Was forced to immediately login to Facebook outside my twice-yearly check of my privacy settings due to unexpectedly getting an email at my primary (but not Facebook-primary) address that I thought I"d removed. After hunting, discovered it as a backup and removed it with vicious satisfaction.

Yeah, I was that worried about Facebook sending something to that email.

I was never really a user, I just set it up because family was on there and social media why not; this was at the same time I set up my twitter account, according to dates. In the normal course of events, I would have started using it from sheer 'it's there' except the normal course of events didn't occur; before I even had a chance to let inertia and existing friends on there do their thing, Facebook had its first privacy problem and I noped out for a while.

Now again, memory is short, my primary email was still Facebook's primary email, so again, it's social media and there; given a year or two, I should have started using it and I sort of took vague steps--and then a bigger privacy breach. At which time, I set it to a throwaway yahoo email with no function but to handle facebook, and promptly forgot it existed (except when I went to clean it out, which is when I would also double check my privacy settings). At which time memory being short was used for good.

Logging in used to be an event; I used to open a new, clean browser to do it, carefully type in my username and password, close the tab when done, scrub the browser, close it, then restart my computer (with malice aforethought). Now, I just use Chrome Incognito. I've gotten soft, you see.

The thing is, I give the 'because privacy' reason and don't get me wrong, it's true, but. I also of my own free will own five Alexa devices, have multiple gmails and a Google Home Mini (Free gift with Nest purchase), belong to many social media outlets, and even have finally gotten LinkedIn under my wallet name (through work, I get access to classes there). I am compromising my privacy dramatically and voluntarily in every other way, but not and never with them.

Yes, Google and Yahoo and Twitter and Amazon are not at all less guilty when it comes to breaches. I am not significantly increasing my privacy by banning Facebook from my life in all forms (including many settings in AdBlock and deactivating and hiding it on my phone).

It is privacy, though; specifically, the day I sat down and went through every screen and sub-screen in settings because at the time (I have no idea now), to get the equivalent of a full friendslock required it. What I could do on literally any other site in one or two (adjoining) screens at most required a full and endless search of everything there to make sure I got it all. Somewhere I have notes about it, because when a friend--who's a goddamn programmer--couldn't work out the settings, I gave him my notes and my login to Facebook (a very very close friend, yes) so he could match mine to get a basic friendslock. I was on AIM with him the entire time so he could double check.

Facebook didn't just make it hard to even work out how to get your desired privacy; they used that difficulty as a get out of jail free when they breached it. It was just Privacy Theatre--look how thorough we are, how careful--while simultaneously making it hard to find the settings, much less work out exactly what they applied to, and then failed to actually respect those settings anyway.

So it's mostly a matter of spite, tbh. Google and Amazon and Yahoo et al will screw me--are probably doing it right now--but at no point did any of them make me enter the Privacy Labyrinth of Plausible Deniability first.

(That they apparently run random ass social and psychological experiments on their userbase just confirms me in my feels of nope. Just the five seconds of being on the homepage made me feel like I was being hunted by Mengele's psychology soulmate.)

...I think I've lost the ability to speak in other than meme or movie references.

It's like watching all of pop culture flash before my eyes. Suddenly, horrifyingly, I realize--this is my Facebook experience.

In other news, I think twatwaffle is now in my active vocabulary. This will end well.

Gakked from sockkpuppett here, because for some reason it really hit me today while reading.

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others" -- Martha Graham

There is no law of conservation for creativity. It's not a use it or lose it kind of deal; don't use it and it's still waiting. So you know, do something with it.

Facebook Things

rivkat is talking here (briefly) about Facebook and the latest thing there on the brand new totally different filters and groups thing they introduced. And intuitive use.

At first, I was thinking it was because I was LJ/DW that Facebook was so weirdly counterintuitive and wrong for me; then a few months ago, I helped a former friend do his privacy settings (as at the time, I had been reading on nothing but privacy settings) and while he wasn't LJ/DW, or like, social networky much at all, he was a geek and a programmer and I was thrown a little by the fact that a guy who enjoys linux command line was thrown that much by the settings.

