opting out of the future of the internets

Man, guess I never considered the future of the internets. Never had a Facebook page, unless something drastic changes never will. I just don't see how Facebook participants keep up with so many friends.

I mean I'm all for an open source alternative, but really I'm just going on FB and saying "damn, I love a good cup of coffee." I'm not really concerned that advertisers will steal that data. Hell, I don't pay any attention to advertisers anyway. My real personal information isn't on FB and won't be.

FB is a great way to stay connected with my friends scattered about the country. It's worth it until something better comes along.

Yeah, I didn't put any personal info on there, either. But they can tell a lot just by who your "friends" are.

Then the other day I was on another website, and a little box showed up with stuff from my Facebook account and "friends" comments on the topic I was reading about or something. Creepy! Too creepy for me.

Google isn't totally innocent here, either. Searches are now showing results from my "social circle." How do they know that?

I put very little personal information on Facebook and limited who is (supposedly) allowed access to it.

I use Firefox with the Adblock Plus and No Script extensions so the only sites who display ads to me are those I allow (such as KnoxViews).

I also 'friended' a very limited number of people and I too see a lot of glenbeckian attitudes among them.

I'm not surprised though. I have a lot of friends who pretty gullible.

As far as harvesting information I'm more worried about what Google has.

Oh well.

I'm with jah. I don't put anything on there that I don't care for the world knowing, and I've gotten in touch with some folks on there that I'm glad to be back in touch with or in better touch with. But, I can understand if you don't want to be bothered with it. You do have a higher profile than most, so the constant bombardment with friend requests could be aggravating. I, personally, don't friend anyone who I either haven't met or don't have a good connection with online already. And one of the things I really like about it is the various fake scrabble games.

I'm mostly a fossil, but FB is eerily powerful for reconnecting. A large number of people I've known since grade school, really, got active on FB within a few months, it seemed. If ever there was an example of going viral, FB is it. I do share your privacy concerns, though. I have a pretty limited amount of personal info. on there and I ignore without hitting the ignore button dubious friend requests. (Funny story: just last night FB "suggested" Bela Fleck as a friend request. I figured I didn't have much to lose, but didn't send it.) I do follow some of my favorite musicians, like Larkin Poe and The Greencards, and that's fun.

I also ignore and hide every dumb game that pops up: Mafia Wars, passing along the red balloon, etc. That traffic is rarer now.

Discovering which of your former classmates have turned into glennbeckian babbling morons was a little too much for this INFP to bear.

You ain't kiddin'! And religious types who are always asking to "pray for" this/that and talking about how "blessed" they/we are. Both practices that are getting really tired! That talk, and people who just babble about every detail of painting their kids' rooms or whatever has prompted me to hide a number of "friends" and that has pretty much cured that.

I like FB, but not that much. When there's occasional talk about moving en masse to a more secure upstart, I somewhat hope that would happen. It probably can't, though, and all's probably gonna be OK.