Leaving the Social Network, Part 1

(This blog post ended up being quite long, so I'm splitting it into parts.)

I find that the more I want to do with my life, the more worried I am about being "exposed" for thinking a certain way that some people may find undesirable. Which I feel is also a bit ridiculous, as I am someone who believes in freedom of speech, but at the same time, I know that there will be people out there who will form preconceptions about me if they were to find out about the things that I am interested in.

In fact, today we had a BBQ for all the tech people in my building, and of the 350 or so people who were there, David pointed out that there were very few females. Albert jokingly added, "That means you'll go far in this company, Anna." I know he was kidding, but I replied saying that if I ever did get promoted, all of my co-workers would wonder if it was because I slept with one of the higher-ups, and soon I'd be hated by everyone - I imagine that my various blog posts on the topic of sex probably wouldn't help defend my innocence. While the females in senior positions that I have met so far are well-liked, I know in my last job, there were a lot of rumours going around about various dealers sleeping with people in order to get their second game earlier.

Obviously, one of the ways in which I could reduce this threat would be to delete my blog, but again, the freedom of speech thing comes up again. Also, blogging is very therapeutic for me. I've never blogged with the intention of being picked up by some publishing company, or tried to be the gossip hub of my friendship circles where everyone would check here to find out all the juicy developments. I enjoy being able to lay out my thoughts, and if I'm writing for an audience, then it forces me to try to explain myself as best I can, and this can often lead to a realisation that my thinking is illogical (or someone will at least point it out in the comments).

My next thought was to delete my Facebook. Facebook is notorious for its privacy issues, and I think that without it, people are very unlikely to make the link between me and this blog. The guy who tried to take on Anonymous was an idiot, but I believe that there is some truth in his theory that you can work out information about someone on Facebook despite how private they make their settings, because not all of their friends will have use the same settings. I blogged a while back about the Blizzard RealID debacle where someone was able to find out so much information about someone given only their first and last names, and which city they lived in.

Ever since I joined the ranks of the smartphone owners, I've been more and more active on Facebook. A lot of what I do is read things that Luke links, which I could probably do from Twitter, but Twitter links don't have that preview feature that you can get from Facebook, so I don't like waiting for something to load unless I know I'm likely to want to read all of it. Other than that, I have more of a passive use, which is so that people are able to invite me to events.

When I create events, I will usually have a guest list in mind, so I will invite people from my mental guest list (although I always start typing Olek's name in, before remembering that he doesn't have a Facebook anymore, but that just ends up being a trigger to remind me to email him instead), then I will browse the rest of my list to see if I forgot anyone. So losing the ability to invite people over Facebook isn't really that much of an issue for me. If I didn't add them to my mental checklist in the first place, then they're probably not 100% suited for the event (in terms of interest in the activity, cohesion with the rest of the people invited, general availability).

I know that deleting a Facebook isn't the end of the world - Team Zuckerberg is ready and willing to hand me back my account if I decided it was all a mistake, but I thought I'd ask two of my friends who have done it how they dealt with it before trying it myself.

Why did you delete your Facebook account?

Olek:

Privacy concerns and lack of control you have over your own information. It was around the time the facebook privacy issues were in the media. Some geeky people (mostly Cory Doctorow) started deleting their accounts and once I read their reasons I did as well. I should probably mention I didn't use it that much anyway, well not as much as other people. I didn't play games on it, or have important contacts on it (like some people have business contacts that don't want to lose and therefore don't want to delete the account). I used it mostly for events and occasionally looking at photos.

A lot of people say things like "oh I only use it for events, I don't have personal info on there, and my account is on highest privacy settings so no one I don't know can see what I do anyway." The thing is though, it doesn't make that much difference. You still appear in photos other people put up of you and they can still tag you in them, they just can't get to your wall. Also, people leave accounts logged on in public(ish) places like university computer labs or net cafes and people can just come along and snoop around. Also there's nothing stopping a "friend" of yours from being on their facebook with a bunch of their friends (but not necessarily yours) in the room and going around trolling. Also nothing to stop them copy-pasting images and sharing them over imageshack or whatever. There's loads of ways to abuse the facebook privacy settings. You can still make a minimal facebook account with just a fake name which you use just for being invited to events...which is possibly okay, but it leads me into my second point...

