Click here to delete your facebook account or read below to find out why you should delete it.
At first thoughts you might wonder why I'm not writing specifically about cameras or photography in this post. I am but it's more about copyright of your images and text that I'm concerned about.
Everything published online is not really public domain but on the other hand it is public domain. It's not public domain insofar as the creator owns the copyright but as there's bugger all you can do about somebody copying and using your work without attribution then it is public domain. Sure - a big company might bully somebody over something stupid like a hyperlinked image from their own website but if the company hasn't got a presence in the area in which the individual lives then even they are out of luck. If I was a company called Mega Acme and somebody in Ungabungaland copied my entire website and posted it as MegaAcmeOfUngabungaland.com then there's nothing I could do about it if I did not have a trading presence in Ungabungaland. It would involve international lawyers etc all trying to track down somebody who's most likely living in a grass hut and using a local school to put up the website. What am I as Mega Acme going to do? Repossess his grass hut? Send him to jail where he'll get better food and living conditions than when he was living in his grass hut? There's no conceivable financial benefit in bothering although some large corporations might attempt just out of sheer malice.
The crux of the matter is that Facebook seems to lay claims to your data - every scrap of data on their servers that is authored by you is owned by them. Think of it as rent. You're not paying to use their services so they can be expected to make money out of your activity somehow. Facebook has to make money in order to survive.
I have not had a Facebook account for a very long time. I think I've been Facebook free since 2010 or 2011. That's an eon in the technological world. I quit mine because I was being stalked by a psychopath. I am still being stalked by a psychopath but aside from reading my Twitter feed about what I had for breakfast, my Foursquare feed about vaguely where I am (when I feel like posting) or my blogs about photography or travel photography on which there is no usable personal information, I am much more in control of what's viewable. Facebook has all kinds of loopholes and changes they make to their security settings lets people see all the data you thought was private. Not to mention the fact that Facebook has availed itself of the right to publish anything you consider personal.
Imagine for a moment that you were in university and went to a drag party in drag and your friends posted the photos on Facebook and set the security so that only people present at the party were able to see them. Then fast forward a few years when you're working as a security consultant when Facebook suddenly sees your drag photo and decides it would look good advertising Facebook to a more diverse audience. Instantly your shameful drag photo is public and your boss can see it - your friends and family can see it. Bang goes your chance of further promotion and you're more likely to be eased out of the company because the company now views you as a blackmail risk.
Unless you have a PRESSING reason to maintain Facebook then I strongly urge you to use this link and delete the perishing thing. Cleanse your life of the foulness of Facebook. Make sure your photos are yours and not owned by Facebook. For further reading on this matter, I recommend this link from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-reasons-to-delete-your-facebook-account-2010-5
Clicked on your link from my site. Thanks for visiting my site. I haven't been off facebook as long as you but it's been a year and I still have no desire to return. It is scary to think of how much facebook has over us and what they can use because we posted it.
ReplyDeleteI wish more people would learn and be aware of what they can do. I quit not because of psycho stalkers. Thankfully, I don't have any online. I quit cause it was becoming a nasty habit and was finding myself on it way too much. I know focus on more important things, like blogging and writing.
Keep spreading the word and make others realize how bad facebook really is.
pitweston
Thanks for your comment and thanks for letting me link my site from yours. I wish I'd put a direct link to the post rather than a link to the site. It would have made more sense.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is one of those good ideas that come along and eventually morph into the most hideous monstrosity ever. Lenin's idea was for a more equal society but that got usurped and ended up with a society where some were more equal than others and with horrendous human rights abuses that never happened under the Tsars. Facebook is one of those and I'm sure that between Google and Facebook, the NSA knows everything from what we think to what we say and what we eat, where we go, who our friends are etc.