No Facebook Comments for Me

I will never add the new Facebook commenting system to my blog. Not only that, I won’t ever comment on a blog that uses that system.

I don’t like Facebook. I do have a Facebook account, but that’s only because some of the people who I’ve met online have walled themselves in there. There’s this sense of privacy and protection. It gives some of us the opportunity to come out of the pseudonymous blogger closet. I get that. Except Facebook isn’t all that privacy friendly.

It’s a free service. We all get to have an account and don’t have to pay a dime. We get to post pictures and little funny statuses, links, whatever. All without handing Zuckerberg any of our hard earned money. Except he’s still making money. He just got a sweet investment from Goldman Sachs: $450 million. Not only did FB land that money, but the company is values at $56 billion. Is it worth so much because it’s free to use? Are you smoking crack?

Facebook is worth that much money because they have all the information hundreds of millions of people stick on their walls and that information is worth something to advertisers. That information gave Goldman Sachs, probably the most hated investment firm in the U.S., a huge boner, mostly because Zuckerberg has no qualms handing over all of that information to the highest bidder. Pictures of your kids? Content to be shared. All your likes? Helped with the targeted advertising– shared. Your friends list and email contacts? For sale. There is nothing that you post on your Facebook wall that won’t be available to whoever gives them the most money.

Not content with selling off the information of their on-site users, they’re sending their skeevy tentacles further out into the web. They promise the end of comment spam with the use of their platform. They make it sound like some kind of benefit to be able to comment on a blog post and keep the conversation on your own wall. But, really, they’re helping themselves to more content, provided by the blogger and the blog commenters. If anyone thinks that FB won’t use the information it gathers from blog comments to woo even more money from Goldman Sachs, they don’t deserve to be allowed to roam outside of their FB pages.

I’m going back and forth with deleting my FB or keeping it for minimal contact with people with whom I wouldn’t otherwise be able to interact. I don’t like having to go there. I’ve ad-blocked everything except for the middle column. I only go on every third day to see if I have any messages from those that have forgotten there are other, better ways to communicate. You know, you can say all you want about Twitter, but at least if you lock down your stream it stays locked down. You don’t have to worry about your face showing up on the wall of someone who you didn’t want to know you were on that fucking site. *ahem*¹

My biggest problem with Facebook is that they promise everyone all this privacy and then sell that supposedly private information at every turn. It’s a skeevy website and way too many are dependent on it and that sucks. But it’s part of life now. I don’t have to participate on Facebook outside of Facebook, though. And I won’t.

I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that FB goes the way of MySpace really soon. Considering the amount of kids showing nekkid pics of themselves on there my wish could come true sooner than later. *fingers crossed*

1. I blocked myself from FB search, blocked everything to just my 20 friends and still people can see me on there. Why? Because I’m a suggested friend to about 50 flippin’ people. [↩]