Some Playboy Playmate

My annoyance with Facebook continues to grow. Quite a few years ago people were getting frustrated with the fact that Facebook loosened default privacy settings without warning. This was well documented by Matt McKeon’s Evolution of Facebook Privacy graphic back in 2010. It showed how restrictions were relaxed between 2005 and 2010, without any notice to user. Facebook regularly changes its terms of service, and users opt in by continuing to use the service. Many people started leaving the service even back then, but most people stayed, and even more people joined.

I understood even back then that Facebook’s true customers are the companies that purchase data sets and advertising, not the end users who utilize the platform to communicate with each other. This is a simple part of media literacy.

Anyway, I recently received a friend request from the beautiful woman in the picture above. When this happens and I don’t happen to know the beautiful woman, I always am skeptical. So before I clicked the “heck yeah!” button, I did an image search on Google with her profile image. Did you know you can do that? Just go to https://images.google.com and upload an image you want Google to search for. Anyway, I did with this image above and found thousands of copies of this image. It didn’t take me long to learn the actual woman pictured is a former Playboy model.

The name didn’t match the name on the profile of the friend request. Instead of simply ignoring the request like I normally do, I reported it to Facebook as a spam account. A few days later I received a reply that my report couldn’t be verified!

Umm, Facebook. I took the time to look into it for you. I told you what the problem was. You ignored me. I am very weary of your tone-deaf attitude on privacy and security. Even when your long-time members are doing the work you should be doing, you shoot it down!

Now you are spending millions of dollars on television advertisements telling us how you are getting it right? Lame.

Facebook, I use you. But I no longer love you, and that’s not likely to ever change. I’d love to replace you, but so far I haven’t found the thing that can take your place. Give me time.