Why I don’t do Facebook

I DON’T do Facebook.

I will not be your “friend,” and I will certainly not sign up for a Facebook account simply “to connect” with anyone. Nor will I put the little “f” logo and a link back to Facebook anywhere on my blog.

Up until now, my resistance has been visceral.

I don’t like Facebook because I find it insipid—mediocre in concept, design and execution. I also question the wisdom of encouraging people to post private information on public pages without warning them that this is exactly what excites stalkers, burglars and other unsavory characters that prowl the Internet. But mostly, I resent being pressed to sign up for a service simply to get at the content inside that isn’t even generated by Facebook. Why should anyone get a free ride on data that I volunteer?

And one big free ride is what Facebook has been getting from everyone who has signed up, all 500 million of you, according to the latest statistics. Companies that are too lazy to set up their own Web sites and use Facebook instead to post information about themselves also fuel the social networking site’s growth.

Unfortunately, the free ride that Facebook continues to enjoy exacts a heavy price that isn’t immediately apparent, especially given the company’s subterfuge of embracing openness.

On his Facebook page, the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says: “I’m trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share.” You can almost read the thought balloon that adds “…as long as they go through Facebook.”

Writing in the Scientific American, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, argues that far from encouraging openness, social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn threaten the true democratic nature of the Web.

“The World Wide Web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990,” writes Berners-Lee, on the 20th anniversary of the first Web page. “It consisted of one Web site and one browser, which happened to be on the same computer. The simple setup demonstrated a profound concept: that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere. In this spirit, the Web spread quickly from the grassroots up. Today, at its 20th anniversary, the Web is thoroughly integrated into our daily lives. We take it for granted, expecting it to ‘be there’ at any instant, like electricity.”

But some of the Web’s most successful inhabitants have begun chipping away at the egalitarian principles that have made the Web such a powerful and ubiquitous tool, Berners-Lee says.

“Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web…

“Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster and others typically provide value by capturing information as you enter it: your birthday, your e-mail address, your likes, and links indicating who is friends with whom and who is in which photograph. The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service—but only within their sites. Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site. Each site is a silo, walled off from the others. Yes, your site’s pages are on the Web, but your data are not. You can access a Web page about a list of people you have created in one site, but you cannot send that list, or items from it, to another site.”

He cautions: “If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smart phones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides.”

It’s a warning well worth heeding, the next time you update your Facebook status. -Ching Wong, Manila Standard Today