother when talking to young people: “Its meaning has been emptied out by reality television.” Maybe a more fitting analogy to illustrate the disappearance of privacy under global capitalism would be Sauron’s all-seeing Eye, from Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings trilogy, a metaphor for the police states of the 1930s. Whichever you pick, the main difference is that now authority is largely in “private,” corporate hands—and has a friendly face.

It’s hard to deny Foursquare’s appeal to a recession-blitzed generation of young people. Mostly under-employed and working from home (or a nearby coffeeshop), they’re isolated. But check into an East Village bar, drink a couple of Brooklyn Lagers and watch the ’hood light up as “everyone” checks in. That’s when something clicks: The entire city is a pinball game, and you’re a player. “It’s a very seductive scene,” Grant explains. It almost makes one believe founder Dennis Crowley’s pitch in the triumphant New York magazine April cover story that, on Foursquare, “Your happiness and your productivity is higher.”

On Foursquare, you’re under an everwatchful eye, but don’t feel its sinister side since you earn rewards and become “Mayor” of some trendy hangout if you rack up enough points. But start thinking about the increasingly tipsy trail you’re leaving, and who might be tracking you. Maybe it’s just an uneasy significant other thinking: “If you’re out, then why aren’t you ‘checked in?’” But what of the extra-close scrutiny being given to eager job applicants by pink-slip-happy managers? You don’t need to be the post-collegiate web-video dude who was ejected from a social media “meet up” at Barramundi on Clinton Street by the cops this winter—after throwing a drink in a girl’s face—to acknowledge the negative possibilities inherent in the Foursquare set-up. Do something you regret, and you’ll never be able to deny it, much less live it down.

True, Foursquare is not quite a 1984style apparatus of state control. Nursed on venture capital, it is, in ambition at least, a commercial enterprise. But add several more layers—ubiquitous social networking tools like cheap cameraphones, incessant Twitter posts and vanity-soaked sites like RandomNightOut, updated every day with pictures of hundreds of bleary-eyed partiers—to the mix, and Orwell’s metaphor for social control begins to hit home.

Foursquare is only the latest example of America’s fascination with trading away what the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls “locational privacy”—for convenience and safety. Cellphones, E-ZPasses, MetroCards, drug store customer reward programs, some Wi-Fi services and CCTV cameras can all be used to build a database comprised of your movements. As anyone who sees a psychiatrist, attends political rallies or scores a little weed should know, “locational privacy” is the operational cloak that maintains the status quo. But to the army of IT flaks who dominate the blogosphere—and set the narrative by which the Web defines itself—a desire for privacy is something to be scoffed at.

But the campaign for an increased ability to spy on innocent bystanders received a massive push May 1 when an improvised explosive device was found in a vehicle parked in Times Square. Ironically, while CCTV images of the terrorists’ vehicle are numerous, a more deadly outcome was averted by old-fashioned intelligence: a street vendor who alerted police of smoke coming from the parked SUV.

At 2 a.m. the next morning, standing in front of the army recruitment office in Times Square, Mayor Bloomberg, with police commissioner Ray Kelly at his side, said that the attack was just more proof that Homeland Security funding should keep flowing to NYC because the city is “where the target is.”

On May 3, some light was shed on Bloomberg’s statement when it was reported in the Times that an apparatus had already been planned for Midtown that will consist of “public and private security cameras and license plate readers [that] would be able to record and track every vehicle moving between 34th and 59th streets, river to river.” The article added that NYPD officials hoped the system would eventually be able to successfully profile potential threats by how much time they spend circling Times Square: “[T]he networks would be able to notice whether a car was circling any area suspiciously.” It is unclear how such a program would distinguish a car driven by a would-be bomber from that of a theatergoing family looking for a parking spot. But we’ve only just begun to mine all the data available out there.

While you’re weighing in on whether to throw your lot in with the cool kids on Foursquare, note that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg—who famously said, “Privacy is no longer the social norm,” and thinks it would be great if everyone carried an RFID chip to track them—is reportedly eyeing Foursquare. Another corporate behemoth with a checkered past when it comes to privacy rights, AT&T is considering buying in as well. They’ve already been criticized for having acquiesced to politically motivated FBI wiretaps. You might also recall the controversial Patriot Act, whereby the government can easily demand personal data from digital providers.

Of course, Fourquare is still a guppy of the social-media web compared to Facebook, which has been setting off privacy alarms all over the place. According to Macworld, the depressing list of criticisms against Facebook include a mysterious function in which third-party links inexplicably appear in your application page, even if you opt in to the new safeguards. This is an especially troubling sign, because the third-party links that have been popping up include new-media companies, like CNET, that have objected to Facebook’s anti-privacy actions.

