Facebook and Radical Transparency Article Comment

Got a few good links for thought from the last Metatalks. Many thanks to Melvyl for linking us this article about Facebook and the future of radical transparency in our meta culture.

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html

What I loved the most in the article wasn't just the commentary about whether we should be having a debate of public vs private on Facebook. I love how it really illustrates the absolute confusion and distortion of facts to give metazens proper information to truly decide for themselves.

If any of you have used Facebook and aren't just the type to click "okay okay okay" to all the shit that pops up on your screen, you'll know just how much they are manipulating you to relinquish your privacy. Even before Facebook started to change it's approach to privacy, I remember a lot of people didn't understand that when they joined say the "Boston", "Chicago", "Austin" network that they were giving everyone in that network access to view their account.

Even now, it's hard to tell who can see what photos because I swear I toggle "family only" and suddenly guildmates are commenting on the picture. Those are times when you realize you are experiencing a WTF am I doing on Facebook moment.

I still don't believe that this quote is true:

“You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” – Zuckerberg, 2009

As users, we have to stop putting the power in the hands of the architects of these networks and fucking demand they create a network that suits our needs or hell, let's start creating groundwork for a more flexible infrastructure ourselves. They are not gods. You think some twenty-six year old kid is the only person on earth who could come up with a viable framework for how we want to develop our communication, interaction, and existence online? Seriously, so many people harness the resources to contribute to something WE want.

I hope more and more people read articles like these and really start to question how they want to interact with the world around them. Pay attention, get informed, and don't settle. I think it lacks far less integrity to be shackled into one identity that is suppressed by the lack of control of its data than to create one hundred identities that are all honest in the information about who I am.