Wildilocks Can Has Journal?

“Every institution is the lengthened shadow of one man” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

So, any of you not living under rocks will have seen in the last few days a massive turn in the media against Facebook. Zuckerberg’s already muddy name has become irretrievably coated with crap with the leak of one of his most damning early IM conversations calling all early FB users “Dumb fucks” for trusting their data to him. The clamor against the ever-increasing privacy abuses, bait-and-switch tactics, and flat out ethical vaccuum that FB unapologetically operates in, has become the hottest news in FB’s controversy-laden history. There are more reasons than ever before to leave FB, and some of the most influential sites on the web have in the last week laid scathing smackdowns: Wired, WSJ, HuffPo (which is a surprisingly good read and gives some personal experience of Zuckerberg as sociopath), Gizmodo, BoingBoing, EFF, El Reg - and many high profile tech personalities are deleting their accounts for good and hoping their examples will lead others to do the same. There’s the odd embarrassing pro-FB post, and you can see in the comments just how well this position is going over right about now (Techcrunch). A Quitfacebookday has been set for May 31st. There’s new stuff coming in every minute and I can’t possibly read let alone profile it all.

I’m outlining some of this here for those of you who might not be aware of the current furore (certainly quite a few people I talked to yesterday were not), but also to explain and to apologise to some of you who feel you are in the crossfire on Twitter, and received more of my anger that really is directed at Zuckerberg for taking things from me, and the ‘Net, that I value. It’s very hard for me to separate support of an institution that I loathe to this degree, from the institution itself when I am in the heat of anger, and for the anger directed at you which should have been directed at the institution, I apologise.

I cannot say that any of this has been a revelation to me or that I’m even slightly surprised, and I don’t think I need to restate my apready well-known position on FB as there are many many posts in my LJ and CHJ past that outline these feelings at length. Yes, I’ve been unremittingly posting antiFB links on Twitter in my best sore-winner fashion over the past few days, with not much apology for the smug “I told you so” tone. But really, those of you who’ve known me for a while: given how much shit I’ve had thrown at me for taking a stand on this early on (and please remember I have lost a lot due to this, and am angry about that too) can you really, honestly blame me?

I guess now that I’m seeing many people in the wider social spectrum of the ‘Net start to question their involvement with this site, I am frustrated to only see parts of this coming about in my own social network and not as fast as I would like. I can see where this is heading, and I’m anxious and impatient - I miss the greater interaction with many people I used to have before FB took much of their time and virtually dried up their participation elsewhere (except those who have chosen to join Twitter, or valiantly maintained a presence on LJ). History repeats itself, and like Usenet, like LJ, even mySpace; FB will eventually become old news, once better technology replaces it. But I’m impatient, and grumpy about the wait.

So for now, the FB apologists on my Twitter feed have depressed me with their defense of Zuckerberg’s sociopathy (”Mark’s IM conversation is no worse than some of the shit I said at 19 on IM.” - @ferrouswheel) and so the antiFB links have continued, I have attempted to explain in less than 140 characters what I see as a very bad thing for the ‘Net as a whole, and it saddens me thoroughly that people I have love and respect for are still championing such an evil thing as FB, even in the face of ever-mounting and overwhelming evidence that FB is indeed the shadow of one man - and that man is a freaking sociopath. I hate how FB has become such a control over so much of our culture. It’s just wrong. And more and more people are realising this - but at this point, there’s still a huge amount of inertia, and attitude of despondency as if no-one but FB has the ability or right to their social netowrk now, and they’re stuck, and anyone who doesn’t like it - well tough shit for you, buddy.

Unfortunately, better technology hasn’t come just yet. People continue to use LJ half-heartedly, and FB is already becoming unsatisfactory for many; but there’s nowhere better to go for most, so inertia holds people in that orbit for now. My Twitter feed just keeps getting busier and busier; but it is limited in scope and cannot encompass everything I want an SN to be - and it’s not trying to, so frankly I have a lot more respect for it than ever, as it remains a core micro-news service which is good at what it does.

But there is hope. Diaspora, a proposed project by 4 NYU guys, has in 2 weeks received over $USD 166,000 in seed funding from over 4000 donors on Kickstarter, and appears to be the potential Social Network technology to watch in the coming months. There is no guarantee that it will be a FB-killer, especially given that it’s geek-centric and unless they make it really easy to use and adopt, then there may be scant wider adoption beyond tech-savvy circles. But it’s the fact that a group of 4 students have raised this much seed money in a matter of weeks, shows just how much support there is for something to rival FB, and how many people are unhappy enough with what’s currently available, that they’ll put down money on nothing more than hope.

This is how wrong Facebook is.

So I’m sorry people, I will continue to swell with pride as more people wake up and join the anti-FB brigade, and take a stand for honesty, integrity and best practise over convenience and utility in exchange for a dirty conscience and feeding the addictive aspects of Social Network written in the shadow of a man I have no respect for, and no desire to support in any way with my implicit or explicit consent to his evil. Remember, it’s the early adopters who make the new roads on the web. Many of the people who were early adopters of FB are turning away from it now. While we don’t have a path mapped out, you can guarantee that once the dam breaks, it will be a tidal wave. The cracks are appearing in the silo walls, and there’ll be no stopping this flood once it’s truly underway.

So, now the basic advertising revenues are starting to dry up and data storage costs are rising steeply, seems Effbee is taking things a step further towards privacy violation - surprise, surprise. Read more here.

Are you really sure you want to store any of your data on that site, or even use it at all? You think LJ’s had problems, they are nothing to what EffBee could be in for. I’d say if you’ve been using Effbee for photo storage particularly, get your pics off there and on somewhere sensible instead.

nb: will not be online much if at all for the next week, am away in teh wildes of Noo Zullun.