Rebecca Jeschke of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that even the “opt out” privacy safety valve might be eliminated by Zuckerberg. “It’s a very problematic time,” she adds, ruefully.

The twisted ins and outs of Facebook’s new anti-privacy machinations seem designed to confuse users into frustrated acceptance. Fifteen consumer groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have challenged Facebook’s new anti-privacy settings with the Federal Trade Commission. Clearly implying that the network lured its gigantic user base in part by promising privacy standards it never planned on upholding, the filing reads in part: “Facebook now discloses personal information to the public that Facebook users previously restricted.” Facebook, which has already been smacked with multimillion dollar lawsuits for similar breeches, could very well have left itself open to a class action lawsuit.

Even more disturbing than the Facebook issues is Google’s transformation into a monolithic global spy network that gobbles up user computer data via its roving hightech Street View trucks—also outfitted with data-mining equipment. Last week, the New York Times reported that the search monopoly admitted it had recorded—and stored—“billions of bits” of data, including email content, as it photographed streetscapes around the world. So far, only the Europeans, perhaps perceiving Google as one more American cultural intrusion on their sovereignty, have cried foul. Typical of irate shouts heard only across the Atlantic was one from Simon Davies, a London privacy advocate: “[O]ver the past year [Google] has moved substantially in the direction of being perceived as Big Brother.” The search monopoly has not made clear what its motivation to spy on citizens around the world was, only saying bizarrely that the breach represented a “mistake” and they were stopping.

But try unplugging yourself from the social network matrix. The urge to live in public, regardless of the consequences, has spawned a brand new set of rules and coping mechanisms for new-media devotees. Doree Shafrir wrote a cogent piece for New York titled “The Warm-Fuzzy Web,” that outlined the most marked of these trends: keeping everyone happy lest you lose your “social capital,” the juice on which all new-media applications purportedly run.

By far these youth-marketers’ most aweinspiring triumph is to paint privacy as a refuge of the unhip. An army of new-media strivers eagerly deploys corporate-friendly concepts like “social capital” and “migrating social patterns.” In reality, frequent corporate spokesman and new-media guru Clay Shirkey cooked up these phrasings inside a think tank—they are lent a tinge of genuine popular phenomena, and parroted by the establishment media.

Last month, John Horgan, who is the director of International Center for the Study of Terrorism and is an Associate Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Penn State, elevated the idea of no-privacy to jaw-dropping levels when he wrote a Scientific American blog titled, “Grassroots spying might make world peace possible.” Horgan’s plan is for citizens across the globe to check up on each other and feed incriminating data into a monstrous open-source network modeled along the lines of Wikipedia. Dismissing fears of “traditional, Big Brother-ish agencies,” he concludes: “Privacy… is a small price to pay for peace, especially since we’re headed toward radical transparency anyway.” What Horgan and kindred spirits, like Shirkey and Google’s Chris DiBona, don’t tell you is that intelligence is only good if you have the power to use it.

David Goodman, a California-based neuroscientist who has penned essays mocking what he calls Big Brother’s hold on academia, and is a property-rights advocate, says readers should even be leery of supposedly liberal academics trumpeting intelligence-friendly rhetoric. “I can hardly wait to see him post all his sources of income,” he says, speculating that even if Horgan does not have “clandestine corporate or intelligence connections,” he would not like his own foibles broadcast online. “He can live in his glass house, and the rest of us can throw stones.”

Even if telecom monopolies don’t grab Foursquare, the free service’s business model is dependent on “consumer profiling” and “targeted ads.” These depend on algorithms that conjure a mushrooming cloud of “location-based” data that is logged on Twitter, where it is visible via the Web. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, told CNBC that the search monopoly has no problem cooperating with the government. If it’s really a secret, he lectured, “Maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” The social media world may very well be a world of zero second chances.

Once again, as in the dot-com boom and MySpace craze, traditional media outlets such as the New York Times have checked their skepticism at the door, devoting acres of glowing prose to chronicling the ins and outs of Foursquare’s “meet-ups.” Not coincidentally, these same media empires are using these networking applications to direct traffic to their sites (full disclosure: New York Press also has a Twitter account). The Wall Street Journal is now serving up a “location-based” news service. If you’re stuck bumper-to-bumper on the George Washington Bridge and you’re checked in, you’ll be alerted that you forgot about the big Yankees game. Reports indicate that Journal management has gravely considered the possibility of “cognitive dissonance,” meaning, what if users freak out from information overload. Or what if the reason for the traffic jam isn’t the big game but a bomb threat on the bridge, which could lead to a major panic. Of course, young users might wonder if statements like this say more about the age of the old-media managers—and their slavish acceptance of fads they don’t begin to comprehend—than anything about the cool new applications.

