It Keeps Getting Worse, If You Ask Me
Facebook now uses facial recognition software to identify your photos. Why?
I hope not being on facebook, means my photos are not tagged of me. In fact, I urge anyone who has a photo of me up on facebook to please take it down.
It just keeps getting creepier and people are just going along with it.
2 comments:
Can't help pilfering grantland.com for a second time today. From Klosterman's article about watching sports on DVR he manages to sneak in some facebook theory (it makes sense in context to sports but also stands on its on I think):
"People constantly complain about Facebook, but that doesn't mean it hasn't changed them; they're complaining because it has changed them. And they know it. They can feel it. There's still a difference between somebody's online profile and who they actually are, but that difference is decreasing and — in 10 years — will likely become negligible. Everyone has become a special-interest newspaper. Everyone wants to break news."
Well I certainly agree facebook is changing people and our society. It is why I write about it so much. My point: it is changing us for the worse. It is turning us into Congressman Weiners. I'm serious. There is such a thing as being productive and unproductive. Facebook is unproductive. It is bad. It brings out our worst narcissistic impulses in a society that already suffers from this disease. It makes us into stalkers and creeps. I'm sure there is some harmless pleasure in getting a friend request from the cute chick at the gym or reconnecting with an old high school teammate or seeing baby pictures of your cousin in Florida. There is also some pleasure in saying fuck it and buying plane tix on credit cards and going to Australia for two weeks. Doesn't make it a good idea.
The only reason facebook works is because it is free. But I argue it is not - it is wasted time and time is our most precious commodity as individuals. Time is limited and ought to be spent doing something useful. I don't view facebook as educational or entertainment or a source of news, although I suppose arguments could be made for all those things. The question you have to ask is whether it is better than existing sources of those things? Is it better than the existing alternatives.
Let me put it another way as well. If, as advertised, Facebook has 500 million users and people spend an incredible amount of time (ie resources) surfing it. What can we point to as a product of Facebook? Can we point to something that has improved the lives of people, something that has contributed to society in a positive manner, something that has created wealth - and I mean real wealth - not the speculative wealth of the facebook stock. (please do not say the egyptian and tunisian revolutions which used facebook and twitter to organize...that is another discussion).
I'm yet to see it. And I don't think a future where we all become special-interest newspapers sounds interesting at all. I'll read about the same number as I read now, which is zero.
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