Essay time. There are good things and bad things about Facebook, but I'm recently starting to feel like there are more bad things about it than good.
I'll start with the good. You can get in touch with people you've not seen for donkey's who you have unintentionally lost contact with. It's also good for for sharing pictures with your friends. Groups and events are also very handy especially for organising things. My brother's stag do would probably never have got off the ground if it wasn't for facebook, it made it so much easier to organise.
It's also pretty handy for sending people messages, and I would go as far to say that if you want to get in touch with me, Facebook is probably the best way to do it. If you send me a message on Facebook, or write on my wall, not only does it appear on Facebook itself, but I get a text message and an email to inform me as such. It even pops up on my iPod. I can then reply to the email, or the text message, and it goes back Facebook, and if the person I'm replying to also has email and text alerts switched on, then they will also get alerted. That's pretty handy for a free service.
There is a middle ground here though. There are certain people I like to stalk; not in a creepy way, just in a compulsive, curious, "wonder what they're up to" kind of way. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, there's not really any good coming from it. I assume it is where the person that came up with the 'Facebook is harming our social lives' is coming from. I disagree with this sentiment by the way, as I socialise daily, always have done, almost certainly always will do. I will never just sit on facebook just because I can't be arsed to go out and see my mates.
Moving on to the bad. There are certain people who you don't want to know what you're up to. You don't really want work colleagues knowing you were out on the piss the previous night if you happen to come down unexpectedly with man flu. Especially not your boss. And talking of being on the piss, how many people have got home one night, half cut, decided to go on facebook, then made some completely inappropriate comment on someone's status, or photo. Come on, own up. Then you wake up in the morning, when it's a bit of a blur, and think 'did I actually do that?' Then the realisation sets in and you boot the computer up quickly, in the vain hope that nobody has seen it and you can delete it in time, only to find that the whole world has seen it and commented underneath.
Of course this leads on the the other issue of revenge attacks. You put some stupid comment on facebook without thinking and people hate you because of it. This has been known to go to the extreme of people getting murdered just through stupid arguments they've had on facebook.
There's also the other possibility of people actually stalking, or even using facebook to carry out identity theft. Unfortunately some people without fully thinking through the ramifications, put their home address, telephone number, place of work, mother's maiden name, photographs of their entire family, etc. etc.
The other interesting one I've come accross recently, is 'hate' pages. Some students at the school I work at, developed a dislike for a certain teacher and decided to make a group called 'omg if you hate mr x join this group lol
xxx'. The teacher in question found out and was not best pleased. The school took the action of suspending the student that set the group up, and anyone who joined the group got a detention. The suspended students parents were not happy, and phoned the school to inform us that they were going to legally challenge the punishment dished out by the school as it was freedom of speech, it was allowed on facebook, and in any case, it is out of the school's jurisdiction to punish for anything that goes on out of school and indeed, on facebook. While I disagree with what the child did, I do kind of feel like that parent has got a point. If it is allowed on facebook, and it wasn't created in school or in school time, then how can the school punish for it?
In my opinion, facebook shouldn't allow such pages. They're quite clearly set up to cause upset and distress to the person they're aimed at. But facebook allows them due to 'freedom of speech'. The other thing I disagree with, there are photos on facebook of me that I don't like. Surely I should have a right to remove that photo. But no. Facebook's terms and conditions clearly say words to the effect of 'we do not remove photos of you just because you don't like your hair'. That's wrong in my opinion. There is a photograph of me, I don't want it there, I should be allowed to remove it. They only let you report the photo, but then do nothing about it. They don't even let you report a photo more than once.
But to bring my rambling to a close, I still think facebook is the dog's bollocks. It's a useful service that is head and shoulders above it's rivals, and while there are some things that could and should be improved, I wouldn't be without it.
chrismoyles.net
