For a time, while I was living far away from my family and friends, Facebook played an important role in my life – beyond the pokes and emoticons and likes and tags, there was a tangible sense of social interaction with the people I loved. It’s a fantastic way to message your friends and see updates on their lives – and in many cases Facebook has replaced email as a primary source of messaging, event planning and information exchange.  Like anything else, there’s plenty of good that little blue box with the white ‘F’ can do.

Lately though, I’ve been giving some serious thought as to whether or not Facebook (or any other social media platform) is a good thing in the end.  For the past couple of years I’ve become a lot wiser to the privacy implications of using these tools.  Not only are you throwing a wide assortment of your personal data out to a public that  you cannot trust, and to corporations that are mining your information in order to sell to you,  it’s a fact that Facebook (and many other platforms including Google+, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) has eyebrow raising connections to several government intelligence agencies like the CIA, DARPA, the Defense Department and the NSA.  What you post, your personal details, entertainment preferences, spending habits, social interactions and general day to day comings and goings are likely being cataloged by a signals intelligence system like Echelon, or one of it’s newer, more expansive siblings. I don’t know about you, but I am increasingly concerned about the implications of this activity.

Beyond the privacy concerns though, are the human factors.  Is Facebook something that benefits social interaction – or does it provide a false network of interactions, and perhaps actually block real human contact?

Like Me.

I’ve seen plenty of damage caused by Facebook that would not usually show up in offline interactions.  For example – you post pictures of you at a party with a girl.  Three years later, that girl is still your friend on Facebook, but you are now engaged to be married.  Your fiancee stumbles across the picture, and your digital friendship and notices that last Wednesday you responded to one of your party girl’s posts with a “LOL” and a ”   “.   Suddenly you find yourself with a jealous fiancee and potential trust damage to your relationship, even if the interaction is in truth an innocuous affair.

We have begun to treat Facebook as our real social network.  The interactions on this digital chat-room have real world impact.  We get drawn in by our “friends” daily updates, angered or emboldened by their political or religious perspectives.  We pour over their pictures, and the pictures taken by others in which they were tagged.  We see things we never were a part of, and become digital voyeurs.  We update people we barely know with dramas that we wouldn’t tell a stranger, but because they are Facebook friends, they somehow hold an elevated position and our defenses drop.

We allow what people say, what interests they post, and what pictures they show to form our opinions about them without first having the ability to interact with those individuals in person.  We generalize people – and are ourselves generalized  by others.  For example, I have been generalized often – and detrimentally – as a “Republican Tea-Bagger” because of things I post, or opinions stated – when in fact, I am nothing of the sort.  My real perspectives on politics, like most everyone else, is decidedly gray – a little liberal here, a little conservative there.  But it’s easier to generalize – and then – to judge.  And when we judge our digital friends we pull away from them, and potentially miss out on the real and meaningful interactions, where communication is more than a status update, an icon or a “poke”.

We follow people we used to date, and even those we used to hate – just to see what they’re doing – sometimes it causes us joy when they hit bad times, but can also lead us into thoughts of anger, regret, depression and more.  We use Facebook to gossip and to judge – to lie and puff ourselves up – to be the person we wish we were, instead of who we really are. I’m just as guilty of this behavior at one time or another as most everyone else using these networks. In a sense we’ve all become one part digital stalker and one part reality show star – two things that in our worlds outside of the computer we are not (or at least most of us are not, and should not be).

But in moving social contact from physical presence to digital presence, Facebook pulls the ultimate sleight-of-hand. How much individual personality is expressed in a chorus of “LOLs”? How much does “want 2 come over now k ” convey? By contrast, how much nuance and gentle shades of meaning are communicated through the human eyes? What subtle hints of suffering, joy, longing or need can you hear in the human voice? Can the beautiful and complex communication in a human glance be transposed into text? How much do we lose by shifting our contact with our fellow human beings to a text-based world of pithy posts and pixels?  — Josh Olson

I’ve been thinking that in reality, Facebook is a sham.  It isn’t the real world at all, and I think  it may actually be doing some level of harm to the way we relate to one another as human beings.  I’ve been thinking of leaving it all behind, and it’s harder than I thought it might be.

After years building up this social circle, I would miss the connections I have with old high school buddies, kids I grew up with in school, and old workmates.  But I won’t lie – I continue to ask what ongoing value all these connections have – and why I am sharing my life’s activities, events, ups and downs with them.  If we met in public today – would it be that easy – or would it just be awkward?  On the flipside – is it more likely that my two-dimensional online relations are acting as a buffer, a safe social outlay where I don’t risk the pitfalls and (more often) advantages of person to person contact?

