Saturday, October 1, 2011

This is A Bad Idea

Okay, so those of you who are familiar with Facebook, explain this to me. There are these cute little quiz or query things out there, letting me know, for example, who may have viewed my profile or what my Facebook grade might be.

Recently, they've added this new wrinkle: They want to post to Facebook "as me."

Not kosher, Facebook. Not at all.

And I don't even really know what this means. What, pray tell, are they going to post to my profile "as me?" Do I get pre-approval of what they want to post? Are they just going to post the result of the quiz or query, or are they, fifty years from now, going to be posting crap to my profile, totally unrelated to the stuff for which I originally gave them permission?

Until I know, my answer is no, no, and no.

I know this is an age of oversharing. Call me an old fart if you like. But I post enough stupid stuff to the Internet without third parties doing it as a proxy just because I gave them permission. That these things seem to be proliferating must mean that either they're not pernicious or that people are so used to giving up what privacy they've got left they don't mind if someone else takes over the onerous duty of regular Facebook postings. I'd like to have faith in humanity that it's the former, but in all truth it's probably the latter.

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