Monday, April 26, 2010

I do not "Like!" (with 70% less tin foil hats)

Privacy
Last week Facebook rolled out its new Open Graph (seen as the new Facebook "Like" button across the web). I'm the Queen of Oversharing on the web (maybe in frequency rather than depth) but I don't feel comfortable with Open Graph.

Last night, I wrote a fairly snarky "Put on your tin foil hats!" kind of post, but this morning I found a post by Valeria Maltoni which says basically what I wanted to but in a much more level-headed way, and she links to most of the sites I was going to. So, here it is: Five Reactions Around the Web on Facebook Announcements

Once you've read through all that, if you want to know how to opt out, Mashable has a step-by-step tutorial. For now, I've opted out. We'll see what the future brings.

Unfortunately, there isn't another social media site quite like Facebook out there. It's allowed me to reconnect with friends and family I haven't seen in years, and that's hard to walk away from. So, I won't be going as far as deleting my account, but I will be keeping a weather eye on Facebook's horizon.

Update: This doesn't mean I won't "like" stuff you post directly on Facebook - that's a horse of a different color. I just won't be using the button on sites outside of Facebook.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/pong/ / CC BY 2.0