I have already trimmed my “friends list” twice – weeding out those on the periphery that, if I’m honest with myself, I don’t really know, or want to associate with – leaving behind a list that feels slightly more accurate.  The vast majority of those I defriended were not my friends – not in reality.  Truthfully, I have maybe 3 good friends in this world – and a small handful of good acquaintances that are great to hang out with from time to time.   I do not have 891 friends – and neither do you.

For all the good it does to superficially connect with the majority of people on Facebook, is it worth being the subject of social, corporate and government scrutiny any more than we already have to be in the real world?  In our heart of hearts do we really want to be creepy stalkers and attention whores?  Do we really want to be the main character in our own ‘Truman Show‘?  Am I really losing friends if I chose not to log-in one day?  Is Facebook a good thing for me?

These are my questions – and I’m not sure I have an answer.  What do you think?

Click here to view the embedded video.

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, privacy, Social Media

The reality is that another group of friends invited you to a party and Bob won’t be there. Before we all used Facebook and Foursquare, making up stories about your VHS labeling adventures was pretty easy to do, but today it’s a lot harder to tell the perfect white lie because our lies can now unfold in real time on the internet. All it takes is one person at the Bobless party to know your identity on a social network and you’re immediately tagged with a beer in your hand, happy that Bob isn’t in your zip code. Even if you don’t check in yourself to keep yourself off the grid, it simply takes one tag to blow your lie sky high.

What can a tech-savvy person do in this situation? It’s hard to catch everything, unfortunately. The fact that Facebook doesn’t yet allow people to approve picture tagging is the biggest issue right now. There is the ability to tell Facebook to not allow friends to check you in with Places. However, someone could innocently say on Foursquare “At this great party with @<yournamehere>”, which gets sent out to Twitter. After that, your cover’s blown and it takes a bit more work to take those bits back since you don’t own the tweet or the Foursquare checkin. How do you politely ask someone at a party to delete a tweet because you lied to someone about where you’d be?

This isn’t to say that we should all become Spock-like and be honest all the time (“I simply find Bob’s company distasteful”), but the number of social media apps out there that broadcast information about us across the internet is getting more difficult to manage, even if you haven’t signed up for any of them. Could the lie be worth the trouble? Is social media an aspect of our privacy that we have to think about now?

Leave a comment or discuss this on our forums.

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Post tags: bob, Facebook, foursquare, gowalla, honesty, lies, lying, social network

First, go to your Privacy Settings which will give you an overview o. Click on the “Customize Settings” link, shown below in red.

You’ll see three settings for Places. Two of them are inside the first “Things I Share” group. By default, “Places I check in” is set to be “Friends Only”. This should be good enough for most people, but if you want to make it even more private, click on “Customize” and only allow yourself to see your check-ins by selecting “Only Me” from the drop-down menu.

The last option is in the “Things others share” group. The option “Friends can check me into Places” should be set to “Disabled”. The reason being is that when you turn this on, your friends can check you in somewhere, even if you’re not there.

While Places may seem like a good idea to some, others may not want to use its features. Couple that with the inability to prevent others from tagging you without your permission, makes Places’ default privacy settings weak.

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Post tags: customize, Facebook, friends only, only me, places, privacy, settings

Facebook updated its iPhone app last night which has the new Places feature. Unfortunately, it’s not currently available in this part of the U.S. yet so I couldn’t test it. The demo Facebook put on last night showed that when you select the Places feature, it brings up a list of known places that are close to you. All you do is select the one you’re at and you’re done.

Facebook took checking in a step further by allowing you to check your friends in with you by tagging them the same way you tag them in Facebook’s Photos. If the place you’re at doesn’t exist in Facebook’s database, you can add it manually. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Not so fast.

If you don’t set your privacy settings, your friends can check you into a place without you knowing. That’s right, you can be tagged at a bar when you told a different group of friends you weren’t feeling well. In fact, someone can check you in without you knowing they saw you. We suggest you turn this feature off immediately.

Go to Account->Privacy settings. There, you’ll see the “Other things I share” section. There’s an option called “Friends can check me into places”. Set that to Disabled if you don’t want friends checking you in anywhere. The problem is that there’s no option for your approval to be tagged first. You can remove a tag, but by then it might be too late. Facebook needs a method for approving tags.

In the “Things I share” section, you can change who can see where you’ve checked in.

Again, Facebook falls short of understanding privacy. When asked whether you can remove a tag of your house, Facebook said that you can’t remove it; you’ll have to request a removal from Facebook by flagging it. Considering how long it takes them to respond to requests, this makes me a little nervous. If someone adds my house, I can’t remove it immediately. Facebook needs to have a system where I can say “this is my house, don’t associate places with my name in a 10 mile radius”.

