My original comments were meant to question you as to whether there was some negative thing I missed concerning facebook privacy, or if this was more about ‘the point of the matter’ and not the actual effect.

Personally I’d say not to connect with bosses or subordinates at all on social networking sites. I know places I worked at in the past this was frowned upon and could even be grounds for termination (for the superior), because they didn’t like fraternization between employees and their bosses outside of work.

I do have a lot of things online which may negatively affect me at work (it shouldn’t, but it could), so I’m very careful about who I connect to what online. I never mentioned a lot of my activities (including my blog) on Myspace because I had both coworkers and family members in my friends list. So far I don’t have anything damning on my facebook page either.

You make a good point about password retrieval questions. It’s not something I find bad with facebook though, it’s something I find bad about password retrieval. Personally I only use the things if I have to, and if I do its a gibberish string more complicated than my password, and quickly forgotten. The thing is, a lot of people know the name of my first pet, my favorite book, and my mother’s maiden name. None of that is information I’ve kept particularly guarded through out my life. It’s also absurd to require a password that contains at least eight characters and two numbers not in sequence so it can’t be cracked, but let it be retrieved with a three letter common word answer to a specific question.

I also know you very well, and I find it very hard to believe that you have things you care about people hacking protected by honest answers to these questions.

You talk about Facebook monitoring Internet usage. It’s not the best thing, but there is a solution. Only use Facebook when you aren’t websurfing. Close facebook prior to websurfing.

I know I’m a little bit careful about what I put online, especially in places I know friends and coworkers are going to look. I don’t see how facebook’s privacy settings are going to hurt me.

To me the issue comes down to this. You enjoy facebook and you believe it enriches your life. Your upset about some changes that have happened, although you already know how to keep yourself protected with these changes, and it is not actually damaging you, except maybe by adding new restrictions to your facebook activity.

If enough people leave they might change some things, but by the look of things most people don’t even know or understand what is going on, so there’s not a good chance of that happening. So if you leave whatever positive things facebook has brought into your life you’re now denying yourself, and the negative stuff you’re saving yourself from was manageable anyways.

As you’ve said, it’s not a matter of utility (positive contributions versus negative effects), it’s a matter of principle. I think I understood these things better when I was younger. But now that I’m older, things like facebook privacy settings which really don’t affect me either way don’t concern me much. I’d ratherbe concerned about more practical things, like working up the courage to ask out the cute gamestop clerk so I don’t have to keep buying $60 worth of video games every week.

My perspective is I currently like Facebook, it’s fun and popular, and as of yet it isn’t hurting me in any way. Until they do something that actually effects me, or I get bored, I’m going to stay there.

I don’t really think it’s a question of defending your privacy either (and I’m sorry if I offended you, my original questions were meant to draw you into an argument to figure out if there was some reason for leaving facebook that might actually concern me). Of course you have the right to your privacy, in the same way you have a right to leave facebook, and I don’t think anyone is going to tell you that you can’t or it’s wrong for you to make a personal decision to leave. The main point of my argument is, is it worth leaving over? Yes I know you have some good reasons, but especially since I know you also know how to fix those things (like don’t play farmville at work), I don’t see any concrete cons to staying, so ultimately it comes down to a personal decision.
.-= Rob´s last blog ..Profaning the Gods for Entertainment: Who Put the “Glad” in Gladiator? =-.