I don't like that facebook has become the de facto tool for organising events. Something like that should be separate from other information. Having all your info in one "basket" means there's a single point of failure for having all your info leaked. Google has the same problem with their products. Whether anyone really cares about your info is another issue. There's a tradeoff between privacy and functionality with most of these Web2.0 apps. I don't find the functionality of facebook to be worth the amount of info it wants me to put up or the privacy concerns associated with it.

There's another side to this also which I only came across recently while watching this roundpanel discussion about Wikileaks and internet democracy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMzEdkiz5tY). Basically someone on the panel asks (paraphrasing) "what will people do when their primary form of communication is a closed platform owned by companies subject to the law?" Or something similar. This is basically the case with facebook and twitter. They're both companies which have been hit by US government subpoenas asking for usernames, ip addresses, contact details, BANK details, etc. We only really heard about it from twitter since they were the only ones to try and fight this subpoena (but you can bet anything that facebook and google also received one (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/01/07/twitter/subpoena.pdf)). Not only do I not like it that facebook is now the de facto event organiser, I also don't like how the de facto forms of COMMUNICATION are now privately owned by companies which can be subpoena'd (and worse). This all sounds a bit paranoid but it's also the principle of the thing.

GP:

I was using it too much. Checking it every 10 minutes, wasting time playing Mafia games (Farmville wasn't around when I had FB), it was a drain on my life. I spend way too much time on the computer anyway, and I figured the time I spent off FB could be used for a better purpose.

Also, while I'm often very interested about serious issues people face in life, I don't much care for the boring minutiae and myriad random details people post on FB and Twitter. I honestly don't care if you thought the train was late today. It's late most days. It isn't news! I know a wide variety of people, but I don't have many close friends, and I was beginning to find all the status updates draining. (you can now remove people from your feed, apparently).

Mostly, however, I think I deleted my Facebook account because I was feeling bored and a little down one day, and just did it for the hell of it. I promptly reactivated it very briefly in order to steal the very useful list of birthdays, allowing me to remain at an optimal social level. (I send a text on their birthday.) It has been completely deleted though now, no chance of getting it back.

My thoughts: I agree with Olek on the privacy issues. I've been doing compliance training at work, and one of the topics I did was on the Privacy Act (seeing as a lot of bank employees can potentially access pretty private data), which in a nutshell is: "We have to tell you what we're going to do with your data, we can't collect stuff we don't need (like sexual orientation) and we'll try our best to keep it secure, but we may have to release it if ordered to by a court." We can feel safe, as Civ III rules state that a democracy has minimal corruption, not every country is ruled by a democracy, and you may find that if you are in trouble overseas, your country might not save you due to political pressure.

I second GP's comment about a lot of status updates not being "news". There are so many passive-aggressive comments on my feed that I have to wonder if it's just me who seems to attract emo people. I once made the mistake of asking someone if they were OK, then was bombarded with cryptic replies along the lines of, "I can't believe that happened to you!" or "Next time we see each other, I'll sort it out!" and I never even found out what the issue was!

How do you feel when your friends have been invited to an event and you haven't? Have you ever decided to gatecrash anyway?

Olek:

Well usually I get people asking if I'm going to be there before it happens. When I say I don't know about it, they just invite me anyway. I never find out about secret events to which I'm not invited, unless I'm then invited.

GP:

Obviously I feel a little left out, but honestly it doesn't happen that often. I give credit to my friends, who are quite adept at telling me about parties before they happen. The main people who don't invite me to parties are usually partners of my friends, those who I've met, but don't know the friendship groups well enough to think too hard about inviting certain people. One girlfriend of a mate in particular has forgotten me several times, but she seems genuinely apologetic about it. I have considered gatecrashing her parties, as I'm sure I'd be welcome, but never have.

I often won't get invited by the person who is hosting/creating the event, but they usually ask "could someone message GP about this?" I always feel flattered when that happens.

The one thing I miss about events is the random invitations to parties from friends of friends, as they simply tick everyone off their friend list. A guy who I'd only met briefly once at a party invited me to his intimate 21st over FB once. I had a great time, despite not knowing anyone (our mutual friend arrived late), and made some friends I still talk to today (and who invite me to parties off FB...). The random party never happens any more.

My thoughts: I guess the thing that I'm most concerned about is, "Would anyone really want me there?" I don't consider myself outgoing enough to be a "party-girl", and I fear that if I wasn't on Facebook, would people actually make the effort to make sure I am invited? Obviously Olek and GP are too popular to ever have to worry about this. =P