We’re hoping that Facebook updates their privacy settings soon. While being tagged in pictures isn’t always done in real time, geolocation is, and can cause issues with friends that you don’t necessarily want. Facebook needs to look at their privacy settings as we’ve outlined. We’ll be testing Places as soon as it becomes available and report back as we gather more data on it.

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: check-in, Facebook, fourquare, gowalla, places, privacy, yelp

Now, there are way too many choices and everyone expects you to support them all. Myspace, Facebook, Ning, Google Buzz, Google Wave, Twitter, blog comments, and the site’s forums are all expected to be there for people to comment on the topics at hand in a space that they feel the most comfortable. The problem is that it fragments the conversations and makes it difficult to read everything.

Over the last few months I’ve been dealing with just that. I focus primarily on the forums, but I have to almost push myself to remember to check Facbook, Wave, Buzz, and whatever else is out there, not to mention blog comments. Unfortunately, there’s no way to funnel everything into one place. The best I could do is use RSS feeds for as much as I could, but not everything has a feed.

I find that Twitter and email are the best ways to get my attention if you want to fire off a note to me personally, but it doesn’t allow a public converation.

The forums are a great vehicle for conversations. Not only are they built to have community tools, they’re moderated and allow people to think of them as a place to hang your hat and chat. From an archive point of view, I own the forums so I can back them up as needed, save them as an SQL table, and import them to new forum software if I need to. I like having that control.

Google Buzz and Google Wave aren’t doing it for me. I’ve tried very hard to embrace them, but I find that they can be noisy and unruly, and the tools to manage them just aren’t in place yet. Also, I don’t own them. If there’s a topic I like, there’s no way to archive them, or move them somewhere else other than a web page archive or a screenshot. They’re owned by Google and there’s nothing I can do about that.

Facebook is convenient, but I find there are times when I avoid Facebook for days at a time because I’m not addicted to it like other people are. When I do use it, it’s usually for a brief period of time and I log off. I find later that there are conversations going on in there which I don’t even know about because I don’t check it. I suppose I should make a conscious effort to.

Blog comments are a good way to have a public discussion as well. They’re attached directly to the post, and people can read them directly off the article.

In my experience, the further you move away from your home base, the more fragmented the conversation becomes. I found that even tweets imported into Buzz make for an uneven conversation since replies are coming and going in two different places. Are these services doing more harm than good? I’d think they are, and I believe that keeping the conversation closest to home is the best way to stay connected to your userbase.

Post where you want the conversation to be. No matter where it is, people will go there if they want to join in on the conversation if they feel it’s that important. Once people see that most have flocked to one place, that’s where most of the talking will be.

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blog, conversation, Facebook, forums, fragmented conversation, Google Buzz, google wave, myspace, rss, Twitter

• Chat with us on USTREAM while we’re recording
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See you soon!

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chat, contact, email, Facebook, feedback, geekistry, IRC, iTunes, live, Podcast, Twitter, ustream

Up for grabs are some essentials that Krissi and Michael feel every geek should keep close at hand for good geekistry

$25 iTunes Gift Card autographed by us

$10 Starbucks Card

1 Year Subscription to WIRED Magazine

Here’s how to win!

1. Write a blog post, send a Tweet, or post a Facebook note about something you enjoy that you consider to be ‘geeky’. Please include the link-back to this post using the shortened URL “http://bit.ly/geekistryftw” – invite your readers to visit us, too!
2. After you’ve shown some geek love, leave a comment here on this post (be sure to use your real email* so we can contact you) with the link you’ve added to your blog, Twitter, or Facebook (hey, we like to re-Tweet/post you, too) and you’ll be entered into the to Epic Name Change Giveaway. You’ll also be added to our newsletter list that you’ll be seeing in your in-box, soon.
3. Want more than one chance to win? Every time you write a new blog post, send a Tweet or update on Facebook that links to this post (leave a comment or ping-back each time) you’ll get an extra entry.
4. We will announce the winner on the second podcast using our new name (effectively podcast episode #23).

Winners will be chosen by random drawing using the Random.org tool.

Good luck and let the best luckiest geek grab the goods!

———-

*You can trust us! Like you, we don’t like spam and we promise not to give your email to anyone else. By the way, if for some reason you decide you’d rather not receive any correspondence from us, request the removal of your email from our list and a real, actual human being will delete it ASAP.

———-

2010/06/08 @ 8:00pm EDT – Comments and entries are officially closed. Thanks for all who participated; the winner will be announced tonight on the live recording of podcast episode 23 http://bit.ly/geekistry-live

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blog, contest, delomni, Facebook, iTunes, starbucks, starman, wired

Just like the rest of you we’ve been talking about Facebook a lot, lately. We’re interested to know how your user experience will change now that Facebook has announced new security and privacy settings. Do you have other comments or questions about Facebook? Please leave us your input in a comment below the poll.

