Facebook.com has this new thing out where members of their site post 25 extremely personal things about themselves to their profile. Then they have the option to tag 25 of their closest friends who are then supposed to write 25 extremely personal things about themselves and post it to facebook.
I have a HUGE problem with that.
What most people don’t realize is that Facebook simply a big ploy for advertisers to get information on you.
I’m sure it started out as a few college kids writing a web application to keep in touch with their friends that they went to college with. But over time, it blossomed into this ridiculous marketing tool where you put as much personal information on your page as you can fit.
You put your favorite everythings on there. You tell facebook all of your friends. You tell facebook all of the people you would barely call friends. You tell facebook all of the people that you would only speak to if you saw in a random country where you knew no one else. You tell them your favorite movies, songs, books, activites, hobbies, quotes, your birthdate, schools, political views, websites, blogs, phone number, all your jobs, and way more if you want to.
They store all this information somewhere and use it to advertise to you. They let people buy space on their site to advertise to you for things you may want but most likely have no use for.
On top of all that, you tell them 25 more things that don’t fit into any other category. 25 completely random things that maybe you never told anyone about yourself. 25 things that if this was 10 years ago, only your closest of closest friends would ever know. And you give it away willingly because someone clicked on your picture when they were telling 25 of their completely random but extremely personal things.
In case you didn’t know, everything that you ever put on facebook is forever. If one day you decide that facebook isn’t the place for you and you want to get rid of your information, you can’t!
You can only disable your account. This means facebook still has all of your information stored somewhere and they can still do whatever they want with it one day.
All of your most personal 25 things that you think are safely hidden from human eyes may be up for sale one day to the highest or suavest bidder. And there’s NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT.
So please… PLEASE stop giving away your personal life to a website. Whether it be facebook.com, myspace.com, or whatever else there is that asks you for more information than anyone on the planet ever needs to know about you.
Thanks?
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