Facebook : Java Glossary

Facebook is the greatest time-waster since email. It works roughly the same way, by bombarding the user with trivia, but by removing much of the SPAM, it convinces him he must respond to all of it.

The function of Facebook is to make it easier for advertisers to exploit customers. It is a place where lambs can present themselves for fleecing and slaughter. It collects information on everything people say, do and look at and sell it to advertisers. Once you have joined, you can’t resign. You can deactivate but that does nothing. You still get spam. Other people can still see everything you have written so far. You can’t get them to remove you from the system and erase the information they have collected about you.

Facebook is a sort of communal electronic refrigerator where you can post notes, photos, lists of what you like, notes on what you have been doing etc. It has proved popular with university students for social interaction. It makes its money from ads. You can use it free. Facebook describes itself as a social utility that connects you with the people around you. Facebook is made up of many networks, each based around a workplace, region, high school or college. You can use Facebook to:

• Share information with people you know.
• See what’s going on with your friends.
• Look up people around you.

Facebook is like straight jacket with 200 little special purpose pockets. I find it revolting. People who use Facebook are the sort who deliberately put crumbs in their bed.

Be careful what you write on your wall, especially about other people. It becomes public knowledge. Use your mail for personal information. Don’t bore your friends to death with trivial events, e.g. I am making dinner, I am eating a banana…

It is unwise to accept a friend request from anyone you do not know.

Beware that anything you post on Facebook, Facebook owns. When you sign up, you hand over the right, for example, to use your photos and movies to sell hemorrhoid cream, in perpetuity, even after you close you account! They have the right to sell that all your photos, movies and text to anyone for any purpose. They have the right to feature you in a TV series called Biggest Assholes on the Net using material from you Facebook page to prove it.

Facebook collects information about your posts from other sites, nothing to do with Facebook and summarises them on your Facebook page.

The wall is an area where incoming messages to you are posted for all your friends to see. It is sort of like letting people put postcards on your fridge.

Facebook will send you email messages from time to time. You must respond to or they will cancel your account. To keep it alive, it might be wise to check in at least once a month.

Facebook is designed to be addictive and to waste incredible amounts of time. It will harm your relationships by sucking up time. It is all but impossible to delete your Facebook account. With hours of effort, you can deactivate your account, but tons of Facebook spam will continue to flow.

I detest Facebook. It is the anti-Internet. It is the dumbing down of the Internet. It is its own little universe cut off from the rest of the Internet — the antithesis of interconnectivity. That is a step backwards. It is run by people without conscience or sense of right and wrong. It puts too much control in the hands of immature twits like Mark Zuckerberg. It has become a single point of failure — far too many eggs in one basket. Mostly it is nothing but time wasting on a massive scale. The effects on productivity are far worse than heroin, cocaine and meth combined. The only serious thing good I can say about it is that people living in the third world have used it to help topple dictators.

Another major problem with Facebook it is centralises communication, exactly what the Internet worked to avoid. This means the Facebook executives can behave like dictators and meddle, ban, censor, sell with undue power. It is only a matter of time until the owners or future owners abuse that absolute power. It also provides a central point for a corrupt government to censor or sell a corporate agenda or war etc. The user agreement gives them the right to censor you or disappear you and everything you ever said. They don’t even have to give you that material to use elsewhere.

Facebook has no sense of privacy. It embeds your image in porn sites; it recalls what you have been looking at and requests similar information from other sites. Presume anything you do while logged on to Facebook will be known by every site that supports Facebook.

Facebook is fundamentally flawed. If you allow people to become your friends, you are effectively giving away your private data to all the websites they visit. If you refuse to friend people, then there is not much point to Facebook.

Facebook can be used against you. By harvesting the names of your relatives and friends, the bad guys can pin point exactly who you are, even if your name is John Jones. Further, they can send you spam that look like a recommendation from one of your friends or relatives. Advertisers can use the pages to harvest likely customers. Unless you are very careful, the entire world can view your pages including sexual predators and whackos of all sorts. Many teens are dropping out of Facebook because of privacy concerns, especially parents and grandparents listening in on everything.

The Purpose of Facebook

Facebook is not a service for its subscribers. Its purpose is to sell people stuff without regard to their welfare. For example, they deliberately interrupt and distract to make subscribers attend to ads. As a secondary goal, they trick people into revealing information about themselves useful to advertisers. Facebook subscribers are sheep lining up to be shorn. Why would you want to hang out with sheep?

Fake News

Many people use Facebook as their only source of news. This is a silly thing to do since the news on Facebook is fake news, just rumours made up by subscribers and political parties. You should treat it is entertaining fiction, like supermarket tabloids.

Cancelling

Facebook sells your personal information to corporations, political parties and foreign countries. Many people are fed up with this and are canceling their Facebook accounts:

1. Look up settings in help.
2. Click privacy settings
3. Click General at the top of the left column.
4. Choose Manage your account and then scroll down to click Deactivate your account.