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PROPRIETORS OF OUR PRIVACY 
Giving Facebook Too Much Face
 By Joey Grihalva
t the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California, Mark Zuckerberg andhis team held a press event on October 6, 2010 to introduce some new tools:Download Your Information, a feature that allows users to transfer their data in a.zip file and a revamped version of Facebook Groups that will allow group chats,e-mail lists and document sharing.Zuckerberg thinks these things will address “the biggest problems withsocial networking.”I disagree. The biggest problem with social networking these days is, well,social networking. Let me explain.
The Obvious
Facebook is the greatest time-suck of all time.
The Scary 
I excitedly joined Facebook in Spring 2005 when it was a fun and easy way to stay in touch with friends from high school and an innovative way to connect with new friends at college. It was simple: no Status Updates, no News Feeds, noadvertisements, no fan pages, and definitely no parents.Zuckerberg’s dorm room start-up started to slide in my eyes when it became a highly profitable company, given that the cornerstone of any for-profitcompany is expansion. In Facebook’s case, it began with high school kids and before you knew it your grandmother had a page.Facebook kept adding new ways for us to share our lives and spend moretime on their site. A number of these changes were met with resistance, yetFacebook continues to grow—there are currently over 500 million members.For all the press releases and posturing, security and user satisfaction havenever been serious priorities at Facebook. And we have no reason to expect their
 
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 behavior will change. The
Time Magazine
article “How Facebook is RedefiningPrivacy” by Dan Fletcher from May 2010 makes it pretty clear that the modusoperandi at Facebook is to get us sharing as much as humanly possible, and thensome.By playing privacy games with its users, Facebook has set itself up as a freeBig Brother service for our governments. If you are like me and you disagree withthe state on a number of issues, you have to watch what you say online. Facebook  will give your information to anyone, be it corrupt capitalists or their enablers inthe government. I hate having to jump out of the way when someone pulls out adigital camera at an anarchist book fair, but I might.
The Subtle
 We have essentially become our own paparazzi and this is having asignificant cultural impact. Ashley Parker briefly touches on this phenomenon in her
 New York Times Magazine
article “All the Obama 20-Sometings,” mentioning that the young folksin the Obama Administration have to be extra guarded in their personal lives soas not to embarrass their bosses in the White House.Professional people, and those aspiring to work in a professional setting,can not afford to dance on top of a table at a house party or make out with a co- worker at a nightclub for fear that the visual evidence will end up on someone’sFacebook page. In this way the site has slowly but surely contributed to a decay of  wild abandon in my generation.Then there’s the flip side of that coin. As the shallow and desperate among us become more aware of Facebook’srole as a pseudo-media outlet, some see an opportunity for temporary celebrity. Along with YouTube, Facebook has helped develop what some are calling a“performative culture.” Think of that person who jumps into your pictures and videos, or broadcasts every detail of their life via a steady stream of StatusUpdates, Wall Posts and poorly written Notes.
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