It’s the end of the web as we know it
When you own a domain you’re a first class citizen of the web. A householder and landowner. What you can do on your own website is only very broadly constrained by law and convention. You can post the content you like. You can run the software you want, including software you’ve written or customised yourself. And you can design it to look the way you want. If you’re paying for a web hosting service and you don’t like it (or they don’t like you) you can pack up your site and move it to another host. Your URLs will stay the same and so your visitors won’t notice. You get a great deal of freedom in return for the cost of running your own site. Your site could still be there in a decade’s time, possibly even in a century.
If you use a paid-for web service at someone else’s domain you’re a tenant. A second class citizen. You don’t have much control. You’ll probably have to live with your landlord’s furniture and decoration and a restrictive set of rules. Your content will only exist at these URLs for as long as you keep paying the same people that monthly fee and for as long as your provider stays in business. Experience tells me that this isn’t very long. As a paying customer you’ll have a few rights under your contract but they probably won’t amount to very much. When you leave you’ll probably be able to get your data back in a useful format but when you put it back on the web somewhere else you’ll lose all your inbound links, search engine rankings and many of your visitors. This kind of service seems like a good deal until the day you need to move.
When you use a free web service you’re the underclass. At best you’re a guest. At worst you’re a beggar, couchsurfing the web and scavenging for crumbs. It’s a cliche but it’s worth repeating: if you’re not paying for it you’re the product not the customer. Your individual account is probably worth very little to the service provider, so they’ll have no qualms whatsoever with tinkering with the service or even making radical changes in their interests rather than yours. If you don’t like it you’re welcome to leave. You may well not be able to take your content and data with you and even if you can, all your URLs are broken.
The conclusion here should be obvious: if you really care about your site you need to run it on your own domain. You need to own your URLs. You’ll have total control and no-one can take it away from you. You don’t need anyone else. If you put the effort in up front it’ll pay off in the long run.
But it’s no longer that simple.
Anyone who’s ever run a website knows that building the site is one thing, getting people to use it is quite another. The smaller your real-world presence the harder it is. If you’re a national newspaper or a Hollywood star you probably won’t have much trouble getting people to visit your website. If you’re a self-employed plumber or an unknown blogger writing in your spare time it’s considerably harder.
Traffic used to come from three places: the real world (print advertising, business cards, word of mouth, etc.), search engines and inbound links. Whichever field you were in and at whichever level, you were competing against other similar sites on a fairly level playing field.
Social networks have changed all that. Facebook and Twitter now wield enormous power over the web by giving their members ways to find and share information using tools that work in a social context. There’s no obvious way to replicate this power out on the open web of independent websites tied together loosely by links and search engine results.
Not so long ago you had to be on MySpace if you were an up-and-coming band. Now it’s probably Facebook. Either way, your social network presence is more important than your own website.
If you’re an independent photographer looking to get established you probably need to get your pictures on photo sharing sites like Flickr where they can be easily found by millions.
Many of the most valuable conversations around technology and many other fields happen on Twitter. If you’re not there you don’t really exist, especially if you’re just getting started in your field.
You can turn your back on the social networks that matter in your field and be free and independent running your own site on your own domain. But increasingly that freedom is just the freedom to be ignored, the freedom to starve. We need to use social networks to get heard and this forces us into digital serfdom. We give more power to Big Web companies with every tweet and page we post to their networks while hoping to get a bit of traffic and attention back for ourselves. The open web of free and independent websites has never looked so weak.
Perhaps none of this would matter very much if the biggest player of them all — Facebook — wasn’t such a grotesque abuser of its position. Even before announcing Open Graph this week it was pretty clear that Facebook wanted to own everything everyone does online. Facebook currently has 750 million members. If it were a country it’d be the third most populous country in the world, bigger than everyone except China and India. The United States has a mere 312 million people — not even half the size of Facebook.
Facebook’s Open Graph technology allows third-party websites to tell Facebook what people are doing. It extends Facebook’s Like button to include any action that the site owners think might be interesting to Facebook. Play a song and your music streaming site tells Facebook what you’ve played. Read a newspaper article and Facebook knows what you’ve read. LOL at a lolcat and your LOL gets logged for all time on your indelible activity record. Facebook calls this “frictionless sharing”, which is their euphemism for silent total surveillance. Once you’ve signed up for this (and it is optional, at least for now) you don’t need to do anything else to “share” your activity with Facebook. It’s completely automatic.
Site owners and developers are lapping it up. Hosting company Heroku posted this incredible tweet the day after Open Graph was announced:
Huge Open Graph momentum with social devs, we’ve seen more than 33,800 new Facebook apps in last 24 hours #f8
Yes, that’s nearly 34,000 new Facebook apps created in one day by customers of just one hosting company. Astonishing numbers.
At least Facebook is up front about Social Graph. Facebook’s abuse of its Like button to invade people’s privacy is much less publicised. We all think we know how it works. We’re on a website reading an interesting page and we click the Like button. A link to the page gets posted to our wall for our friends to see and Facebook keeps this data and data about who clicks on it to help it to sell advertising. So much so predictable.
What most people don’t know is that the Like button tracks your browsing history. Every time you visit a web page that displays the Like button Facebook logs that data in your account. It doesn’t put anything on your wall but it knows where you’ve been. This even happens if you log out of Facebook. Like buttons are pretty much ubiquitous on mainstream websites so every time you visit one you’re doing some frictionless sharing. Did you opt in to this? Only by registering your Facebook account in the first place. Can you turn it off? Only by deleting your account.
This is where I draw the line. I’m well aware that everything we do online and many of the things we do in the real world creates a data shadow — a digital record of our actions. If you carry a mobile phone your location is continually recorded by your phone company. If you’re suspected of a crime or go missing then this data will be handed to the police. Most of us know this and choose to use mobile phones anyway. We know that when we buy things that transaction is recored by our bank and the shop unless we’re using cash. We know that our computers and our broadband providers record what we do online. But all these things are predictable and at least arguably necessary to provide the services we use. We might not like these intrusions into our privacy but we like the law enforcement, fraud protection and service quality that they buy us. It’s a compromise that most of us are willing to make.
What Facebook is doing is very different. When it records our activity away from the Facebook site it’s a third party to the deal. It doesn’t need this data to run its own services. Moreover, Facebook’s aggregation and centralisation of data across all our disparate fields of activity is a very different thing from our phone company having our phone data and our bank having our finances. Worst of all, the way Facebook collects and uses our data is both unpredictable and opaque. Its technology and policies move so quickly you’d need to be a technical and legal specialist and spend an inordinate amount of time researching Facebook’s activities on an ongoing basis to have any hope of understanding what they’re doing with your data.
As individuals we can opt out. It’s still possible to live a full life in the developed world and not use social networks. Some people may find it harder than others — missing out on event invitations that are only sent on Facebook, for example. Not being able to see your friends’ photos because they’re only posted to Facebook. Not being able to join conversations on Twitter. But for now there are sufficient alternatives for most of us. As with smoking, it’s easier to not start using the social web than to stop. Once you’ve signed up the cost of leaving increases with every “friend” you make, every photo you post, every tweet you send. That’s why I’m holding out against Google+ for now.
For organisations and business it’s very different. We’re already past the point where social networks can be ignored. If you don’t have a social networking presence your businesses is at a significant disadvantage compared with those that do. It’s where the attention, the traffic and the conversations are. Even public and government services are finding their social networking activities increasingly important. How long before they’re essential?
The promise of the open web looks increasingly uncertain. The technology will continue to exist and improve. It looks like you’ll be able to run your own web server on your own domain for the foreseeable future. But all the things that matter will be controlled and owned by a very small number of Big Web companies. Your identity will be your accounts at Facebook, Google and Twitter, not the domain name you own. You don’t pay Big Web a single penny so it can take away your identity and all your data at any time. The things you can say and do that are likely to be seen and used by any significant number of people will be the things that Facebook, Google and Twitter are happy for you to say and do. You can do what you like on your own website but you’ll probably be shouting into the void.
