Place: Steak & Shake
Lunch: Portabello mushroom-Swiss (lettuce pickles, onions, mayo), cheese fries, bowl of chili, Coke
It's getting harder and harder to defend Steak & Shake. The chili today is lukewarm at best, there's barely any cheese on the fries, and the burger is super soggy. And they apparently now offer a Grape Kool-Aid milkshake. WHAT???
Have you seen all the hoopla about Facebook the past couple of weeks? Mainly relating to privacy. Yeah, not good.
Because of the hoopla, I took a look at my privacy settings and discovered that my profile, which was set to only be shown to people I've designated as "friends", was suddenly wide open for anyone to see.
Me: pretty angry.
This has gotten enough press that even Congress has taken notice. People are now warning that you should either drop Facebook completely, or modify your information so that nothing is there you wouldn't want seen publicly. Which I'd pretty much done anyway, since some of my Facebook friends are just fans of this blog or my website or longtime internet friends I haven't actually met. Short of actual pictures, there's nothing more private there that you wouldn't have read here.
The one change I've made is that I set up a Facebook-specific e-mail address. I do that with most of my online accounts (even my personal website) so that I know specifically where the SPAM and what not comes from. I should have done that with Facebook in the first place.
Facebook IS a great tool. I love the steady stream of "news" from friends and media outlets I subscribe to. It's like a really customized AP wire feed. Plus, it's a great way to keep in touch with relatives. Several family members have just recently set up accounts. If it weren't for Facebook, most of them would be people I wouldn't hear from for years at a time. So even if the updates they're posting are about the color of their socks, I appreciate seeing them and just knowing they're out there. (Plus...let's face it...I dig random stuff like that.)
And I don't mind Facebook using information to help target advertising to me based on my likes. They should be able to make money, and I have in fact purchased things based on this structure. But having my 'likes' out in the wide open for any random person anywhere in the world to see...particularly when I specifically set my settings NOT to...is ridiculous. That stunt immediately made them a liability to every user they have.
They shouldn't even need to show my "likes" to advertisers. They should be able to sell advertisers their advertising and do the targeting internally. It's not that hard. Not that big a deal.
The sad part is, they don't seem to think anything they've done is wrong.
So what's the solution?
- There's already suggestions that somebody should create an open-source competitor to Facebook. Let the millions abandon Facebook and run to the new service. You know who should jump on this? Google. Googlebook. Or maybe Google could BUY Facebook. Google's doing everything else right (this very blog is hosted through a Google-owned interface), why not social media?
- Deactivate your account. Not so easy. Apparently, it doesn't really deactivate, so delete your pictures, unfriend your friends, and unlike your likes. Apparently, if you don't, it all stays up anyway.
- Deal with it and make sure nothing in your Facebook profile shouldn't be public knowledge. (Yes, that'd me my route.)
Sad, because everyone abandoning Facebook seems to be the only way to get the message to their management that they screwed up.
They really don't seem to care.