Contrast: my sisters came from MySpace to Facebook and had few transition issues. My mother was non-networky until Facebook and finds the entire thing a bastion of Spock's wisdom (disclosure: she paralled with GuildWars, but I'm almost sure Facebook came first). My son took to it like a duck to water, but let's be fair here, he's a fangirl geek's kid, so I have to measure him by other fangirl geek kids, and he's in the right age group to have friends doing it and so he must, too. He also was a user of online kids' MMORPGs and evony, so it's not like the brat was tabula rasa here.

While I get the first social networking site you use is often the one you bond with and becomes the measure by which all must be compared and everything, there's also Mr. Nearly Tabula Rasa Programmer up there who reacted to it just like I did even though he's not LJ/DW and that throws my curve. I'm not talking about those who are now comfortable with it after using Facebook for a bit, but that initial get to know you period--did it click and you got it, even if you didn't know it yet, or did you stare at it in horror and just fail to comprehend what the fresh hell was this?

With the exception of Scrapbook--which is an argument that no one should try to design things while high since I'm still way better at using it when I'm dosed with enough Vicodin to see energy trails and I am not saying brad was high, I'm just saying did no one check his pupils?--LJ and especially DW are very intuitive for me (DW even more so, but DW is a unique social networking site and I'm not sure fits on this curve at all due to both its history and its owners).

Thing is, usenet was intuitive, and so were mailing lists and interestingly enough, I went to read a post I did years ago on the transition to LJ from mailing lists through the lens of SV fandom and I'm kind of surprised to realize that all the differences are a lot more superficial in terms of how we structure interaction than I thought then. Not in like, structure, no, but in--I don't know if the word I'm looking for here is organization, but in how I think.

I'm kind of wondering, randomly, if someone from the blogosphere hitting Facebook and someone from the chans hitting Facebook to start an account the same day would have a similar reaction to it, because of their online social history. Okay, acafen, could someone thesis this already? Please? Because yes, my sampling size is small, but it's diverse enough that there has to be something I'm missing on why Facebook feels like a structureless hell of inanity before I actually have to look at my feed with a sense of growing horror.

Final Note

dreamatdrew sat up with me and kindly walked me through the first stages of installation of Ubuntu Server. Which means when I get home, welcome to command line hell. Where is my cheat sheet anyway? More adventures in what the hell will come later. Possibly with crying. When dreamatdrew won't see it.

For those with Facebooks that haven't seen the new and improved personalization Facebook has started and opted everyone into, please go here for the explanation and a step by step on how to opt-out if you're not into that sort of thing.

...at some point, I am going to snap and rant about the fact that 'this is the internet' holds water just as much as 'boys will be boys' and 'that's the way things are'. Just not today. This is the internet. I'm going to write porn now. As God intended.

ETA: How to Restore Your Privacy on Facebook. That was was lowering. I thought I'd reset all of mine, and here I am proved wrong.

If you're not sure you got everything, read it. I went methodically every damn page and I still missed a page.

Facebook is one of those places I always feel half-convinced of the legitimacy of online split personality; it could feel less like me, but I don't know how. Even my status updates feel weird and wrong, like someone else entirely is typing them. It's not me online, it's not me in RL, which are actually in a lot of ways basically the same thing, just without the need to spellcheck; I feel like I'm constructing someone new out of pieces of the things I am and the things I'm okay with people knowing about me, and the things I'm mostly not but have to be anyway.

This person is both boring and irritating; seriously, not good. Also, people keep finding me and come the fuck on. It's been fifteen years. How do you even remember my name?

Also, I have Iyaz's Replay stuck in my head. I love this song. But this? This is how I learn to loathe music. Right here.

(HE COOKS THINGS FOR HER AND WRITES SYMPHONIES. OVER AND OVER. IN MY HEAD.)

There we go--Jason Derulo. Better.

(I've also rediscovered twitter? This can't be good.)

Your BFF 'unfriended' you -- now what? on CNN

The eternal question.

Yeah, I don't know. For some reason, that struck me as hilarious.