Staying on Facebook?

It seems like a lot of people are upset with the fact that Facebook allowed a company to access and use a lot of users personal data.

This was done by a firm that was hired to help a presidential campaign and the problem is that they used one users consent to harvest the data of many non-consenters from what I can tell.

First, you shouldn't consent to letting someone access your personal information.  A lot of apps ask for these permissions as you do meaningless surveys and profiles, which want two things form you.

First to keep you on their site as they show you ad after ad.

Second to collect usable and sellable data about you.

The second one has been going on forever, at least since advertising companies have existed, but it has gotten more and more sophisticated as so much more is on-line.

There is a movement to delete Facebook accounts and maybe it will catch on, but I suspect not, unless something is readily available to take its place.

We did have some on-line communities before Facebook and they had some degree of success.

In fact they seemed to get popular and burn out relatively quickly and when I first heard of Facebook I sort of expected the same behavior, but I was wrong, it lasted.

It clearly provided a better experience than say "My Space" or AOL forums, and I think it simply was so very easy and as opposed to the earlier apps, it was your real friends and relatives as opposed to a bunch of somewhat nerdy strangers.

The previous sites let you join forums or communities that consisted of people who may have shared an interest with you but who you didn't know.

Sometimes you became friendly with that group and I actually went to a gathering of a group I used to participate in quite a while ago.

However on Facebook you see people you already know and you start to form groups based on pre-existing connections.

It was this sense of instant belonging that helped it a lot, in my opinion, and the connections with family and friends is going to be hard to replace, so I suspect it will recover, at least until an alternative comes along that does it as well or better.

I'm planning to stay.