I’m not overly happy about what’s been happening with different social media. I don’t think a lot of people are, but in case there’s confusion, let me spell it out: Facebook, Google Plus, etc. are in the advertising business. They are not providing these social media outlets for free: you are their product. They are selling your personal information to advertisers, and the advertisers are their customers.
Originally, I didn’t really have a problem with that. They provided a service, and people did benefit from them. What’s set me off, however, is that Facebook in particular has been getting very aggressive with their “you are the product” mentality. Even if you have platform applications disabled, your news feed is continually spammed with junk from applications you have no interest in, and an increasing number of publishers are requiring you give access to their platform app in order to read a link that’s been posted on Facebook. This poses a problem: when you give access to the platform app, you give them full access to all of the information you’ve put on Facebook. You are giving Yahoo your name, your address, your telephone number, and complete access to all of your friends’ public information by clicking on that link. This is bad. Especially when you consider that the introduction of Timeline is a marketing ploy intended to trick you into adding even more personal information on your Facebook page.
They have become evil. Well, in some ways they always were evil… but they have crossed the line. I value my privacy.
Now, of course, nobody uses Google+, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that site is any better… you’re still their product, and their advertisers are their customers. The same goes for every social media site… they provide the service for “free” because it gets users online, and they sell their users to their advertisers.
As far as Facebook goes, not a lot will change… for a while now, I’ve been reticent about posting stuff that really matters there. They are known to filter content that gets posted, and I don’t want their advertisers to get to know me very well. I’ll continue to post mindless drivel like lolcats on Facebook, but here is where I’ll be posting important stuff. That means, of course, that posts on this site will not be a daily occurrence.
I don’t expect that most of my friends will bother to check here very often, and that’s fine. But if you’re so inclined, here is where you’ll find my musings on the direction the world is going in, and on life in general. 
