[NetBehaviour] With friends like these ... (guardian article about Facebook)

[marc garrett]

With friends like these ...

Facebook has 59 million users - and 2 million new ones join each week. 
But you won't catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information 
- not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social 
networking site.

Tom Hodgkinson
The Guardian,
Monday January 14 2008

 despise Facebook. This enormously successful American business 
describes itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people 
around you". But hang on. Why on God's earth would I need a computer to 
connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be 
mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? 
What was wrong with the pub?

And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn't it rather disconnect 
us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and 
eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending 
them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while 
chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent 
a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a 
gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at 
our workstations.

Facebook appeals to a kind of vanity and self-importance in us, too. If 
I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my favourite 
things, I can construct an artificial representation of who I am in 
order to get sex or approval. ("I like Facebook," said another friend. 
"I got a shag out of it.") It also encourages a disturbing 
competitivness around friendship: it seems that with friends today, 
quality counts for nothing and quantity is king. The more friends you 
have, the better you are. You are "popular", in the sense much loved in 
American high schools. Witness the cover line on Dennis Publishing's new 
Facebook magazine: "How To Double Your Friends List."

It seems, though, that I am very much alone in my hostility. At the time 
of writing Facebook claims 59 million active users, including 7 million 
in the UK, Facebook's third-biggest customer after the US and Canada. 
That's 59 million suckers, all of whom have volunteered their ID card 
information and consumer preferences to an American business they know 
nothing about. Right now, 2 million new people join each week. At the 
present rate of growth, Facebook will have more than 200 million active 
users by this time next year. And I would predict that, if anything, its 
rate of growth will accelerate over the coming months. As its spokesman 
Chris Hughes says: "It's embedded itself to an extent where it's hard to 
get rid of."

All of the above would have been enough to make me reject Facebook for 
ever. But there are more reasons to hate it. Many more.

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook