Why I'm Not Quitting Facebook

There seems to be a new tech trend.... quitting Facebook. I don't care to explore the history and reasons why, but it basically comes down to general panic over the Facebook privacy system. I will admit that they have made some stupid mistakes when it comes to the way they have changed some default settings. But, what seems to be overlooked is that, every time Facebook does this, they place some huge message on the newsfeed explaining what they changed. I can only assume most people just close the message and not read it, because I've always been extremely informed about these changes directly from the Facebook website.

On top of this, the Facebook control panel isn't overly complicated. There are a fair number of options, but they also allow you to highly configure the privacy controls to a high level of detail. You can fine tune things so that individual people can't see certain items on your wall. I can't think of any other site that gives such control. They do offer some details on how the privacy works on their site. When you go into the privacy settings which can be found on the Account menu, you are given a page with six categories. On the top three, you are given a selection of various area's of your profile and what limits you want to share your privacy. Basically, everyone, friends of friends, friends or you can customize and make it so only certain groups of people can see the info. That seems pretty straight forward. If you are unsure that privacy settings are how you want, you can click "Preview my profile" and it will show you what your profile page looks like to the general random person viewing it. At the top, you can also type in a persons name and see exactly how that person would see it. If you ever have any reservations as to if your profile is locked down well enough, this is the place to go.

The next option on the privacy page seems to cause the biggest conflict. That is the applications and website settings. On that page, you can control things like how your information is shared with apps, and what your friends can share. You can also disable the "Instant Personalization" feature. Oddly, there is no link here to directly edit the sites and apps settings. That can be also found under the Account menu under "Application settings". Finally, the last two options on the privacy settings, search and block list, are pretty self-explanatory and basic.

While the privacy panel isn't basic, if you are really concerned about privacy issues, sending 5-10 minutes to explore the options really isn't a huge cost. I don't mind this personally periodically explore the options as I sometimes decide to change things around.

As for why I'm not leaving Facebook; basically those privacy issues don't bother me, so it's business as usual. Facebook actually makes things much nicer on a day to day basis for me. My phone integrates with it really well. Anyone I ever talk to on the phone is on Facebook, so when they call, I have their most recent profile picture display on the screen. I think that is very handy. Whenever I take a picture or a video, I can easily upload the picture or video straight to my Facebook account with just a couple of clicks. This allows me to share events with my family nearly instantly as they take place. On top of that, if anyone has their phone number on their Facebook profile, its already in my contacts. Facebook has become an overwhelmingly useful extension to my phone.

Of course, there are the typical social network reasons for staying on board with Facebook. No other place on the Internet has so many people I know together. That makes it much more convenient to stay connected with people and know what's going on. When I plan events anymore, I just set them up on Facebook and invite the appropriate people. Since usually 90% of the people I intend to invite are already on Facebook, this works out really well.

I also really enjoy the Instant Personalization feature. I am sick of having to sign up for accounts over and over again. Facebook already had the Facebook Connect feature which allows using your Facebook account to login to other sites, but this makes it happen a bit more automatically. On top of this, in many ways it is actually better to use this method to sign on to sites than to create new accounts everywhere. You have no idea the security and privacy settings on every site. It's true that Facebook could leak information, but if it is just in one location, that is much better than having logins on hundreds of sites. If at any time in the future, you want to disconnect your login from a site that you used Facebook Connect, or the Instant Personalization with, you can go into the Application Settings on Facebook and remove that site. If you didn't use Facebook, you'd have to figure out each site individually and determine their method of removing your account info. That seems to me to be much more secure than not using Facebook.

Anyhow, that's my random thoughts on Facebook. Feel free to comment.