JMO - Facebook

I wrote a post about chasing friends, and my opinion of Facebook. Well, it seems they love to shoot themselves in the brain, and their thinking has been out to lunch too often in their own self-interests than the users - you know the one who help them make money.

After quietly changing their terms of service agreement on intellectual propert (audio files, videos, images and writings) rights, meaning adhering to the normal standards that what you create is yours and only yours unless you agree to either give away those rights or allow use right to another entity, they decided that all their users agreed to allow Facebook eternal and free use of your property for whatever private or corporate needs or interests, even keeping your property should you remove it or your account from Facebook.

In short, post it and it's theirs. And now they've said, "Never mind." But wait, they really said it's what they want to do, they just have to find a better way to sneak back into the terms of service agreement. Remember you agreed to it when you signed up, you didn't necessarily agree to changes without being informed and agree, except in the fine print which allows them to change the rules whenever it suits them.

At least for now they've restored their old standards of what's yours is yours.

This isn't the only reason I hate Facebook. I hate you have to be a member to see anything. No other similar service does that. So if you have friends on facebook and want to know what they're doing and saying, you have to join. No member can set their pages to public. That sucks, and why I only keep the minimum there and will only use it to help with getting word out about Mt. Rainier NP.

And then last year Facebook agreed to post to your friends what you bought through retailors they had advertising agreements. This meant if you bought something for friend(s), especially a loved one, they could and would tell all your friends about it. That idea also lasted about 2 days when they decided to put an opt-out button in the user preferences, until they removed it and then apologized for the error.

Error? It was intentional and a bad idea at that, but with about 170 million subscribers they must feel they have some latitude with common sense and decency, and even more with privacy and the copyright laws. To me, they're just this side of dumb and stupid. Where is the CEO and oversight board going, "What are you thinking?"

Why do I get the view that it sometimes seems the only thing the founders of Facebook want to do is promote it and then sell it for a very rich profit? Any bets it gets bought by a corporation in the (near) future for a tidy sum of a few billion dollars? After all corporations are buying Websites like these for the membership and/or subscribers, meaning people, to sell services, products and such.

Why else would Facebook do what they're doing? Anyway, that's my view. I'll stay on Facebook for friends, but that's it, nothing more, and I'll leave if I see more stupidity from them.