Should I get into Facebook?

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I got a Facebook account recently because I'd asked a friend of mine for some recordings/footage of a band we'd played in, and he said it was all on his Facebook page....so I had to join so I could see the stuff. Was disappointed that they don't do music as such, though they'll happily upload videos which presumably have soundtracks. Seems rather wasteful for me to have to graft a still image onto a sound file just so they'll upload it, so the main purpose of joining was scuppered. Not to worry, I've found a bit of webspace and (I presume) I'll just be able to link to music uploads via a Facebook message, unless there's a rule against that.

As for anything else that Facebook does, I haven't seen much. Seems like it's a public space for telling "all" my friends anything I want to, but I'm very one-on-one, so I don't really have much to say to "everybody." But it could be good if I were in a band and I wanted to spam everybody with gig details. Nonetheless, I don't see anything so hard about just creating a mailing list for that kind of stuff.

Naturally I've not filled in most of the personal details, and I even lied about my DOB just in case anybody evil was trying to trace me through it. It came as quite a shock to see the owner's suggestions for friends - how did they access my email accounts to find all that out?

I've heard that a lot of young people are now wishing they'd not been so gung-ho with the comments and pictures they'd uploaded - apparently people mature, and some of that old stuff comes back to haunt them. I don't think I'll be caught like that though. Most important thing is to realise from the start that it's all in the public domain....if I don't want the world to know, I won't put it on Facebook.

I've had several "friend requests".......if I know them then I'll usually accept - sometimes I don't see the point if I don't know them well enough to class them as a friend, but it's only a gesture.......if they turn out to be wacky people then I'm not too worried about seeming to be friends with them on FB - maybe a few thickheads will think I must be wacky too, but most people probably know that a Facebook friend means very little. I've never accepted people I don't know as FB friends - I don't see what good could come of that, and I don't understand how they found me or what they want, so I ignore them.

The other thing that made me want to sign up was that I heard the YMCA is now telling its employees that they're forbidden from joining FB, which seems to me to be a diabolical liberty....I don't work for the YMCA, but I thought that if employers don't like it, we should probably do it all the more.

I think these two things are related. I don't think Facebook has access to anything other than what is on Facebook....but they have access to everything that is on Facebook, everything that you have put and everything that every other person has put. They have a crossmatching algorithm which is where the Friend Recommendations come from and also why people you don't know request you as a Friend.

Did you fill in any school that you attended? It will go through its database and crossmatch you with everybody else who attended those schools and recommend you as friends to each other. Do you belong to organizations and put those in? More crossmatching. Also, every time you Friend somebody, it goes through that Friend list and recommends (seemingly at random) that you Friend people that your Friend has Friended. If you Friend Joe and he Friends Greg, it will recommend that you also Friend Greg. If your Friends actually do know each other in real life (which leads to extensive overlap of things on each other's pages), it will favor those Friend lists and pull recommendations from them, making it more likely that you will be recommended to somebody you actually know which can be eery and make it seem like Facebook has access to more information than it actually has. Six Degrees of Separation is very real and Facebook has proven it through this crossmatching algorithm.

While all this is happening on your Facebook page, it is also happening on other peoples' pages. You may not Friend anybody you don't know in real life, but many people do. They will take Facebook's recommendations and attempt to Friend everybody that the algorithm recommends, whether they know them or not. This is how you get requests from people you don't know.

I see.

No I didn't do any of those things. Left all the school and employment records blank, because I thought they might try something like that.


They're not going to have much success with me, going that route.


I guess it makes sense if they want to show off that they've got lots of friends....think I'll give that one a miss though - seems pretty meaningless to just extend the definition like that, it stops it feeling special.

I think some of those people you don't know could be scammers, too. I've had some friend requests that I don't know, and can't figure out any connection to. So, I ignore them. One I went so far as to report as a spammer; that request came with the same "I see your profile and think we could ... blah blah blah" that our pm spammers use.

Thanks for all the replies... I don't think I'm any closer to deciding if I should join or not, though. I guess it just depends on whether I decide my worries are silly or not.

Sounds like the junk folder of my Hotmail account - "Becky" wants me to "hook up for the night," "Kelly" wants "late night fun" with me, "Josie" wants me to "talk to her," and "Carrie" of "Adult Fun" has "sent me a message"....what is this strange power I have over women? It's a no-brainer - I don't know them, they probably don't even exist, and even if they did I wouldn't want to talk to them, as they're obviously weird. Haven't had any PM spammers on my case at WP though, not yet anyway.........

I would say, if you have the mind and the time to do it, make your own website, much more fun and far easier... and it can be done for free too!

I did that when my sister asked me to join so she could have some contact with me. I used my middle name as the surname and put a Chiss Clawcraft as the avatar. I can't believe what people are willing to put on that website without thinking about it.

To me there's no should or shouldn't but just whatever you think you should do.

Personally, I think social networking sites are great for aspies, if they have problems talking to people in person.

I only took one look at the privacy policy and decided: NO.
They can give any information you put on there to third persons. They can use any photo you put on there and make money with it without having to ask.
If something happens because even though you set your settings to something very private something leaked through, they cannot be charged for that.
And so on...

And then there was that time when they updated facebook, and afterwards set every privacy settings to default - which was: everybody can see everything. At least this one caused a huge uproar, so they probably won't do that again. But the fact that they actually DID that makes me feel very uneasy, because they don't seem to care about what happens to personal data.

I'm 19. Almost everybody I know is on facebook, so not being there is at some times a huge drawback. But in some cases I live my life up to principles, and one of my principles is that I don't join anything if I don't agree with one of their basic features and ideas.

I would suggest to be very careful if you join facebook. If you do, check your settings regulary and think twice before you put anything on there.

i cannot get used to facebook. its too much of a chore for me, i only use it to keep in touch with a couple of people, otherwise i use things like MSN.