KEY POINTS:
The Sunday Star Times really went to town on social networking website Facebook.com yesterday in an alarmist spread of stories that labelled the website "evil" and "part of a project by a small group of backers to spread their ideas of free-rule, borderless capitalism and extreme liberalism".
I think we can all sympathise deeply with Gil Elliott, the father of murdered 22 year-old Sophie Elliott who was shocked at the amount of personal detail his daughter was openly publishing on her Facebook profile. I think it is good for us all to follow this rule: don't post anything to the internet unless you'd be happy having it on the front page of the Herald.
I can stomach the story about Gil Elliott and his daughter, the tragedy is a wake-up call for people who use social networking websites in general, even if the information Sophie was publishing may have had nothing to do with her death. But what was really over the top was the big spread from The Guardian the Sunday Star Times re-published to go with the Sophie Elliott coverage.
The Guardian story is by Tom Hodgkinson, a bit of a technophobe who last year proclaimed on the Guardian website that he was giving up email.
He confesses to despising Facebook before launching an attack on the whole concept of online social networks and the people who are backing Facebook. He testily asserts early on in the piece:
"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?"
I could rebut Hodgkinson on each of the points he makes, but I really don't see any point in that. Yes, the people who put money into Facebook are capitalists, they want to make money, just like the Rockefellers and the Waltons and Bill Gates wanted to make money.
Yes, they monitor your activity on Facebook and target adverts at you accordingly - so does Google, Yahoo and most other large web companies. That's called a business model. Yes they may be in favour of borderless capitalism but in the age of globalisation, barring a few despots and dictators, who isn't? As for the extreme libertarianism, who really cares about the philosophical inclinations of Facebook's backers? It's your choice to set up a Facebook account and your choice to put on it whatever you want. It's free to use and you can use it as much or as little as you please. If Facebook moves beyond the comfort zone of its users as it did last year with the Beacon advertising platform, it will get its fingers burnt, again.
And why does Facebook have to replace all that talking and eating and dancing and drinking with your friends? I quite like the fact that I can quickly check up on what friends and acquaintances, many of them spread wide around the world on OEs or more permanent stints abroad, are getting up to. The advertising isn't any more intrusive than with Gmail. At the moment there's an advert for K&N Air Intakes down the side of my Facebook profile. If that's targeted advertising, Facebook is way off the mark, and incidentally, that's the first time I've even paid attention to a Facebook advert.
What I want to see is Facebook become more useful. I've no interest in the games and super wall posts and poking that goes on. I see it as being a useful networking and productivity tool that could incorporate elements of LinkedIn.com, a VoIP service, a decent digital dashboard for storing content online. In other words, Facebook should steal the better aspects of what make the services of Google, Skype, MSN and Yahoo and Flickr great. That's the clever thing about something like Facebook, it can be different things to different people. You can take it or leave it. What's evil about that?
What is evil is the Trade Me phishing scam targeted at people like me over the weekend. I thought it was very strange that Trade Me would send me an email asking me to update by personal details, especially since the link underpinning the "CLICK HERE" icon directed to a page hosted by Philonline, a Philippines internet provider. I contacted Trade Me over the weekend and they confirmed it's a scam they're in the process of shutting down.
What is evil is the email Herald reader David got this morning informing him that he was due a tax refund of $203.59 and should fill out his debit card details on the provided electronic form. It was supposedly from the US IRS. As soon as I clicked on the link my anti-phishing software blocked the page - its a known phishing scam.
There's plenty to watch out for on the web without people dreaming up fresh conspiracy theories designed to make us paranoid. Maybe Hodgkinson would be more at peace disconnecting completely.