If I find any answers I’ll post them but right now things are looking bleak. It’s the end of the web as we know it and I feel pretty far from fine.
Wow. Good read. 3 things came to mind: -
1. I need to pay my own domain name the respect it deserves.
2. I want to quit Facebook, Twitter & Flickr.
3. I better do it soon…
This now creates a new level of Service offering for a website; not offering a Facebook Like or Social graphing tool might be seen as a bonus if your trying to promote privacy or respect of peoples data. We might even go as far to start rating a site by its ability to be private and not track your actions.
Im not sure about the metaphor of home ownership and site maintenance though I think its a little confused in its direction but your intentions are at least clear enough.
However here is what I dont understand ; why are people not upset about browsers which will always know where you have been , what you have done and the installation of the wrong plugin ( or a change of user policy by a group ) could mean your browser is collating your social history just as easily as any facebook app.
Great post Adrian – makes me want to quit FB. To what extent do Google Plus and Twitter buttons on websites do the same thing? Are any social networks playing nice anymore?
Nik,
I understand the idea. Privacy as a differentiating feature. I think it’ll end up like ethical investments and fair trade produce at best — a niche market. You might still be able to listen to an internet radio station without sharing every song you listen to with Facebook but you still won’t be able to operate most kinds of businesses or organisations without a serious social media presence.
If you watched the F8 keynote Facebook were very clear that they thought apps that were “social by default” i.e. logging every user’s actions with FB, would be the apps that would succeed in the marketplace. Given that they will get a disproportionate amount of publicity in people’s timelines they’re very likely to be right. I wonder how much space will be left for apps and services that respect people’s privacy.
Browsers collect browsing data for a legitimate purpose (enabling caching, history, etc.) While there are privacy risks around browsers through malice or error their default use is well understood and legitimate.
Interesting article,
the question about FB and all the surveillance is…do they really care about what websites I have visited? What is this information valuable for? Spam? shady marketing campaigns? I don’t really see what is the point on that “surveillance”
Looks like Facebook wants data recording to become their core service. Enough people will even like that idea for a while. I wonder why there are no standards bodies in place that create protocols and formats that can compete and do similar things, but are open for any provider to be in Facebooks place. The same goes for the more typical social network aspects.
I use a different browser for Facebook and Twitter than I do for everything else. It’s good to keep them as much as possible in a walled garden on their own, so all their cookies are kept separate from everything else and it’s harder for them to associate my other browsing with my account.
Do you refrain from using credit cards, Dave, so credit card companies don’t sell your name to third-party marketing firms?
Do you block your phone number from displaying on a recipient’s caller id machine?
Do you not use a cell phone in case you get radiation?
There comes a time when enough is enough, no?
So what we might see is a Browser called that extends cookie and callbacks to invoke walled gardens at the user end, something like the chrome incognito function. Or tabs that work as sandboxes for your browsing experience. This would be an interesting development as you would have a browser whose purpose at the outset would be to act as many tiny browser instances for every website, segregating cookies and formdata for each tab and website visited. It seems the arms race returns ( as it has before ) to the browser , which always knows far more.
It’s sad to see the web reverting to its early days of walled gardens (a la AOL and GeoCities) where what you get to see is pretty much pre-determined. I can’t even trust Google to reliably index the “open web” any more. They too are caught up trying to “optimize my experience” by making assumptions about my preferences. Here’s a newsflash – don’t insult my intelligence by trying to guess what I want.
Interesting read, thanks. I’d ways hoped the web would be and remain an open environment forever. Naive?
I had a conversation two weeks ago with some friends, a couple. One of them is a developer. SAP I think or something. His wife is an artist. I explained that Google forcing people to register on Google+ with their real name and enforcing this removed the one layer between you and your social network which Facebook didn’t have. The ability, through cookies and Gmail, to suddenly tie your real identity and your real name to your email account. And that to your Picasa account. And suddenly, I explained, Google had a really big jigsaw of exactly who you are. When your mother died. When you got married. How old everyone generally is when they get engaged and when they’re thinking about it and suddenly your adverts will become about engagement rings, yes but there’s something else too.
Data. All the data in the entire world about who you are and what you do. With your real identity tied to it.
I thought they were alone and Facebook couldn’t do this. Now I know they can.
But if I told my friends that Facebook could I would no doubt get the same reaction. They don’t care that the biggest commodity will shortly be personal data and that if they think spam is bad now….the targeted advertising coming through your inbox in the future as we all rely on gmail will seem like an avalanche.
There’s just complete and utter disinterest. No one cares. No one can see. And in the meantime our civil liberties, our digital civil liberties are disappearing on the wind for the sake of governments too slow and too stupid because they can’t see either.
In response to the much heralded changes to cookie legislation there have been rumours of the major browser manufacturers making cookie opt-in/out a more obvious browser ‘feature’ to take the onus off sites themselves and give users more of an up-front choice.
I think it’s obvious (especially with Timeline providing them with a retrospective personal resume) that Facebook’s gameplan is to harvest as much info as possible about its users and sell that intelligence on to advertisers.
I genuinely can’t find a reason to like Facebook. It plays on two fundamentally ugly human obsessions: narcissism and voyeurism, and it commoditises that ugliness.
Ryan,
This would be interesting if I thought even 5% of people on the web really know what a cookie is. The whole “arms race” is a naive hope. Even techies have a hard time understanding what’s happening with their data and taking effective countermeasures if necessary to achieve their desired level of privacy and functionality. Forget about anyone else doing anything other than using the defaults.
Andy Cotgreave,
I haven’t looked into exactly how the Google+ and Twitter buttons work.
I assume (but I’ve been wrong about this before!) that Twitter is probably behaving because their corporate goals seem very limited.
Google has got much more data to aggregate and cross-reference for its users.
But whatever the situation today it’s a constantly moving target. It’s very hard to keep track of every change to the major social networks’ services.
All of what you say would be true is there weren’t people like you on the web. Its everything you say and worse, but its also not that bad.
I’d like you to think about what it was like in London in the years after the Great Fire. London was being rapidly developed, in a 50 year period the population trippled from inward migration. The network of streets started to deliver a new urban culture, and at the edge of the culture opportunities for cash took hold. Soon they were central to the experience of the newly urbanised city. They (whoever they are) even had to invent a police force.
People and institutions colonise together, a kind of double-helix of domiciliary emergence. Depending on how you look at it you’ll see warped blankets of commercial dominance, you see cess-pools of degraded culture and you’ll bright rainbows of optimism.
Yes, Google suck, Facebook sucks, twitter suck, having your own real estate sucks. And ultimately someone else always owns the pipes, and they’ll (yes, its they again) play the tune.
But while there are people like you around, the circuit will never close and counter-realities will always exists. I am always reminded of the Samizdat, in Russia where the dissidents created a movement of ‘self-publishing,’ in effect a network of photocopiers, small printing presses and so on. The took books, fact and fiction, made small numbers of copies and passed them on. They were keeping ideas alive, making sure the the circuit couldn’t close.
There are differences of course. But we have more opportunities, more spaces, more networks. Have hope.
loulouk,
For many people Facebook is effectively their email as it’s where they send messages and chat more than their real email account.
And for others, Facebook is literally their email account. They’ve created their @facebook.com email address and can actually receive Internet email in their FB inbox.
[...] like how the web is changing so much and won’t be the same again. I love the coding practices and community of designers [...]
WoW! Science Fiction to Science Fact and Big Brother all rolled into one!
I am not a tech, nor particularly skilled at using the internet media, beyond what I have figured out to write my blog and promote my very small business. You have given me much to think about!
That’s why projects like http://unhosted.org or http://joindiaspora.com needs our support.
Interesting stuff. Could a way round this (rather than the hassle of using an seperate browser for all your FB-related traffic) be to force an incognito window in Chrome for all Facebook-related activity? Or am I being massively naive?
Another one to watch is Thimbl, a distributed microblogging framework (a bit like Twitter) built on top of Unix’s finger daemon.
Very interesting blog and comments. Here’s my suggestion:
In the absence of an international regulatory body why don’t we set up our own.