In rare instances where the press broaches the subject of privacy in relation to social media, the danger is seen to lie in “identity theft” scams or stalkers. Should we be surprised that media conglomerates fail to note the more insidious danger in the amassing of all this personal information in searchable form?

Things move so fast these days that a bunch of new social media applications are already nipping at Foursquare’s heels. Blippy, which encourages you to share information about what brand of back-to-school jeans or greasy fast-food lunch you’re buying, caused a firestorm of criticism after some users’ credit card info began appearing on Google. When scolded by the same New York Times writer who had cautiously heralded it just the day before, the start-up admitted: “It has been a rocky weekend for Blippy.”

Three days after the Blippy dust-up, an even creepier application, called SubMate, materialized, cooing at users to plug in their subway route to work, after a simple onestep, Facebook-enabled sign-in. According to the gushy post on Business Insider, which introduced it, the stated aim of SubMate is to tell you “about people near you who share similar ideas as you.” Just in case the L train isn’t your idea of a sex club on wheels, the post comes with a graphic featuring youthfullooking commuters not wearing pants.

Why Business Insider was rehashing blatant PR is not clear, but writer Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, per the Web’s recently enacted full-disclosure laws, snarkily admitted to being SubMate’s “unpaid advisor.” Oozing praise over the souped-up platform, Gobry wrote: “While Foursquare asks you to check in at each new place you visit, SubMate knows about the areas where you usually go.” While purportedly based in Paris, the venture’s CEO, Laurent Katz, explained that “living in New York” inspired the app. By May 1, the New York Post was devoting a full page to hyping the two-bit European-based start-up.

At this stage of the bubble, it’s impossible to tell why dubiously sourced “location-based” apps—with little or no chance at ever turning a profit—are spreading like herpes. Are they just venture capital scams? Remember: These apps’ stated intentions are to help others better keep an eye on you. Soon, hopefully, we can find out where the money came from.

Now that an entire generation has been trained to upload their personal habits—as well as their innermost hopes and fears—onto the Web, it doesn’t seem like it will be a passing fad. Before you sign up for Blippy, SubMate or Foursquare, however, you might want to pause to consider: Who really wants to watch you?

Mining social media networks for personal data is a stated priority of both the intelligence and law enforcement communities. A September 2005 white paper published in conjunction with the CIA maintains that “the agency perhaps has the greatest to gain from adopting social software.”

Closer to home, in February, Nassau County cops launched a “digital dragnet”—tagged with the Orwellian acronym HALT (Heroin Abuse Location and Targeting)—aimed at nabbing drug abusers via a combination of data mining and real life surveillance.

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, and social media is not the brainchild of the security state-think-tank-consensus. Don’t forget that Clay Shirkey was a member of a CIA roundtable discussion in September 2006. Or that a Kremlin-backed company named Digital Sky Technologies began amassing Facebook stock in 2009. By December, when Facebook first began dismantling its firewall, DST owned 5 percent, according toKomersant, a Russian newspaper.

Asked why Facebook was doing away with its users’ privacy, Rebecca Jescke, media relations director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was hesitant to speculate, saying only, “There’s probably a ton of money in it for them.” Ironically, Zuckerberg has been unforthcoming about revealing his backers. Behavior-patterning programs, Brown says, are so alarming because “now they can literally pick the needle out of the haystack.”

SubMate, for example, could easily add power to the remote eye already zooming in on MTA commuters—a spanking-new, but unsurprisingly faulty CCTV apparatus, consisting of over 3,000 cameras. Weakened by the tragicomic bumbling of Lockheed Martin, the city’s contractor, the system was shocked back to life on March 29 after two unrelated attacks occurred in the Moscow and New York subways. The Moscow attack, a suicide bombing, and the local one, an apparently random double knifemurder, fueled cries in the dailies for more surveillance, although it was unclear if that would help prevent such brutal crimes from occurring.

Privacy activist Bill Brown, a 50-year-old Queens-born copywriter, finds it a fitting coincidence that downtown Manhattan gave birth to the Foursquare craze. Because of its value to multi-nationals, the city is the center of a new corporate surveillance society that is sweeping the country. The federally funded Lower Manhattan Security Initiative (LMSI) makes Downtown the most closely recorded real estate in America. (Another anti-terrorism program, SHIELD, promotes “public-private partnership based on information sharing” on a citywide level.) Hugh O’Rourke, formerly of the NYPD antiterrorism squad, says the blanket CCTV coverage below 34th Street is fashioned after London’s famed “Ring of Steel.” “People have been under observation for years downtown,” he explains. “They’re used to it.”

In her 2007 anti-laissez faire broadside Shock Doctrine, author Naomi Klein explicitly links the “deafening hype”-based business models of the security industry and Silicon Valley. “Like the dot-com bubble, the disaster bubble is inflating in an ad-hoc and chaotic fashion,” she writes.

