With Friends Like These: The Darkside of Facebook?



I don’t have and probably never will have a Facebook account - so I don’t know what all the hoopla is about.

But I read Tom Hodginson’s op-ed about the phenomenon that is Facebook with great interest. Tom wrote about the "real" backers of the website, its role in an experiment of the capitalization of friendship, and its link to the CIA:

The US defence department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. "We need to find new ways to deter new adversaries," defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2003. "We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts." In-Q-Tel’s first chairman was Gilman Louie, who served on the board of the NVCA with Breyer. Another key figure in the In-Q-Tel team is Anita K Jones, former director of defence research and engineering for the US department of defence, and - with Breyer - board member of BBN Technologies. When she left the US department of defence, Senator Chuck Robb paid her the following tribute: "She
brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century."

Now even if you don’t buy the idea that Facebook is some kind of extension of the American imperialist programme crossed with a massive information-gathering tool, there is no way of denying that as a business, it is pure mega-genius.

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Posted on January 17, 2008 at 2:56 am by Alex
Category: Blog & Internet

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8 comments to "With Friends Like These: The Darkside of Facebook?"

  • MoonCake
    January 17th, 2008 at 7:59 am

    nor do I have a facebook account– anymore. and what about GPS and the patriot act? nobody’s location is private anymore.

  • sparge
    January 17th, 2008 at 9:20 am

    I wouldn’t join Facebook today, but I’m not about to delete my account either — it’s quite useful for keeping tabs on old friends and classmates. Firefox+Adblock keeps most of the ads out of sight, and they seem to be starting to realize that people don’t like being told every time a friend becomes a Zombie/Vampire/Werewolf, etc.

    Last year, I changed my profile so that only my friends could view it. I never did put intimate personal details on it, and if some company wants to pay money to find out that I like Arrested Development, that’s OK by me.

    Hodginson sounds like he doesn’t quite understand the way most people use Facebook — it’s not a replacement for your social life, but rather an extension of it, if even that. Yes, perhaps in the future people will interact with each other solely in virtual space, but you know what? It’ll be because they choose to do that over the real world. This choice will remain incomprehensible to Hodginson and those who are used to doing things the old way.

  • Johnald_Chaffinch
    January 17th, 2008 at 10:09 am

    what’s the point of this post again?
    it’s a social networking site just figuring out how to make some money.
    the info you put through it could be used against you, but people are aware of that and withhold certain info accordingly.

  • Jonathan
    January 17th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    I quit my account a couple of days ago and I feel fine. No tremors, shakes or cold sweats. What did we do before facebook? We did just fine is what.

  • Alex
    January 17th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    @Johnald Chaffinch: what is the point of Neatorama anyhow ;)

  • Laura
    January 17th, 2008 at 8:18 pm

    this sounds an awful lot like http://albumoftheday.com/facebook …a great video if you haven’t seen it… (sounds like Hodginson did..)

  • Vako
    January 18th, 2008 at 8:25 am

    I wonder what the opinions here are about MySpace.

  • Dv0rsky
    February 12th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

    I somehow hate this Facebook. Exactly because all of this.

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