Ask everyone to register on a new site with the sole purpose of getting as many people as possible signed up against the day when they may be needed. Example – to tell eg Facebook that if they don’t reform we will all move our custom elsewhere (cue in an open social network).
Excellent article; you put words to some thoughts which have been there for a long time now.
Freedom for many is defined by realizing the necessity, which is to obey the power. This gives you room to play within certain boundaries as along as you don’t cross the system.
When does social media become a necessity for a normal life? When do you stop becoming a cyber-citizen because a medium inadvertently restricted you through the TOS of Facebook, Twitter, Google or others?
“…You need to own your URLs. You’ll have total control and no-one can take it away from you. You don’t need anyone else. If you put the effort in up front it’ll pay off in the long run.
But it’s no longer that simple.”
But it never was simple. As you say yourself, you have to “put the effort in up front it’ll pay off in the long run”. Choosing a web host, choosing (and installing) your own software, setting it up, adjusting DNS settings, maintaining the site – this is black arts to most people.
It’s usually the case that first class citizens get the easy life, while the underclass have to work for their bread. On the internet, the opposite is true: the first class citizen has a lot more work to do if they want to enjoy their freedom, while the underclass just has to fill in a CAPTCHA.
People want to write things, put up photos, music, and put it where everyone can get at it: the internet. But we all know what most people will choose when faced with the choice of a Facebook or self-hosting.
So doesn’t it follow that for the open web to be connected, it’s going to need more than hyperlinks? The sharing, notification and interactivity that come as standard in all these corporations’ services have to become as much of a standard as email, HTML, or IP. Authoring has to be easier, not to mention taught.
All of which is an awful lot of effort.
Until G+ supports easy to use real time chat across mobile and desktop people will not come and stay.
On the desk top GTalk require clumsy matching in gMail and scrolls off the screen. I left f
fB for the reasons expressed her but I miss chat and have accepted I cannot expect friends to join and stay till Google address this fatal flaw.
That if why a Federated Social Web needs to be built. That is not easy but it is necessary.
First step: Join the public mailing list
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/#Joining
You may want to support Mozilla’s open web attempts then.
For example, Firefox, Identity, …
I left Facebook over a year ago, I refuse to join Google+ and I’m increasingly wary of Google in general; you’ve pretty much articulated my reasons here.
On being a ‘first class citizen of the web’, though, here’s a thing: I own my own domain, and I use it for my primary email address. And frequently – it’s impossible to tell quite how frequently – legitimate emails I send to people wind up in their spam folders or get marked as suspicious mail. This happens even when I’m replying to a message they sent me; this happens even when I’m sending a message to a Google group of which I am a member. I suspect that part of the issue is simply that I have an email address that doesn’t come from one of the big players.
I have a Gmail account that I use for a bit of work stuff, but given my wariness of Google I want to phase it out and I’m planning a small business website with its own domain. But I’m worried about the prospect of potential clients thinking I haven’t replied to them, if this stuff keeps on happening.
nik butler:
a browser whose purpose at the outset would be to act as many tiny browser instances for every website, segregating cookies and formdata for each tab and website visited
Adrian Short:
Even techies have a hard time understanding what’s happening with their data and taking effective countermeasures
Countermeasures are getting more difficult. Here is an eye-opening look at what goes on when a site you visit uses a “data management platform” to aggregate and unify its view of you (as an advertising target) from multiple sources: And this is on the open Web, not a social walled garden.
worth mentioning, google analytics does this too. and it’s probably on more websites than facebook like buttons. also, you don’t need to opt in to anything to activate google’s version, at least with facebook you have to have an account. with google all you have to do is visit these sites with cookies switched on, something pretty much everyone does without thinking.
In previous comment, WordPress suppressed the URL. Trying one more time. Stack these together with an http in front.
http://www.adopsinsider.com/online-ad-measurement-tracking/
data-management-platforms/
syncing-online-data-to-a-data-management-platform/
FYI on the number of apps created – this may be attributable to the fact that if you enable your account as developer and create an app, you get a sneak preview of the new timeline.
[...] esbarro em novas críticas. Exemplos? Facebook’s new sharing is anything but ‘frictionless’, It’s the end of the web as we know it, Facebook Logout Tracking: Privacy Concerns Arise Over Alleged Cookie Snooping e The New Facebook: [...]
I now pay for email hosting to avoid GMail. Avoiding Google search is getting easier every day as there are at least 3 other quality search engines – my favorite being duckduckgo.com.
For the facebook.com problem there is a simple solution:
echo `facebook.com 127.0.0.1′ >> /etc/hosts
I treat facebook as a virus. It is harsh, but it fixes the problem completely.
I was only on facebook for a about a year when I realized what a gigantic waste of time it was. The main problem of course is that I found myself pumping all kinds of personal data into an uncontrollable black box.
This is a real problem, people need to wake up and stop participating in this self-driven surveillance society that has been created.
The solutions will come with better browser crypto and perhaps new ideas in p2p for psuedo-anonymous social networking.
“Did you opt in to this? Only by registering your Facebook account in the first place. Can you turn it off? Only by deleting your account.”
Actually, a person can log out and then delete his or her cookies. But this is a problem that goes way beyond Facebook — it’s just one of the problems with using proprietary JavaScript. If you want to block unwanted javascript, use the NoScript browser plugin.
One alternative to using facebook is using a federated web of social networks. Each person can host their own instance, or join one they trust, and still communicate with each other. Already, Identi.ca is a microblogging platform which uses the OStatus standard, and has a thriving community there.
It’s a good time make the move to platforms that respect users’ freedoms, before we get stuck.
Great article ! Have a look at Newebe, a distributed social platform I started to work on when I understood how much we are tracked. Every user must host an instance of Newebe at his home. So privacy is safe and you can reuse easily your data.
NB : Newebe can be read as “New Web”.
http://www.newebe.org
https://github.com/gelnior/newebe/wiki
[...] are not shy about taking risks. The additions and changes they are making will have a tremendous impact on the Web. Whether those changes make for a better Web remains to be seen. LD_AddCustomAttr("AdOpt", "1"); [...]
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Excellent article – intelligent, insightful, well-written. Kudos!
As an aid in protecting my web browsing privacy, I use the noscript plugin for the firefox browser. When I first started using it, it was highly educational to see the number of 3rd party cookies being set by most sites. I block most of them. All third party facebook cookies are routinely blocked, as is google-analytics (used by virtually every website – but not yours, I note).
Based on this article, I will be checking your web site frequently. Gotta go – I need to set up the RSS feed for your site.
Great read. That first paragraph really resonates, yet I thing very few people own a domain. It would be nice if there was a root domain system like .com but specifically for individuals to help facilitate this.
[...] citit articolul de … aici … ? This entry was posted in Întrebare: and tagged web end. Bookmark the permalink. [...]
Great write up. It’s such a hard balance at the moment.
I’ve been contemplating turning off my flow of information into Facebook and Twitter for a while. It is such a desirable option to display the content you want to share in the format you want to share it.
The only trade off is the accessibility of audience. Services have made it easy to connect with others that would normally not seek out your content on a daily basis.
One of my constant thoughts is how to get over that hump and share data in my environment in a way that will get friends and family to revisit as often as they do now. Or, just get over it and email them important updates.
Still a ways out, but in the meantime I’m taking back control of bits and pieces that have been scattered around the web over the years. Definitely an interesting process.
Thanks!
It is interesting that so many of us are feeling the same way. I wrote a very similar post today.
I am not ready to cut off facebook just yet, but I am getting close to it. I guess it has not shocked me since I knew what they were doing for the most part… its just a matter of what they will do with it in the near future and more importantly who will it be available to.
Websites are fucking dead –
A manifesto
http://corrupt.ch/websitesarefuckingdead
Adrian,
The web ain’t dead yet.
People use flickr and youtube since there was no easy way to post, share, manage photos and videos before them.
The social chit chat and tweets have typically little content value, and did not exist as such in web sites before social web services. The fact is that the vast majority of the users of these services did not have a real alternative before those services showed up.