Since there’s no one to watch countless hours of footage, CCTV surveillance relies on “analytic software” that produces something called “behavior recognition”—much like social networking, which depends on corporate data mining to accomplish “consumer profiling.” If cameras see you standing still in Penn Station with a messenger bag for longer than the algorithm deems normal, a red flag goes off in the LMSI command center, and the flesh-andblood cops descend on you.

O’Rourke and Brown, who sit on opposite sides of the fence on virtually every conceivable social and political issue, agree that the rise of “behavioral profiling” computer algorithms is troubling. Stressing that a cop can separate a real threat from that of a 9-to-5 commuter who missed his train, O’Rourke says he understands Brown’s concerns about such software. “Computers are restricted to algorithms,” O’Rourke says.

But then again, if you have some kid in a car already checked into Foursquare, tweeting plans on Twitter, zoomed in to Google Maps to locate where they are and telling everyone in the world where they’re headed, some of the work is already done. As they say, knowing is half the battle.

[lightningBugout]

No tech company this young lives through the level of criticism and distaste currently being experienced by Facebook.

As a future paradigm that will re-make social networking, Diaspora looks very very promising and, even if its not these kids (though if you watch the video, you may also hope it is them - they're awesome old time geeks who talk about sleeping under their desks and eating ramen), they're almost surely on the right path to a project that will make FB look as antiquated as Napster.

join diaspora – the project

We are 140-character ideas. We are the pictures of your cat. We are blog posts about the economy. We are the collective knowledge that is Wikipedia. The internet is a canvas – of which, we paint broad and fine strokes of our lives with. It is a forward extension of our physical lives; a meta-self comprised of ones and zeros. We are all that is digital: If we weren’t, the internet wouldn’t either.
current state.

We already have a rudimentary prototype of Diaspora running on our machines, and are working like mad to make it all we can be. Our current implementations include GPG encryption, scraping Twitter and Flickr, awesome design aesthetics, and the initial stages of connection infrastructure (“friending” other Diaspora instances).
first sprint.

It is our one and only goal to get Diaspora in the hands of every man, woman, and child at summer’s end. September 2010 will signify the release of the project in its first iteration, fully open-sourced under the AGPL. This release will be comprised of several key features for Diaspora, mainly:

* Full-fledged communications between Seeds (Diaspora instances)
* End to end GPG
* External Service Scraping of most major services (reclaim your data)
* Version 1 of Diaspora’s API with documentation
* Public GitHub repository of all Diaspora code

second sprint.

Once the core application is finished, we will focus on extending Diaspora, unleashing a battery of add-on modules and updates to the core system with the open-source community. We will migrate back to New York City to set up house, and will devise plans to make it even easier for the general public to utilize Diaspora, a la a dead-simple, five-minute setup. Like the first sprint, the second sprint will also be all about reclaiming all that is us.
flooring it to 88mph.

The future will offer a multitude of amazing new capabilities for Diaspora. A taste of what’s floating around in our heads right now:

* OpenID
* Voice-over IP
* Distributed Encrypted Backups
* Instant Messaging protocol
* UDP integration

“The only limit is yourself.”

[Luther Blissett]

I'd never reveal my relationship status on FB. The entire category, along with things like political and religious views, have been hidden since day 1. Some girls I've dated have used it, but most 20 and 30-somethings who date a lot just keep it hidden like me. It always blows my mind that someone would want to make their romantic comings and goings public.

[Nordic]

I'd never reveal my relationship status on FB. The entire category, along with things like political and religious views, have been hidden since day 1. Some girls I've dated have used it, but most 20 and 30-somethings who date a lot just keep it hidden like me. It always blows my mind that someone would want to make their romantic comings and goings public.

Well if you're married it just doesn't matter. And if your wife is also on Facebook, you damn well better mention you're married!

[norton ash]

Facebook -- for everyone who loves small talk, looking at photo albums, idiotic conversation, doing the Jumble, and family newsletters. Having your personal data collected and living your life like a zoo animal behind glass is just a bonus.

[Nordic]

Facebook -- for everyone who loves small talk, looking at photo albums, idiotic conversation, doing the Jumble, and family newsletters. Having your personal data collected and living your life like a zoo animal behind glass is just a bonus.

Yeah. Well, the Internet is one big salt-lick. Like any salt lick you can use it to find any group you want.

That's probably why they let us have it.

I was just reading in an alumni mag from USC that there are gaming people, meaning those who make and develop and harvest stats from online games, that law enforcement is already using this info in this way: that people who play these online games conduct themselves in the games the way they do in real life. They've realized that people who are drug dealers have a certain way of communicating with others, and they do this in the game as well. So you can sift through the users of the games and find the drug dealers who are playing.

Nice, huh?