Tag Archives: Facebook

The Problem for the Future Might Not Just Be the Government

Politics, , , , ,

As an advocate of free speech and very (extremely) limited government, I’m often talking about the problem of government control and its intrusive nature. For those like me, we’re often seeing the future as a variation of “1984” and fear the process of new-speak and Big Brother. But one thing that has emerged over the latter part of the 20th century and into the early part of the 21st century is the revelation that the problem may not be coming from big government, but from big business. This is somewhat ironic, or tragic, because most people who tend to advocate for less government are usually big fans of privatization and the freedom of business interests. But what has happened is that big business is slowly usurping big government as the entity we most need to fear.

Look at Microsoft, Google and Facebook for examples of what I’m talking about. Microsoft won the operating system wars by dogmatic policies and, as some lawsuits would have you believe, through some pretty crappy business practices involving monopolies and claims of stolen innovations. Whether or not there’s any truth in that latter claim, I don’t really care about, but what arguments can be made is that by having huge monopolies of this nature, we’ve really made it practically impossible to innovate in new directions because dogmatic companies just don’t let you do that.

But to make matters worse, these types of companies are now going out of their way to innovate their own successes on the backs of most of their customers. Facebook, lately, has shown itself to be a behemoth that no longer cares what people think as it buys and sells our own personal information, and it laughs at us if we think what they’re doing is wrong in any way. I love their procedure for dealing with you when you decide to quit them. Instead of actually allowing you to delete your account, they “allow” you to “deactivate” your account so that they can still use your information and treat you as one of their products rather than one of their customers. To ACTUALLY delete your account, you have to go through a four or five click process to finally reach a page that then informs you that it will take 2 weeks to delete your account, as if the owners of Facebook realize that you’re being rash and hotheaded, so they’ll give you some time to think about it before they’ll allow you to make the “mistake” of leaving. Even when you deactivate your account, they make you feel so guilty about it, reminding you that if you should dare to deactivate your account, you will no longer be able to communicate with your friends, your wife, your loved ones or your family EVER again.

The biggest problem with some of these companies is that they buy and trade our own private information as if it is their own. And read the legalese they make you click and agree to before you ever access their pages. THEY OWN YOU and your information, and you’re only living in THEIR worlds. That’s really how they feel about it.

Lately, there has been a new movement to pretty much dump Facebook because of their unilateral strategies in ownership of information. The backlash has been a claim of “if you don’t continue with Facebook, then you can never communicate with anyone ever again”. It’s straight out arrogance and stupidity, but people fall for it.

What we used to fear was government becoming too powerful, which is why we made rules of what government could and could not do. But private enterprises don’t have this same type of hold on it, unless you count the government itself. Right now, Congress is looking into a number of these different large companies to stop their approaches to ownership over data and information, but these companies are doing an amazing thing as a response: They’re appealing to citizens and acting as if government is using its power to stop them from donig what is their right to do, which essentially means they are upset that government is stopping them from doing to us exactly what we wanted to make sure government could never could do to us. The irony is that because they’re not government, they think it’s okay that they get to do things that we would never allow government to do.

As big businesses are becoming more aligned with the wants and needs of government, and often use government to back up their plans (police agencies have always responded to the needs of large businesses before they respond to the common folk), this collusion may one day reach a point where we are going to find ourselves being detained by government at the behest of these organizations. Recently, when Gizmondo printed a story about the new iPhone, the government raided their offices and took all of their computer equipment. No one knows who pulled the government’s strings on that as Apple claims it was the individual who lost the iPhone, while many others claim it had to have been Apple because the government agencies involved then went silent when questioned further.

It might not be something people realize is a problem just yet, but when it becomes a problem that everyone notices, it will then be too late. But when has that ever caused anyone to be proactive about one’s own rights and responsibilities?

Is there life after Facebook?

Uncategorized, ,

The Internet is all ga-ga (not Lady Gaga) over the fact that Facebook is getting ready to make another announcement today. The crazies on CNN.com (the fans, not the reporters) are now getting into a huge argument over what the announcement is, but not surprisingly the biggest parts of that thread cover two areas:

1. Should Facebook create a “dislike” button?

2. What will be the next Facebook to follow Facebook?

The first question is kind of funny because it’s basically a “I hate the features of Facebook, but I am too absorbed by Facebook to stop using Facebook” complaint. In other words, people want a way of controlling what messages they receive, but in reality the messages they receive are set by the type of friends that they have, so the easy way to fix that is to change the types of friends you have, and well, that doesn’t happen so easily.

What Facebook probably could use, rather than a “dislike” button, is a “I don’t care” button, so that when someone sends you a message about how many farm animals they’ve found on their imaginary farm, you could click, “I don’t care” and hopefully NEVER receive another message of that type again. I say this realizing someone is probably reading this post thinking, “man, I wish there was an “I don’t care” button RIGHT NOW.” But I digress….

The second thing is more significant because Facebook is slowly reaching it zenith of useability, meaning that there’s only so much more you can do with it before someone builds a better mousetrap, and we all go somewhere else. It’s what happened to Myspace (remember that dinosaur from SO LONG AGO?), and it’s probaby what’s going to happen to Twitter once people realize that following someone’s 120 character (or whatever) post is really not all that interesting.

But that means people will start gravitating towards something else. Most likely, the kids are already using it, but the rest of us haven’t discovered it because we’re all not as cool as the kids. By kids, I don’t even mean the college kids, so most of you in college reading this thinking I’m talking about you, I’m not. Sure, you’re cool. Cooler than me, obviously, but we’re talking about a demographic that is generally not in our midsts. Which is what cool is all about anyway because “cool” is always that area of the Internet just out of our reach, and once we reach it, it’s not cool anymore.

That’s what happened to Myspace. And that’s what’s going to happen to Facebook because everyone already uses it, and CNN is talking about. Remember Gundrum’s Law: If CNN is talking about it, it stopped being cool a long time ago.

So, what’s next? I don’t know myself because I’m not cool, and I won’t find out about it until it’s a few months away from not being used anymore. So, when I get around to telling you what’s cool, remember that it’s time to jump ship because I’m only a few hours ahead of CNN, and that doesn’t really say much.