Most people who sign up to twitter or facebook and pack it with their stuff would not bother to set up a website or even manage a hosted wordpress site, and you can’t really expect them to.
I do not have active accounts in social services and don’t miss it one bit.
The web is packed full of content, interesting articles, media, information, all of which is out side the social “I am going to see movie X, cool…” nonesensical social chit chat web…
I use the web for work, education and pleasure, and every day read new stuff or re-visit favourite sites, and they are all full with interesting new information.
This article is out there on the web, just as an infinite of other information.
The web is not dead yet.
Cheers,
Nir
I often hear this, that Facebook and Twitter is the grave of normal websites.
It’s just the cycle of things people. Nothing is eternal, not even Facebook or Google will be so you can’t expect websites to be either. Times will change, things will change and every time there will be something new, the important thing is to stay ahead of the curve; I think websites for companies are still their number 1 window of selling and thus, they are necessary for the time being.
Under your analogy, Amazon must be shaking then as people will then shop on Facebook or Google only. Or it’s like saying that why do we need physical stores if you can buy anything online. It’s things that complement, not replace. Same thing with Facebook; it complements, it doesn’t replace. Websites MIGHT die, but so does everything mainstream eventually, look how dead radio is, how dead print/newspaper is, etc.
The funny thing about the Internet it’s that it is indeed one of the few things that isn’t regulated as to what content goes up.
I tried to warning my boss about that before the new Facebook Graph was released… but didn’t find words like you did.
Thanks for spreading your ideas,
François, France.
you don;t have to suse your account,
just use Vidalia
http://www.torproject.org/projects/vidalia.html.en
A very, very interesting read – thanks for the post!
Not trying to defend what they are doing, but maybe this is the way forward for growth in the web.
I mean, google has been collecting our data for years through various methods (google ads etc), and is probably one of the reasons they are one of the biggest search engines out there – they simply know what the user is after, and can provide relevant information based on what the user has done in the past. Without this sort of data capture, could google be as great as they are now? Would they instead need to be surveying each of their users to learn their requirements?
I do, however, agree that this should be a choice of ours – we should know what information is going where, and have the ability to turn it off where and when need-be.
I have never been a fan of facebook, due to the fact that I don’t know where my data is going, and this definitely makes it worse – may be time to quit?
Maybe we just need to wade this growth spurt out, avoiding services that does this sort of thing, and wait until they give us back the control of our privacy. Though, this may never happen.
Just some ideas, and it is great to see what others are thinking!
Sounds like a huge opportunity for social media proxy services.
Great post! So many interesting comments and intelligent people. Thank you all! What a wonderful time we are living!
“That’s why I’m holding out against Google+ for now.”
Yeah – me too.
When you think you have escaped FB, there is still Google who does the same thing…
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who vetts cookies sites want to set.
Another great resource is Project VRM at Harvard:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page
This is an attempt to document all of the apps, services, and movements that put the customer at the center of personal data rather than the company.
Dumped Facebook years ago. It’s a despicable heist of the web and people’s collective attention to real life and things that matter.
Nice post. Just ditched Facebook myself because of this latest round of nonsense.
It is perfectly possible to simply reduce your facebook use … do your personal acitivity elsewhere – I already have whole months where I go off facebook.
That is going to be my exit strategy.
Think I will simply retain facebook for business use. Loving Google + so far. Seem to be less crazy over privacy issues.
People need to retain control … my group – A plea for facebook transparency are having our first “No facebook” day on Saturday 1st October … please pass it on and join us (:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/197884126944504/doc/197887610277489/
[...] piece first appeared on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has done a lot of work on open data activism, including Armchair [...]
Thank you for taking care of this topic and writing this insightful post. Actually there are a lot of alternatives to centralized platforms right on their way. Project Danube, Lockerproject, Unhosted, ownCloud and Diaspora, to name a few. Some of them aim to serve your online identity. If you host these on your own server, your identity will be yours, solely controlled by yourself.
[...] piece first appeared on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has done a lot of work on open data activism, including Armchair [...]
Whats…. “Facebook”?
[...] tweets, the lesser of evils. I found this really interesting article on Adrian Short’s blog: It’s the end of the web as we know it. Putting the exaggeration & frustration aside, it is hard to find fault in his [...]
I don’t use Facebook because I want to, or because I like using it. I use Facebook because everyone I know uses Facebook.
I regularly have to organise events and say I am going to particular events and all of that happens through Facebook events. Until I can use Diaspora to say “I’m attending” to a Facebook event, I will have to keep using Facebook.
Well written and insightful. Thanks mate.
What part of this can’t be circumvented by simply people stopping using Facebook? (It already happened once with MySpace. Can’t see why it shouldn’t again.)
By the way: the web was not egalitarian when the main points of aggregation were personal URLs, because everyone *could* create a website, but many *did not know how*. Predicting doom because people now rely heavily on companies who addressed this deficiency seems at the very least shortsighted. Where is the alternative?
(Note to everyone: that last question was not rhetorical.)
Well written article! The web has been a great tool to bring out the voice of individuals to the world. I don’t think Facebook, Twitter or Google+ can ever stop that. MySpace and Yahoo! were ubiquitous once too! There will be more tech start ups coming to challenge these players once people begin to feel a threat to their privacy.
Well there might be a chance in using BigWeb co. just to promote Your own website and domain. Whatever I rite, film, photo, first of all I place it on my website and only then link it to FB. So i keep all the data to my self,it is still mine and I’m using them when they are using me.
Just my 2 c.
“but when you put it back on the web somewhere else you’ll lose all your inbound links, search engine rankings and many of your visitors.”
NOT SO. A simple Google redirect instruction and some simple HTML and all inbound links and traffic and rankings remain unaffected.
You should learn the subject before you spout inaccurately!
[...] square first seemed on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has finished a lot of work on open information activism, including [...]
If you are using Chrome (as I am), you can follow these steps:
1) Log out of Facebook and manually delete all cookies
2) Go to Facebook’s main page
3) Click on “(wrench) / Tools / Create Application Shortcut…”
4) Edit the new shortcut, adding “–incognito”
5) Use that shortcut *exclusively* to access Facebook
Incognito windows will not save their cookies, nor share them with normal windows. (But they will share them with any other open incognito windows, so don’t visit Facebook and any place you want to remain secret at the same time.)
I’ve been doing these for about a year, but I must admit that I’m also using Facebook less and less, especially now that Google+ is here.
Very interesting read.
Thanks for this clever analysis.
John Lewis,
I was talking about the situation where you move some content from someone else’s hosted service (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) onto your own domain.
Of course you can move your own hosted site from one hosting service to another and set up redirects from the old domain to the new one as long as you control the old one. The problem with the case I mentioned is that you don’t.
Who really cares if Facebook collects your data? Can you give me one compelling reason why I should give a toss?
http://www.thingstodoinbalhamwhenyouredead.com/2011/09/first-world-problems.html
That is the reason why I upgraded my hosts file to keep my browser from accessing Facebook. And it is very easy and can be reverted if I want to see something in the Facebook Moloch.
Here is what helps me keep my privacy:
127.0.0.1 http://www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 http://www.facebook.de
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 api.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 badge.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 app.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 apps.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 de-de.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 blog.facebook.com
I do essentially the same as Andrew, above, in that I mainly use Facebook to share links to my own blog posts. Other than that, I largely use it to keep in touch with real-life friends and family.
So to some extent I agree with Dead In Balham: I have my concerns about privacy, but I’m not convinced that the recent round of Facebook changes are as bad as you are making out.
But mainly I wanted to say, why are you lumping Twitter in with FB in this piece? Twitter have, no doubt, made some mistakes; but I’m not aware of them being accused of any privacy violations. Plus I believe it’s easy enough to get your data out. Certainly there are services like BackUpMyTweets that will help you do do so.
As I see it, Twitter is part of the Open Web. Nothing is hidden there; you can freely link to any tweet, except in the case of private accounts. And a private Twitter account is one of the stranger ideas on the web, in my opinion.
