Monday, January 02, 2012
Facebook'll Get You
If You Don't Watch Out
The video below appeared on the Further Left Forum last April. It is a satire with purpose of expanding a possibly true situation to the point of the ridiculous and by that cause consideration of veracity. What the video presents may or may not have been the case in April. Recent changes however indicate it will be for the future.
Facebook itself now seems its own best satire as it gravitates to a new format called "Timeline". That is being rolled out to all Facebook users soon, if not already and whether they like it or not. Timeline’s base concept is for users to maintain and present for internet scrutiny an embedded personal scrapbook detailing an entirety of life events.
The word Timeline was aptly chosen in naming the format, for aside from change in profile screen layout design, time is the essential difference between the old and new. Whereas the old had limits to how far back one could dig, those are removed with Timeline. Everything a user has done on Facebook since the date of account creation is there and can be shown and accessed depending on configuration. The default leans toward loose openness.
Users who prefer to let personal information gathering spooks do their own work should have definite privacy concerns and begin the process of doing something about them before walking naked for very long on Facebook's new cyberspace path.
Timeline does have facility for deciding what remains, what is shown, how, and to whom. However, the new format will make controlling that confusing at first. Considerable work may be required to reconfigure content and presentation to desire. Here are some links that may help.
Facebook Timelines: How to Get Started
http://www.pcworld.com/article/246295/facebook_timelines_how_to_get_started.html?tk=rel_news
Prep for Facebook's Timeline Layout: 6 Must-Do Privacy Tweaks
http://www.pcworld.com/article/246371/prep_for_facebooks_timeline_layout_6_mustdo_privacy_tweaks.html
Facebook's Frictionless Sharing: A Privacy Guide
http://www.pcworld.com/article/240592/facebooks_frictionless_sharing_a_privacy_guide.html
