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Open Letter to Facebook
I posted this letter on my Facebook account this morning, in reaction to LJs new features. I know everybody has already ranted about this, but since I posted this letter on Facebook, I figured I'd just repost it here.
Some content of the letter has been changed, to protect my anonymity.
(NB: Note how I describe my LJ page as containing "stuff".)
That's it. This has to stop.
Facebook's insidious infestation of the internet is a plague upon the very existence of the web.
Thursday night I'm deleting my Facebook account. If you need to contact me, my e-mail is XXX . Please use that for any future communication with me.
If you're wondering, this decision has been months in the making, but one very specific development occured while I was sleeping that was the impetus for this act.
I have a LiveJournal account on which I post stuff. This stuff is not stuff I want everybody, their grandmother, my professors, and people I haven't talked to since elementry school looking at. I'm part of several specific communities over there, I have a bunch of internet friends through LJ, and in fact am meeting with some of them this weekend at DragonCon. I am not registered under my real name there, I am registered under a screenname.
Remember screennames? Those things we used before the internet lost any semblence of anonymity that it once clung to?
Well, as of this morning, LJ has allowed Facebook and Twitter access to its site and its users accounts. No problem, right? Just set your privacy settings so that Facebook can't get in.
The problem is, I logged into LJ this morning, without being logged into Facebook, and my LJ account knew who I was on Facebook. This is unacceptable. This is ridiculous. The internet that I belong to is anonymous, is insane, but is completely filled with unfettered discussion about whatever topic you want to discuss, without having an effect on your actual, real life.
Now, it may seem like I should be protesting LJ for this. But, 1.] I'm much more involved in LJ than I am Facebook., and 2.], more significantly, this is happening all over the internet. I go and read Cracked.com in the morning: it asks me if I want to "like" the article on my Facebook page. I read an article on Drudge Report: same thing. What's the next step? I visit a pronography site and it asks if I would like to share this with all my Friends?
This is bull. This has to stop. Facebook has become this behemooth, this kraken, with its tentacles raping the rest of my internet. My internet was about anonymity. My internet was about discussing things you might *never* discuss with people face-to-face. It was about the free and open exchange of ideas, even if you KNEW those ideas would be immediately met with scorn and disdain in real life. And THAT is what made it a great place. THAT anonymity is exactly what made the internet the place it is today.
Well, maybe not the place it is today. Today, the internet has been perverted (ironic turn-of-phrase, since it seems to be getting more and more family friendly). It's been twisted into...what? Another extension of my real life? Why the hell would I want that? Why in the hell would I want to digitize my real life? Because that's what Facebook does, you realize. It takes your real life, filters it through the computer screen, and feeds it back to you. At least what we used to read on the computer screen was relegated to the computer screen. Now everything is starting to bleed together; the lines between reality and virtual reality are gone. Social networking? Social networking is *detatched* networking, is *disconnected* networking. You know, I would have thought I'd be the last one to complain about the loss of emotional connections and all that warm and fuzzy crap, but come on! That's what Facebook does! It relegates your actual, real, emotional life and relationships to the same place that people get their quick pornography fix, get into arguments with Tea Partiers, and look at cheap animated gifs of kittens having tea. Is that REALLY the place you want to associate your relationships with?
So that's it. I'm done with Facebook. I'm done with having my name on the internet, with outsourcing my personal relationships to a machine. And I'm using that machine for the open and free exchange of ideas, behind the honesty-inspiring veil of anonymity.
Once again, if you need to contact me, my e-mail is XXX .
Cheers,
-Amuly
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Actually, you can on some sites... *hides*
Bravo for you for writing that letter!
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This is our haven here, and Facebook is like Big Brother.
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It's a huge pain in the ass, but I'm taking a stand, damn it!
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