Surely there will be a simple option/setting to not post automatic updates on your timeline/profile?
If not, then that’s wrong.
But if there is, then I don’t see the problem. For ME, personally, if Facebook are going to use the articles I’ve read and the sites I’ve visited to offer me more targeted advertisements, then that’s fine by me. In fact, I see that as a benefit to me.
I have nothing to hide and I like the idea of my online activity being recorded and possibly seeing statistics on what I’ve read/listened to etc. all in one place.
If I’m missing the real point, I’d be happy to reconsider my thoughts, but at the moment I see no real problem with being public on a social network (which is all about sharing). Bare in mind that I previously stated that mandatory automatic updates are wrong – but surely there will be an option to not allow automatic updates (someone correct me if not please).
Just my thoughts.
[...] piece first appeared on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has done a lot of work on open data activism, including Armchair [...]
Martin McCallion,
The main thrust of my concerns is about the dominance of privately-owned social networks in our everyday lives. Twitter doesn’t give me any serious privacy concerns but it is a problem when a private company acts as a utility. You may remember back in the early 1990s when people used private internet services like Compuserve, AOL and MSN. Each of these used its own proprietary “email” service with mutually incompatible addresses. This wasn’t just inconvenient. It meant that if (say) Compuserve booted you as a customer you couldn’t email Compuserve members. We’re going back to that situation again. Twitter is vastly important to many people’s businesses and personal lives but you’ve got no right whatsoever to an account. This isn’t Twitter being evil but it’s the nature of things. We need an internet where meaningful participation isn’t controlled by half a dozen private companies.
[...] is also a theme also taken up by the Guardian in the article, which first appeared on developer Adrian Short’s blog headlined “Why Facebook’s new Open Graph makes us all part of the web [...]
What you have mentioned is very serious issue. . Most people do not know is that the Like button tracks your privacy. Need to be very cautious while interacting in social media.
I am making comments like this all the time, to peers, colleagues etc..
Sad thing is “everyone’s on Facebook” and this habit is hard to break, especially cuz most people ‘built their network there’, and “all my friends are there” .. Two of the most heard comments when you try people to convince the evil Facebook is doing.
I myself can’t even logout and delete my profile, because in my business (web development) I get a lot of clients asking how to market their stuff there, create FB page, get fans, likes etc.. because that’s where their market also is..
Typing this, it sort of reminds me of Internet Explorer. Everyone installed it (or got it installed) “to get on the internet”, now more than 10 years later, and 5 better alternative browsers, a lot of people still stick with their bad habit..
On another note, while I’m considered by lots of people as a Google Fanboy, and certainly don’t question them as I do Facebook, how do they compare when it comes to data retrieval.. ?
[...] piece first appeared on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has done a lot of work on open data activism, including Armchair [...]
how do i ‘like’ this?
[...] It’s the end of the web as we know it (adrianshort.co.uk) [...]
I hear where you’re coming from but I suspect that Facebook is in reality as much led by users’ collective behaviour, as users are by Facebook:-)
[...] piece first appeared on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has done a lot of work on open data activism, including Armchair [...]
Adrian, I must say you are more wrong on “current human nature” than I am.
Current “humans” simply want to display whatever they are, whatever they think, whatever they say and want other people to “obey” them. What I noticed twenty years ago as people becoming more and more “exhibitionist”, have turned out to become “exhibitionist egomaniacs”. They want to inform others so that they can “properly obey” them.
Also, please note that you are wrong on how to call it, by its users it is called “face”, not “facebook”. This thing has become the “face of humanity” – at least a portion of it.
My conclusion is : as long as “face” is hip, people will click on every button it provides and complain that the numbers are not enough to describe their actions.
How long it will stay hip ? Until now, no web thingy has stayed hip longer than 10 years.
[...] = ''; } click hereclick here.It’s About Time We Discussed the Business of IdentityIt’s the end of the web as we know itIt’s About Time We Discussed the Business of IdentityIt’s the end of the web [...]
I never joined Facebook because I saw they had no respect for users’ privacy.
@Alan8 It’s a public social network for sharing things! There are options to share certain things with certain people and to not share things with others. Privacy options are there.
So they’re using your data to offer you targeted ads and making money from that. So what? You’re using their FREE service. And at least that way the ads aren’t as meaningless. I don’t get the bitching.
There are two different topics going on here. The first is the loss of individual control online for small businesses. the second, Open Graph, is a separate issue of privacy.
As far as the presence of a small business online, what you say of needing your own domain is most obviously true. Though I do not agree with your opinion that social networks, such as Facebook, are engulfing the web & dominating businesses. You give them too much credit. Is it wise and advantageous to advertise on Facebook? Yes. Yesterday, people found businesses in phone books. Today, they use Google. Yesterday, businesses put ads in magazines. Today, they put ads on social networks. It is not domination or manipulation, it is merely a shift in advertising.
As far as privacy online, that’s a whole other can of worms that concerns us all.
You say that business owners with websites online who do not use ads on social networks are shouting out into a void. Perhaps that is true. But it is no different than a business (say 10 years ago) putting signs outside his storefront advertising a big sale yet getting hardly any customers because he choose not to list his business in the phone book. That also is shouting out into the void. Social networks are merely a link, a link to connect businesses to their customers. And these such links (in one form or another) have always been essential.
@Tom Hermans Google has always made exporting your data simple and strait forward.
[...] piece first appeared on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has done a lot of work on open data activism, including Armchair [...]
The Fadebook has indeed become the platform for “exhibitionist egomaniacs.” Well put. And I find that the underlying reason for this is that people have an innate desire to be heard. To be found influential. To have an impact on those around them. They want their opinions to count. By exposing themselves on fb they are expressing this desire.
Want to protect your identity from Zuckerberg – everyone’s newest “big brother”? Isolate your usage. Either do as samwyse says and run “-incognito” or perhaps do as I do and run fb in a dedicated browser version – I ONLY use Safari to connect to fb. All other browsing is done using Chrome or FF or IExploder.
Lastly, netdonyms. Create alternate personas and use those to run part of your net life. You ARE different people to different groups. You can separate your real life’s social connections physically; at work you are a separate person from yourself at church where you are a separate person from yourself at home, etc. Each group is physically isolated. Online? You must separate your relationships with different groups – virtually – using alternate personas. Otherwise – you’ve go all your contacts exposed together in one huge bucket and who wants that? Oh yeah, fb does.
Where’s the “Like” button?
[...] of social networking, Adrian Short considers the promise of an open web increasingly uncertain.adrianshort.co.uk This entry was posted in articles and tagged data, facebook, freedom, google, internet, privacy, [...]
@Anonymole What the..? This isn’t the apocalypse. We’re going to be okay.
You make it sound like MZ is sat in a dark room looking through your online activity rubbing his hands together, judging your activity as he carries out his plan to take over the world using your personal data!
Or in reality, the only thing your data is exposed to is a program that will serve up ads thats are targeted to you.
And no one really gives a crap what you’ve been reading or listening to.
@Adrian: Ah, the incompatible systems thing. Yes, I certainly take your point there. (As an aside that’s exactly where instant messaging is: four or five competing, incompatible systems — and one open, standard one (as a further digression, note that Google use the standard and FB use one of the closed ones)).
However, at least both FB and Twitter let you read from and write to their walled gardens via APIs. That’s why there are so many Twitter clients for phones. And one or two FB ones.
As to “the dominance of privately-owned social networks in our everyday lives”, I’ve signed up for Diaspora, and will try it out as soon as they send me an invitation. But I expect to use it, in part, to update FB & Twitter. And think about this: the wires over which we connect to them are also privately owned.
You say, “it is a problem when a private company acts as a utility.” I agree. But they’ve been doing it ever since Thatcher, an for things that are more genuinely natural monopolies, like the railway and water systems.
And, of course, that phone network.
“We need an internet where meaningful participation isn’t controlled by half a dozen private companies.” Again, fair point, and things are currently moving from open more towards closed. But such networks don’t take away the open web; they exist alongside it.
And I still think you’re wrong to put Twitter in the same bucket.
