A letter I wrote to Katie about why I'm still on Facebook

I suppose the new privacy changes implemented by Facebook are concerning. Yes, I'm a Facebook user and yes, I'm aware of Facebook's cavalier attitude towards my personal information; but I also understand that at its heart, Facebook is a marketing tool designed to make money.

No, I've not removed information from my profile for any reason other than to better express who I am to people who are interested. If anything, I've updated and even added to the information there with the express intention to (again) better express who I am to people who are interested. Does it concern me that my email address may fall into unscrupulous hands? From time to time, yes, it does. And am I aware that by being terribly specific about my interests––from the books I read to the TV shows I watch to with whom I've shared romantic relationships––I'm enhancing the ability of marketers to better target me as a consumer? Of that I'm keenly aware. So why do I seem to be choosing to expose myself?

From an early stage in my use of the Internet, I'd been warned about where I put passwords, to whom I give my email address and credit card numbers, etc., because even in the mid to late 1990's, people had learned to take advantage of other people's naivete about those kinds of things. I'm still wary of phishing schemes, pop-ups and digital tiger traps in general.

But a lot of the targeted advertising we see on the Internet is based on keystroke analysis and algorithms that log what links we click on, the pages we visit regularly––everything. The Internet is no longer a place where we can move freely and anonymously: Just because you haven't signed into your Google-based cloud computing account with the name on your Social Security card doesn't mean people who want to advertise to you or people who want your personal information don't have the data they need to target you. The Internet is a panopticon, sort of like Great Britain.

That said, the Internet is playing less and less of a role in my life. While I appreciate the connectedness Facebook offers, that connectedness isn't as satisfying as it used to be, and increasingly I'm coming to see that spending exorbitant amounts of time online isn't as satisfying as it was in the past. I find myself reading more and spending more time with friends. I'm more productive. At some point, I decided that the Internet has its place in my life, but pleasures should be tangible, so I should seek them out in the real world.

Concurrent with that trend is my feeling that the Internet isn't the powerful democratizing force some people claim it is (and for more expansion on that point, I might refer you to "The Myth of Digital Democracy"). I've noticed that the "open forum" quality of the Internet doesn't translate to action in the real world. Take, for example, the iPad: When the iPad was released, Apple put strictures on what applications can and cannot be run on that piece of equipment; and while open source advocates and armchair democrats bitched and moaned in their blogs about what is obviously tyrannical behavior on the part of Apple and the evil Steve Jobs, there's been exactly zero market resistance to the iPad, which has been selling like hotcakes.

My second gripe with the Internet as a whole is the false notion that anyone can have a voice there. Obviously, established blogs and websites get more traffic than amateur blogs; but what I think escapes most observers is just how wide that rift actually is. Sites like ESPN, which is a subsidiary of a huge, multi-national corporation, get hundreds of thousands of hits every day. By contrast, my personal blog––which no doubt contains more incisive observations about society and keener insights into relevant topics than ESPN––is lucky to garner 50 hits when I post something new. The Internet isn't any more efficient or effective a marketplace of ideas than a soapbox in Times Square, and online speech is as subject to branding and corporatism as any other medium.

Facebook was supposed to be some MySpace 2.0. When I first joined, it had the reputation for having more interesting features than MySpace without the SWMs seeking underage females to lock in their basements. And for the most part, it remains that way. It was this eForum that connected real people in a virtual world, and that was cool to us because, you know, it was online and shit. But at the time, we all assumed that Facebook was this innocent place where people could keep in touch and engage in the pithy gossip that constitutes the remainder of the Internet that isn't porn. And this assumption feels like a slap in the face now that we're beginning to appreciate Facebook's modus operendi.