What should you think about when using Facebook?

As much as people say they hate how much social networks track them, it's really the thing that makes them work so well. The more info Facebook has on you, the better it can work for you. A privacy-oriented social network isn't social at all, it's...4chan. It would basically just be a forum, and we have plenty of those already. You could go minimal privacy, but then where is the line drawn?

People want to be able to find their friends, so you need some way for discovery to happen. If there's no tracking locations and relationships, then how do you do it? Usernames are the only privacy-concious way to accomplish that, and then you've just described MySpace. Facebook works because when you drunkenly befriend someone at a party, you can find them the next day online. It's bootstrapped discovery. Like it or not, that's what most of the world likes about Facebook.

Google almost solved this problem with G+, but they did it by scanning your email contacts. Is that still a privacy breach?

I keep my social media accounts locked down and off search engines, so I was surprised to see my name, photo and a link to my profile appearing in a Facebook list of people with my name when I self-Googled. The problem seems to apply to localized versions of FB (it-it, en-gb) so it is probably a bug.

Google Plus had a similar problem, but for much longer. Even though my account was locked down, the people who had me in their circles were showing up in Google search results for my name, so I deleted my Google Plus profile, and advised my friends and family to do the same.

I nuked my Pinterest profile after it was scraped despite being locked down.

FB also did something rather disturbing the other day that reminded me why vigilance is critical. It generated a (private) music video about my friends, but freakily, the person who it started up with was a secret crush -the attraction was mutual but never went anywhere-from 15 years ago (we became FB friends a few years later). The two of us don't interact much on FB, so it must have inferred this based on her ongoing views of my profile, or vice-versa. My wife has no idea about this crush, and is friends with the other person. Our circle of mutual friends does know about it, but has kept it secret for years. Having it appear on my FB timeline would have been awkward, to say the least.

I recently sent round an event-organising email and slipped in the facebook thing. Not everyone who replied mentioned it, but everyone that did said that they were thinking exactly the same thing.

And if you need an extra kick, you can download an archive all your data. It had previous girlfriends, employers, places I signed in, private messages, ad agencies they passed my details on to, etc etc. All stuff I'd rather let fade away, but I know it never will.

This works well for any follow or subscription based network. Taking the instant gratification and new-content-every-five-minutes aspects out, just leaves you with something that does not incentivise you to keep returning so often (and therefore waste your time).

I have several friends who would benefit a lot if they stopped following hundreds of accounts, keeping their feeds and brains busy with "nothing."

The funny thing is, these are exactly the things I think about while on facebook. By being online for almost two decades I've developed a 6th sense for sketchy services and the whole UI of Facebook screams "SCAM!". The periodically reoccurring messages harassing you into uploading a picture of yourself, the prompt to denounce people who you believe are using a fake name or the vaguely described privacy settings don't help either.

I only log in when I get an e-mail notification for a message I've received. Some time ago you could simply reply to that e-mail but that doesn't work anymore. Furthermore, you can't say: I just want a notification in case of a message. You have to accept some other stuff as well. I've told my spam filter to delete every e-mail from facebook that doesn't include "message" its the subject.