[...] You can read the entire article here: http://blog.adrianshort.co.uk/2011/09/25/its-the-end-of-the-web-as-we-know-it/ [...]
[...] It’s the end of the web as we know it: I keep seeing articles that remind us of the importance of owning our data. Have you noticed how you’re reading this on Climb to the Stars, on my own domain, hosted on my own server, run with my own WordPress installation? Yup. [...]
I have been hearing this about days ago. Whether its true or not (Honestly, it surely is) we can’t deny the fact that many are using facebook (for whatever reasons they have). People’s privacy should and always be THEIR responsibility (by whatever means necessary). The web is like a street, you never know which one of those people you encountered are criminals, pick pockets, etc (some are even dressed in a tuxedo :D ).
Anyways great article. Good job! :D
I am about to ditch Facebook soon, it has gone a step to far about the news feed. I have lost many readers on my blog in the couple of days. Now is twitter more thrusting!
Where’s the facebook like button for this article?
[...] afraid… It’s the end of the web as we know it « Adrian Short. Share this:TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmailPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]
[...] [...]
Great posts and insight. I veered from agreement when you recognized that many other services also track everything you do, in the case of mobile operators – where you physically are – and then tried making the case that Facebook is doing a greater evil.
You say, “We know that our computers and our broadband providers record what we do online. But all these things are predictable and at least arguably necessary to provide the services we use. We might not like these intrusions into our privacy but we like the law enforcement, fraud protection and service quality that they buy us.”
I doubt any of those service monitors are any more predictable or assumed than Facebook. My Internet, Internet browser and phone providers aren’t making a security or privacy policy as readily available or known. I don’t attribute them as predictable in what they do with my data, and they certainly haven’t provided any more law enforcement, fraud protection or service quality based upon what I or the public provided them anymore than social networking companies have.
So, I guess I agree that Facebook is “in the wrong” for monitoring, just not worse than anyone other service that I opt into.
Great article, but there already are some alternatives and they improve fast.
Just look at the unhosted.org specs.
ownCloud.org as alternative to Dropbox, Google Calendar etc.
There will be alternatives and they will be necessary in the future, but not everyone was so lucky to use them early enough…
Sounds like a lot of poor little me here. What you are missing is that having a presence on Facebook and making it your site are not the same thing.
As for the “Like” tracking, you are completely wrong on how to stop it. You need no delete your account. In fact, that could still leave you open to the tracking. The trick is to delete the cookie. No cookie, no tracking.
But in the meantime, if you are from the US complain to your congressman about the privacy issue. If your elsewhere, complain to the appropriate people who make laws. Or better yet, don’t go to Facebook. Delete their cookies and never go there again. Short of that, use a different browser for them. There are plenty of choices.
Stop moaning and become educated.
It’s un-Facebook, un-google, and almost up. My hope is that it *is* what they say it is. Private and space wholly under your control. ::fingers crossed::
Oops!!! Forgot to say: It’s called unthink. Com
Wow. Excellent post. This is so hard to explain the less technological. Facebook is too big to be ignorantly used. It is very unfortunate. Thanks for a well written article. I’ll be keeping this one as Exhibit A.
“Plus I believe it’s easy enough to get your data out. Certainly there are services like BackUpMyTweets that will help you to do so”
I can’t access my Tweets from the first two or three years of using Twitter. I find that highly annoying.
The “value” of Facebook (et al) is not the software platform they provide or their tracking of activities, but it is the userbase – the fact that they have become the “de facto provider” of online social interaction. The value of having a telephone is not that you can call a specific person, but instead that you are tied in to a network that allows you to call anyone, and anyone to call you.
Your friends from school, your co-workers, your family down the street – if they are on facebook, then making those connections is where facebook adds value. To those that say “try real life instead”, well most of the people I interact with on facebook are people I may see in person once a year or less – it’s nice to keep up with what they are doing in the meantime.
Yes, use of social networks is a privacy hole. So is telling your friend what you did yesterday – they can repeat it to others very easily. Facebook just makes the process somewhat more efficient. As the column says, if it’s free, it means your the product, not the customer. Use it as such and you’ll be happier.
[...] piece first appeared on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has done a lot of work on open data activism, including Armchair [...]
I find awfully ironic that I got to read this good article thanks to a retweet.
I put my hand up to help resolve these concerns by developing innovative web tools that achieve scale and *support the open web*.
Internet Explorer is fading into oblivion after failing to respect open standards. Other can too.
[...] چاپ شده در روزنامه اعتماد ۲۸ سپتامبر ۲۰۱۱ و مبتنی بر این مطلب عالی [...]
[...] It’s the end of the web as we know it « Adrian Short "It’s the end of the web as we know it" by @adrianshort http://t.co/aSnnZnxq #openweb via @mpesce (tags: openweb via:packrati.us) [...]
Social media is an evolution of human communication. MySpace, Hi5, Facebook, Google+ are just part of an evolutionary process: They are riddled with imperfections, mistakes, inadequacies yet at the same time they reflect human potential for good and bad in every sense every other technological achievement does.
From my point of view, this is not the end of the web, this is the current web, and there will be others to replace it as long as there a need for it. Addressing most the concerns expressed in this article can be traced back deep in the nature of humanity’s social nature.
[...] It’s the end of the web as we know it « Adrian Short. Tweet Share this:FacebookPrintEmail [...]
Hi,
I think you need to correct your link and comments based on Nik Cubrilovic’s blog. He has also corrected his intial post too after talking to a Facebook engineer.
The offline tracking of your browser is collecting your data for login control, not for collecting data to sell.
http://nikcub.appspot.com/facebook-fixes-logout-issue
“Facebook has changed as much as they can change with the logout issue. They want to retain the ability to track browsers after logout for safety and spam purposes, and they want to be able to log page requests for performance reasons etc. I would still recommend that users clear cookies or use a separate browser, though. I believe Facebook when they describe what these cookies are used for, but that is not a reason to be complacent on privacy issues and to take initiative in remaining safe.
…
I must thank Gregg Stefancik, an engineer at Facebook who reached out (and also left the ‘official’ Facebook response as a comment on the previous post) and who worked with us on this issue. Thank you as well to other Facebook engineers who reached out. On my end Ashkan Soltani and Brian Kennish (author of the excellent disconnect browser plugins that every user should be running) were invaluable with providing tests, advice and additional sets of eyes.”
Great post and very revealing. I don’t care for Facebook very much, but being an online business owner I feel as though it’s an absolute must. I fear being left behind if I opt-out, and will obviously miss out on business should I do so. They’re slowly and surely creating an online dependency, from which none of us will be able to escape!
If it wasn’t for Twitter and Google I would never have read this awesome post….
I’ve been thinking about quitting facebook, but that means I’ll lose touch with hundreds of people I’ve gotten to know through the years. If there was a way to drop facebook but still be in touch with friends from the other side of the world, I’d totally go for that. For now, the +’s of Facebook outweigh the -’s, at least for me.
Great read!
You write that the only way to leave this is to DELETE your account… well, not really, you can only DEACTIVATE it… so FB is still keeping all data… you know… just in case you want to come back. :)
Thanks for the great write-up. At what point do we say, “You know, this social networking stuff is a public good and needs to be treated as such?”
I agree, as soon as you take the internet and wall parts of it off, build fences, like what Facebook is then it loses its value. Unfortunately people still think like college students or children for that matter. They want to be cool, they want to be liked for posting something on their walls. This phenomenon is very American and immature, but safe and a luxurious time sink. A safe way to spend your days indoors, confined by a box, away from harsh environment, your computer and the boxes within it. Facebook is simply a box with a lot of clout. But the fact that Zuck keeps touting how it connects people and has a moral compass, annoys me. He is still an ignorant college kid living in his dorm room, and that’s exactly what Facebook investors want him to be. Zuck is not that brilliant for building a web page that college kids like and now he’s being taken advantage of too. Facebook does little for society other than keep us confined into tiny spaces with little nutrition. At least Twitter is an even playing field and more open. The open social graph is bogus. Stop fooling yourself Zuck… you have created a monster by compromising principles. Grow some.
