Saturday, June 25, 2011

linked out

Today is a day that should have been a while ago. Almost a year back I was for the first time seriously contemplating the course of action I took today. Back then, I was dithering, reconsidering and eventually failing to pull through. Today, with unlikely decisiveness, I did what needed doing. With just a few clicks, I deleted me LinkedIn account. With even fewer clicks – though they were preceded by an internet search and followed by a bit of typing – I bailed from Facebook. I'm not socially networked anymore.

That I had been at all is something I can't convincingly explain. It's not exactly my nature to follow the herd. Friendster passed me by unnoticed. I was never on MySpace or the virtual kindergarten playground. I had repeatedly refused membership at Hi5, despite invitations from people I strongly cared about. Then, four years ago and out of nowhere, I got sucked into Facebook. A couple of years later, I linked myself in without anyone's prompting me, but I never fully understood what the buzz was about.

A year ago, when I didn't find the strength to go all the way, I trimmed my friends list to people I would call good friends in real life. The next morning, I had an email in my inbox from an acquaintance asking me why I had defriended her. "Did I offend you with something I said?" she asked. With mumbled apologies, I added her back and stumbled on.

Yesterday, I read in the paper that there is now in London a company that offers social networking concierge services. Not quite knowing what that's supposed to mean, I read on. Turns out that – who'd have thought? – advertising your holiday abroad to the whole world is not a good idea, especially if you have a house full of nice things. The company thus proposes to post engineered updates to clients' profiles in an attempt to confuse and deter burglars.

Think about this for a minute. The concern is that too much information exposes your privacy. Instead of stopping the flood of updates, you add to it. How about just cutting it? Because if you mix fake and real updates, how are your friends gonna know? And if they already know, you don't need to post at all. (This all is besides the dubious value of posting an invented piano lesson in your living room while you also upload photos of yourself on the beach in Ibiza.)

The story is unrelated to my situation. I kept a tight lid on my bucket of friends and I always updated my privacy settings to the strictest possible value whenever Facebook diluted their standards again. But it made me stop and question the status quo, and I realized what a pile of crap Facebook and LinkedIn are. I'm so glad I'm out.

1 comment:

Dee said...

why do they keep changing their standards of privacy? I can't keep up.
LinkedIn has never done anything for me either.
Now I have an account with a site that is supposed to keep tabs on all my sites. But I never remember to check it.
I need to see real people in real time.