disalarming

Dear Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg/The Facebook Powers That Be,

I can see straight through your PR spin of “building the social web together” when the new Facebook platform was announced. I don’t need new ways for my online experience to be personalized, because essentially that’s just another tool to divulge more personal information about me and my dis/likes for everyone to see across the World Wide Web. I don’t even bother reading the stuff that my friends choose to “Like” on Facebook because more often than not it’s stupid stuff like “Why do I even miss you?” or “If you ask me to hold your drink, I will drink it”¹. So why would I want to be privy to this kind of stuff all across the web? Do I really have to know what specific type of Levi’s jeans my friend chose to “like” on the Levi’s website? No, not really. If I really wanted to know, I could just, you know, do it the old school way and ask him or her instead.

I already have enough qualms about how addicted to Facebook my generation has become over the last few years and how much Facebook has permeated society and created various societal norms that are continually reinforced². This is especially disconcerting when considering that much of Facebook’s recent changes to the platform eliminates previously established privacy settings. Despite Facebook’s claims to the contrary, Facebook is more public now than it ever was before and users need to check through each and every single setting under the “Privacy” tab of their account to make sure they’re not sharing private information with strangers.

I also have a problem with how this new “Instant Personalization Pilot Program” and how all users are automatically opted into sharing personal public information with third party websites such as Microsoft Docs.com, Pandora and Yelp. Sure, public information is fair game, but when your relatively recent privacy changes affected which personal information became public, a lot of users are going to end up sharing information they thought was private. Even if I uncheck the box that says “Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites” I’m told that my friends that participate in this personalization program can still share my public information. So then I have to individually block the applications for the third party websites involved in the personalization program to ensure that my personal information remains, well, personal. Even then I’m not sure I’ve wholly prevented third party websites from accessing my information.

I’m not the only one that thinks the new platform and the personalization program sucks. While I don’t realistically think Senators asking Facebook to reconsider the way they divulge user information to third party websites is going to do anything, it’s definitely a sign that something is amiss when it comes to Facebook’s new features.

1. Both of these are taken directly from what’s currently on my news feed. I’m not making this stuff up. [↩]
2. Wow, my professor was totally right when she said the theories and communication models we studied this semester would be relevant in every day life. Props to her. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

It’s Doppelgänger Week on Facebook (well, more like Doppelgänger Now That It’s Popular It Won’t Go Away on Facebook). Even though I’m not one to have defaults that feature photos of people/objects other than myself, I was curious to see who my celebrity doppelgänger was.

According to MyHeritage’s face recognition software, my doppelgänger is…

Zhang Ziyi, the Chinese actress best known for her roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; House of Flying Daggers; and Memoirs of a Geisha!¹

I don’t think I look that much like her, but apparently MyHeritage does. The biggest difference between me and Ziyi is that she’s 100% Asian while I’m only half. Most people think I don’t even look half-Asian, maybe a quarter, so I’m not sure how accurate MyHeritage’s 97% similarity rating is. I’d absolutely love to have her complexion, though. The girl’s skin is flawless!

1. Photo source: here. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Like most typical students, I waste a lot of my time surfing on Facebook. From writing on my friends’ walls, updating my status, or looking at photos, Facebook is the perfect way to procrastinate for hours on end. There are also a plethora of amusing Facebook groups to join, many of which amuse me to no end. Here are a few of my favorites!

• Calvin and Hobbes Taught Me All There is to Know About Life
  Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite comic strip ever, pretty much anything Calvin and/or Hobbes says is Gospel.
• Fuck This, I’m Going to Hogwarts
  There have been so many times where I’m like, “Okay, real life sucks, time to go to Hogwarts instead.” Wouldn’t it be cool if we were all witches and wizards?!
• You’re Not Wearing Pants! (Concerned Citizens Against Leggings Misuse)
  I hate people that wear leggings or tights as pants. Luckily I’m not the only one! Oh, and for the record: leggings is spelt with a “g” at the end before the “s” and is not spelt “leggins”.
• Disney Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations About Love
  I love Disney, I really do, and I am a firm believer in true love and soulmates and think that one day, my prince will come. But he probably isn’t going to waltz into my life the way a Disney prince waltzes into the life of a Disney princess!
• Enough with the Poking, Let’s Just Have Sex Already!
  Ah, Facebook poke wars. The Facebook “poke” feature is pretty much useless, unless you want to use it as an online flirting tool. In that case, after being poked a few times, it’s time to take things to the next level, don’t you think?

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I have friends from all over the world as a result of moving around different countries growing up. While I have lost touch with many of them, I manage to talk to most of them on a semi-regular basis thanks to various social networking sites, email, and other technologies. Still, it’s hard not to be with all the people I want to be with, but being able to keep in touch has helped a lot.

When I moved from Delaware, USA, to Perth, Australia, I was eleven, and the latest technological development was email. Not everyone I knew had email, and even less knew how to use it¹. Needless to say, I lost touch with all of my friends from Delaware. It’s only been in the last few months that I’ve started reconnecting with them, mostly via Facebook. Most of my friends from high school in both Perth and Chicago use Facebook now (some are using Twitter as well), so that has been immensely helpful in keeping in touch with all my friends.

Facebook and email are what I usually use to keep in touch with my friends that live overseas. For my friends that live in the US, not only do I use Facebook and email, but I also make phone calls a lot as well as send texts. I am the champion of long phone calls, as Roanne can attest to, and I think that a phone call is the next best thing if you can’t see someone in person for a face-to-face conversation. And even though I’m not a fan of texting, if there’s a special circumstance with a particular individual, I’ll break all of my texting rules and happily text away to keep in touch².

Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without all of the various methods of keeping in touch that are available these days. As much as I love to travel, I still like maintaining a connection to all the places I’ve visited and all the people I’ve met, especially those that have had a big impact on my life. Even though I may get a little slack about keeping in touch from time to time, I strive to maintain contact with all of those that are important to me, regardless of distance. After all, since there are so many options of how to keep in touch nowadays, there’s almost no excuse not to!

1. Remember, my friends and I were eleven. And while eleven year olds are coding and such now, that wasn’t the case when I was that age! [↩]
2. I don’t go as far as send texts when I am in the middle of a conversation with someone else, though. I still think that’s ridiculously rude. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.