I would like to see some insights into google. I feel their are not much different – they can connect online activity, email content, mobile phone, laptop activity – forgotsomething? :) I also feel they come across to sympetathic – is this marketing/manipulation?
Excelent note!, and I agree with you Milan.
Best regards.
The ultimate irony? I found out about this blog post via Twitter.
I agree with the article and John’s comment about Google – their activities around search, buying up other companies/web functions increases their control of these activities and a user’s web experience.
Both Google and to a lesser extent FB (due to some major blunders) are perceived to sympathetically and benignly by the media, and worse, governments. Given FB is in the US shouldn’t they be subject to that jurisdiction’s data privacy laws and stringently so? It took Germany and France to take Google to task over Street View – though it seems to have made little difference to their overall approach…
I think Zuckermann is too naive still. He is trying to deliver a seamless user experience without even acknowledging the difficult questions that generates about what the motives are. Giving him the benefit of the doubt they may not be his personal [nefarious/commercial] motives, but those of his investors which prey on his naivety and encourage him to deliver the “improved user experience/seamless sharing” knowing what power/return that will give them?
[...] Short says that anyone who doesn’t own their own personal domain and web site is a second class citizen and that social networks like Facebook have actually usurped our own independence and freedom [...]
Lovely article
[...] Adrian Short wrote one of the best alarmist articles I’ve read about Facebook’s frictionless sharing – which he refers to as [...]
[...] Adrian Short wrote one of the best alarmist articles I've read about Facebook's frictionless sharing – which he refers to as "[Facebook's] [...]
[...] Adrian Short wrote one of the best alarmist articles I've read about Facebook's frictionless sharing – which he refers to as "[Facebook's] [...]
[...] Adrian Short wrote one of the best alarmist articles I've read about Facebook's frictionless sharing – which he refers to as "[Facebook's] [...]
[...] Adrian Short wrote one of the best alarmist articles I've read about Facebook's frictionless sharing – which he refers to as "[Facebook's] [...]
[...] can be a bit alarming, which brings me to the next post. It's from Adrian Short and is titled It’s the end of the web as we know it and Adrian doesn't feel fine. The article begins with some general thoughts about what it means to [...]
[...] Adrian Short wrote one of the best alarmist articles I’ve read about Facebook’s frictionless sharing – [...]
[...] Adrian Short wrote one of the best alarmist articles I’ve read about Facebook’s frictionless sharing – which he refers to as [...]
[...] piece first appeared on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has done a lot of work on open data activism, including Armchair [...]
It’s so true.
And I hope identi.ca will replace twitter. (I don’t use facebook!)
And if you’re a star wars fan, you could call this post “A New Hope” ;-)
Where’s the Like button?
We would rail against a government doing the same sort of tracking, yet a company doing it is ok to the majority of users?
Excellent blog.
Thanks
[...] to quit Facebook Is Facebook trying to kill privacy? The Pros & Cons of Frictionless Sharing It’s the end of the web as we know it The Problem With Facebook’s New ‘Frictionless’ Sharing [...]
Firefox, with the NoScript plugin.
I only enable scripting for page elements I WANT to view. The global Facebook ones, and things like Google AdSense etc I leave blocked.
You ain’t seen me… right?
<__> <_<
Funny thing is, I was looking for a facebook button to share this article with my friends :-)
As you pointed up about owning a business and not creating a social presence it is already an disadvantage. What can be more true than owning a domain with your own content in the future will be pointless? You will need to grow your presence on top of the “Big Web” to have your say, but at which cost?
Great article, I must admit. I like zuck and I once had a facebook account. Like few people out there, I shut it down.
I am presently on twitter though and only got to this blog via its link.
Technology is a moving target and we cannot as individuals make it static for our own comprehension, No sir! I believe change is the only constant in life and the facebooks’ and twitters’ will have their day under the sun.
Social media is evolving but as people with free will, we collectively decide the direction it navigates. Now, this is where your article comes to play. You have raised a point and people will notice soon enough. We owe it to posterity not to create monsters.
I couldn’t agree more. I’m “this close” to abandoning “facebook” completely.
A few months back I decided that I was sick of having to live by the facebook constraints of what and how i could share when sharing my musings with my friends, so I announced to them – via facebook, of course – that I was “going back home” to my own domain that I’ve owned for well over a decade.
I don’t get the visibility, but I post what I want, how I want, formatted however I want.
I hold out no hope for the future – that’s not pessimism, that’s realism.
Good luck, freedom lovers.
wxd.
Very interesting, thought-provoking and insightful article. Just look at this flood of comments – they are great too! Thank you.
Fantastic article.
About time someone blogged about the true reality about how people really feel about Facebook … I use Facebook under sufferance … Their needs to be an alternative, a few even! The problem for me is the it’s actually really BORING and everyone is always so happy about everything … It doesn’t reflect real life
[...] out of necessity, the intermediaries as a way to reach the audience we wish to connect with. As Adrian Short so rightly pointed out, avoiding social media is not an option for most individuals or companies. “We need to use [...]
[...] out of necessity, the intermediaries as a way to reach the audience we wish to connect with. As Adrian Short so rightly pointed out, avoiding social media is not an option for most individuals or companies. "We need to use social [...]
[...] Facebook tracks you even after you logout (which has supposedly been fixed but who knows for sure). It’s the end of the web as we know it and most of you feel fine. I’m not sure what to be more worried about, the fact this is [...]
[...] out of necessity, the intermediaries as a way to reach the audience we wish to connect with. As Adrian Short so rightly pointed out, avoiding social media is not an option for most individuals or companies. “We need to use [...]
Milan, excellent post. I bailed on Facebook about 18 months ago, and haven’t looked back, for personal use. And you can delete your account, not just deactivate. I don’t think Zuck deletes the data, however.
And since my work requires some access, so I created an alternate ego(name) at work to access and admin some pages we have. You are dead right.
This video mashup by Erik Qualman says it best at the end: “The ROI of Social Media is that Your Business Will Still Exist in 5 Years. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPYrbSUqr2k)
And ironically, I also found this via Twitter.
[...] more on this from Adrian Short, via Sheri Gilmour. A bit apocalyptic, but that Open Graph stuff is vile. Filed under Rant [...]
Strange…. no button here to like this or tweet it?
[...] out of necessity, a intermediaries as a approach to strech a assembly we wish to bond with. As Adrian Short so righteously forked out, avoiding amicable media is not an choice for many people or companies. “We need to use [...]
Hmmm… all good points but it’s ashame that you neglected to mention the Federated Social Web, open social network tools such as Diaspora* and Identi.ca.. All hope’s not lost! While I may be using Facebook and Twitter now, I’m giving friends and acquaintances on both fair notice that in the near future I’ll be switching over permanently and that they should come over to the open web. So far, many have followed and seem glad they did.
[...] wird da nicht nur, ob Facebook und Google die Privatsphäre töten, sondern darüber hinaus das Web nachhaltig verändern. Schließlich ist eine Webseite, die ich auf meinem eigenen Server hoste und somit kontrolliere, [...]
[...] out of necessity, a intermediaries as a approach to strech a assembly we wish to bond with. As Adrian Short so righteously forked out, avoiding amicable media is not an choice for many people or companies. “We need to use [...]
[...] square first seemed on Adrian Short’s blog. Adrian Short is a developer who has finished a lot of work on open information activism, including [...]
[...] It’s the end of the web as we know it [...]
[...] out of necessity, the intermediaries as a way to reach the audience we wish to connect with. As Adrian Short so rightly pointed out, avoiding social media is not an option for most individuals or companies. "We need to use social [...]
[...] Analysis By: Adrian Short, AdrianShort.co.uk [...]
Martin: You can permanently delete your Facebook account by visiting a rather hidden page (linked below). Once you’ve requested your account to be deleted, you then have a 14 day “cool down” period. During this time any activity on your account will cancel the deletion process. This includes logging in, using a Facebook Connect app or clicking the Like Button anywhere on the web. Phew!
