I registered at Facebook after several weeks of pressure from my friends, Facebook is the place everyone just has to be. It’s where you keep in touch with friends, find back the lost ones from times gone by, keep the world informed about where you are, what you’re doing and whether or not someone is at the same place doing the same thing as you. Facebook knows everything about you - how good is that?

I’ve been there for about a few months, I think, and I’ve found all the friends from times gone by, rejected some of them because there’s a reason I didn’t stay in touch, accepted some because I wanted to stay in touch but life got in my way, sent a bunch of messages with friends I usually would have met for a cup of coffee, received and answered the required “Hi, how are you and what are you doing nowadays?“-messages from people I haven’t seen in a while, sent the same one back and kept my profile updated with my status, how to contact me and where I am. Now what?

I can’t think of any more people I could ad to my friends list, who by the way contain allot of people I would never call friends, I don’t think it’s interesting to send a message saying “Hi, I’m still doing fine and I’m still where I was 2 weeks ago, how about you?“, I don’t think anyone is actually reading my status or even care about it, just as I don’t really read or care about others status.

Some of my friends is complaining that Facebook is taking up too much of their time, while I am unable to understand what that time is used on. Nothing exciting is happening on Facebook, unless you think reading a long list of which movies other people have seen, keep track of who’s dating who and see pictures of your friends being totally drunk is exciting.

Some of my friends have over 200 people on their friends list. Who knows that many people? They ad everyone they’ve ever met, no matter who short the meeting was. “I passed you on the street the other day, can I ad you to my friends list?” What I do find strange about this, is that those who ad most random people to their friends list seems to be those who ad most information about themselves. Do they really want people who are total strangers to know their phone number, home address and a list of everyone they’ve ever met the last 10 years?

I am one of those boring people who doesn’t share much information about myself in Facebook. But by getting access to most of my friends’ profiles, you can find out their full name, current (and former) address, phone number, relationship status, sexual preferences (homo/hetero/bi), pictures, birth date, political and religious views, educational and employment history, email, IM contact info, website, leisure activities, interests, favourite music, books and movies, what groups and networks they belong to and who their friends, family, former and present partner is, what network their friends belong to, their social time-line and how people know each other. Why do people want to share all that information with strangers? Even those who knows that everything published online is there for ever.

Facebook also allows my friends to share information about me, without my consent. They can upload pictures of me, tag them with my name and share them with the rest of the world. If I have a profile myself, the tag will display a link to it. If not, it will still display my full name. Notes can be written, again tagged with my full name and a link to my profile if I have one. Now, I do know that if anyone wanted to share information about me, they could just as well make a website. That’s not the point here. Facebook is making it easy and more likely. None of my friends would bother to make a website only to share information about others, but many of them doesn’t think that I might not like being “shared” on Facebook either. They’re not doing it to be mean, they just can’t see that my limits for what I wish to share is not the same as theirs. And Facebook makes it accepted to just ignore any limit I may have.

I am far from paranoid. But I still don’t want all that information about myself stored and shared like Facebook does (if you let it), and by reading all that information about my friends, you can find out quite allot about me too. Now, I don’t feel I have anything to hide from anyone, at least not anything that can be found trough Facebook. So what don’t I like about Facebook?

From their terms of use:

This Site is intended solely for users who are thirteen (13) years of age or older, and users of the Site who are under 18 who are currently in high school or college.

In other words, a 13-year-old can share all this information about herself. That concerns me allot more. Now, I still not paranoid. I don’t think there are many pedophiles on Facebook searching for 13 year old girls to abuse her. I’m sure there are some, but they would find a girl anyway. What bothers me more is how they share information about themselves without being able to be critical about what information is suitable and what is not, and again the fact that everything shared on the Internet remains available for everyone with knowledge about how to find it.

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Said in with more understandable words: anything you share in Facebook, the owners of Facebook can do with as they want.

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

So you really can’t ever change your mind. If you no longer wish to use Facebook for whatever reason, you’re not even allowed delete your own profile. You can deactivate it, but never delete it. How long is a deactivated profile stored? Who has access to it? What is the information shared there used for?

Maybe I’m just strange, it wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe I’m old-fashioned too. I just don’t get why something like Facebook is needed. If you wanted to find back old friends, it’s not really that hard even without Facebook. And Facebook is the biggest collection of information about civil people we know of - what is the information used for, and by who?