P.S. Join us for our live-stream podcast at 10 pm Eastern!

[polldaddy poll=3148866]

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: delomni, Facebook, poll, privacy, Social Media

Fast forward to now. Beginning in December 2009, and as recently as 10 days ago, Facebook has been making giant changes to it’s Terms of Service policy and user security options. As a result, Facebook has been getting a lot of attention and scrutiny (even Congress isn’t too happy) about their (deceptive?) business practices. Is it any wonder that some previous Facebook fanboys and girls are departing faster than they embraced Facebook just over a year ago? Not to me.

One of the most recent changes, and most controversial, is the new “instant personalization” feature. By default “instant personalization” is set by Facebook as “opt-out”. In other words, if you don’t uncheck the box that “allows select partners to instantly personalize their features with your public information…” the entire internet will know any public information you’ve ever posted on Facebook.

But it doesn’t stop there – Facebook has a multiple-step opt-out system that is complicated and creates a user environment ripe for missing steps to protect one’s security. In addition to unchecking the instant personalization box, a Facebook user must also go through each section of their account’s privacy settings to customize each option. Even still, very easily overlooked and commonly missed “opt-in by default” features like the “Public Search Results“  (which, unless changed, will “create a public search listing so others can see a preview of your Facebook profile on search engines,”) can be missed by veteran Facebook users.

Simply put, Facebook allows you to customize your privacy, but only on THEIR terms. The best policy comparison I’ve seen so far is The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s post called “Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline” wherein they chronicle Facebook’s privacy policy circa 2005,

“No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings,“

to April 2010′s shady and complex policy,

“When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. … The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” … Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.“

Like our friend MissSomething, I’m thinking of deleting my Facebook account, because honestly, what can I trust Facebook with? At the moment, NOTHING.

Hey, Facebook, give me back my privacy on MY TERMS, not yours.

———-
Props to SAT Slayer for this post’s thumbnail image!

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: delomni, Facebook, Podcast, privacy, Social Media, ui

Open Graph – This is probably the biggest and most controversial announcement. Facebook is going to allow developers to have access to whatever it is you make public. If you don’t make it public, it won’t be readable. The controversy comes from the worry that there could either be a bug in the system at some point, or Facebook could change its privacy settings and make something that was private to you now public.

Paranoia aside, this is huge for one very important reason: people probably put more personal information into Facebook than into Google. If true, this means that Facebook is now the largest collection of personal information and connections on the internet. This is a goldmine of information that developers and advertisers can use. How the use it is the question. It takes responsibility both on Facebook’s part and the user’s part to show and hide certain information.

From Facebook’s API page, some of the information you can get from a user is: movies, music, books, likes, groups, events, videos, games, and friends. Yes, friends. Your friends list could be read and used.

Another reason why this is important is because third party apps that have their own set of data can now tap into Facebook’s, match it up, and get more information about people that use their app than they ever could on their own. This also means that Facebook can act as a central hub of basic personal connections, and apps can build on that, taking that grunt work out of their development cycle.

Like – Facebook is now allowing the ability to add a “Like” button to pretty much any object or web site that exists. This is bigger than digg, bigger than adding a retweet button. This stamps an object or web site with your name on it, showing to one central location that you like something. From there, your social network can find what you’ve liked, and see other people that are connected to you that also Liked it. The business opportunities from this are stellar.

OAuth – Facebook announced that it will be using OAuth for authenticating data from the social graph. This makes creating applications much easier for developers since they only need a single key. Now users don’t have to worry about transmitting their login and password for Facebook, they just connect via OAuth.

Docs.com – Facebook and Microsoft are jointly going up against Google directly to bring online document creation, sharing, and collaborating to the internet. Although we cannot try the document creation features yet, we can see that the document viewer is working fine. It’s also listing friends of mine from Facebook that have also joined docs.com. Like Google Docs, docs.com will allow you to bring people in to collaborate on documents, and share them publically. No word on annotations yet, we still need to try it. Will this take wind out of Google’s sails? Only time will tell, but as soon as we can start creating documents, we’ll report on a direct comparison with Google Docs.

Pandora - Facebook and Pandora have teamed up to create a social music network. If you Like a band, it will be added to your station. Others can see the bands you’ve Liked, and listen to stations created by your choices. This is much bigger than last.fm could ever be because of the sheer number of people that are actually on Facebook and the relationships built by it.

I cannot stress how important this is, both to users, developers, and businesses. It’s going to take some time to process all of this and come up with unique apps from it all, but you can bet you’ll be seeing some visionary apps come out of Facebook soon.

© June Sixth Productions for Geekistry: It's all geek to us, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: delomni, docs.com, f8, Facebook, like, Microsoft, oauth, office, open graph, pandora, Social Media