And the page in question: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
The situation would not have been so sad if Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut etc survived substantially and there were at least a dozen or more social nets. But unfortunately, now thousands and thousands of websites have just become “slave” to FB where they show FB buttons and icons even if we do not want to see. The more critical areas are where you are forced to register or login with FB and even comment using FB plugins (example Techcrunch). I do not know why this is not antitrust and why epic dot org is not active about this. Google Plus devlopment is slow and they still do not have comment plugin, and Myspace sinks every day while Yahoo has killed its social web Y360 (as also Geocities). Development with Diaspora and Appleseed and onewebsocial etc are toooo slow to make any real dent. Even Tim Lee in his latest note seems to be somewhat frustrated. I really really wish the present gen was not so blind just to become “slave” FB users and not to see the beauty and charm that internet really was – a collection of interconnected sites with independence and **variety**, not just cookiecutter FB pages. A few points to note is that FB ads are not as successful as may have been projected, FB has lot of fake stats promoted via its successful PR machine (a tactics not applied or failed application by Yahoo and Google and MS), and last but not the least many are aghast with FB (only that they are forced like in Techcrunch and other sites to use FB) and let us hope their number quickly increases to bring the open internet it was. If that not happens internet is a lost dream, really, and just a monopoly of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.
The temptation to post this link to FB so that they can see how badly they’re being ‘had’ is quite strong!
I lost more of my illusions on winning the fight against exploits. We already lost the fight with the spammers, trackers and others, fighting this battle against their advanced algoritms for crawling and disguise and loosely clustered virtual worldwide conglomerates with automatic fallback opportunities for tunneling messages back and forth from the object of spamming to the initiator of spam etc. (Spam 2.0).
On social media platforms this phenomenon however may be a more advanced version of the same exploit (Spam 3.0), in which additionally (process flow driven and user-event driven) semantic link following and building is done, using advanced processing algoritms, with the aim of gathering data valuable for their given purpose.
The freedom of the web is both it’s handicap and it’s strenght.
But there may be some light at the “end” of the (spiral) tunnel: we are free to degrade the value of the very product they seek to harvest and process.
The business process of these social media seems to use the freedom of the web to harvest raw data or (web 3.0) data with added semantic value to transform it into usefull marketable (intermediate) products.
In order to prevent the exploitation of this data for influencing us beyond our consent.
We are free to add nonsense data with a high “semantic” value in our context of things, intermixing “dirty” data with our “clean” personal raw data and thereby virally infecting their databases and the semantic thruth value of our non-autorised personal data. The very reason they exist would force social media to shift the focus to more valuable clean personal data, with explicit user permission, or else to make costly adjustments to the semantic reasoning logics.
Of course this autorised “clean” dataset should not be part of their virtual platform of data or should only enter their database when accompanied by our “dirty” data.
But there may also be other less dramatic approaches out there, f.e. highly organized user-interest platforms (inside or outside of the social media platform) for acting as an agent in the interest of the general or specific user; organized user demands for progressive protection against forbidden intentional use of personal data information; independant rating of the social media platform’s activities on a reliability scale accompanied with automated mechanisms for protection in the user platform.
At the moment the default use of our data is often without our intention or permission (based on a default user policy setting). The reason for this may be that the data is easier to harvest this way and it makes the company more marketable to a buyer.
So to sum up: if you can’t beat them join them, but influence those who influence you.
dear Adrian,
Most of the time you’re right. However, remember that G, FB, or T are domain owners / holders, so they are free to do whatever pleases them. It’s the same basic principle of freedom, that you use and maybe enjoy.
It is just their magnitude that bothers you ? Is the fact that zillions of naive webmasters did chose to use the “Like” button ? The pity of them just search exposure, as every webmaster does.
They make alliances with the strongest, in order to survive. And you know why ? Because they think they have something important, real, and solid (for the other) to be shared, to be spoken and heard around them. In fact, most of them DON’T, they just to gather sheeps around them, to make a quick buck, right ?
For this reason – and billion others – the guilty part in this story is this “other door guy” that accepted to advertise the G+ button, or the Like button of FB, and so on.
And you know why ? Because they are not just happy (as you are) with saying “look at me, this is me, those are my thoughts, this is my page”, or “this is my web identity and creation, for anyone looking at it, or anyone reading this page and asking my ‘online ID sign’, but those are different, they say “not only look at me, but share with others about who I am, make me renowned, please, do it, here are the buttons to use it”.
It’s like those webmasters hang on their doors a ‘digital ID sign’ that is not just a piece of “paper” as it might be, but also having a loudspeaker attached to it.
To those b-a-d webmasters I would answer that: “please don’t use me to promote yourself, ok ? Be happy that I wrote your page, give me your free content, and earn your business, please not use me as your salesman, because I won’t be that stupid for you.
You know why ? Because in most cases, sharing is being stupid (because you don’t have original content to post it by yourself). People that just share links as as “look, ma, what is in that store!!”
My insight is somehow different than yours as follows:
1…. first class net citizens – those who post blogs, opinions, whatever.
2…. second class citizens – those who comment (they cannot make an exert power just because they ANSWER, but not CHALLENGE, as bloggers do)
3…. third class – those that just share what they see around.
Those last poor bastards cannot even re-word (and create own blog posts by themselves) in order to gain power. No, they just repeat as point the fingers toward a site or another.
I hope I was clear.
PS. My comment here is MY content, even if is hosted in your webpage, therefore I copy it and take it with me, for my own use, too.
Thank you again for your topic.
Cheers.
Pretty dull article. Facebook tracks u.If u don’t like it don’t go on it.If you’re doing more than chit-chat on it go to a more secure place.Yawn.
I enjoy the approach in which you have talked about this particular subject. Very helpful.
I look forward to reading the other comments.
It is true. And it is scary. Sadly, I don’t think everybody ‘opting out’ of Facebook (read: abandoning) will fix things. The next big player (be it Google, Amazon, ..) would just step up. Neither are initiatives like Diaspora (that don’t seem to get a real ‘hold’). So what is the solution?
In the mean while, lets make sure we cherish our ‘own domains’ and the content that is on there. And ‘grab’ as much as possible (or desired) from our posts on G+, Facebook, Twitter, … using API’s and Feeds? It’s our IP after all?
I slightly disagree about Google+ being as bad… Google at least has the motto of ‘don’t be evil’ – whereas FB has no compunction about how it uses the data it collects.
There is an extension for Chrome called Disconnect which stops Facebook tracking your web activity, but still allows you to use Facebook: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhlakheieifhpjdfeo
@Anonymous, the like button is an iframe. A request is sent to facebook anyway (with any cookie they could have saved).
this blog posts represents exactly what I think about this whole facebook situation, well done!
You can use the Priv3 extension to Firefox, in combination with the CertPatrol addon.
Priv3 will disable the Like, +1, etc. buttons.
CertPatrol will allow you to watch SSL certificate hierarchies, and actually reject those who don’t want to use.
See my blogs about these issues at https://n-1.cc/pg/blog/read/100742/finetuning-firefox-for-privacy
But I came here to mention a couple of projects that might make your day: one is the continuation of PSYC and is not really “webby”: it’s aimed at P2P friend-to-friend sharing (“private” social network if you wish) it sits at secushare.org
The other one is the latest joint of Ward Cunningham, and it’s about federated wikis. You run it on localhost and can share your changes in two ways: either you’re online at your own domain and you can give the URLs of your pages for synchronization, or you can propagate the changes by Git. The second way isn’t properly aknowledged ATM in my opinion, but the whole thing is very interesting. Have a look on Github at https://wardcunningham.github.com/ and on http://localhost:1111/ :)
Great article … it made me think about my blog (using wordpress), my Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and finally also my Google+ Accounts! I fully admit that I used to be one of the first Facebook enthusiasts in Switzerland. Over the years I grew more and more cautious but by now I guess I have already crossed the line of no return. These social networks already know far too much about my person. Therefore I decided to use these platforms as good as possible to drive my business and get as much in return of my information as possible.
I’m looking forward to your next posts and I will gladly link to this post from my own blog.