I have a friend (IRL) who keeps nagging me to sign up for Facebook.

"Ye shall know them by their fruits." And what "fruits" have I seen of Facebook? Families, churches, clubs, and other groups wiped clean out which would have prospered for years had Facebook not been.

Ceterem censeo, Facebook delendum est.

And sometimes get creative at that. But I am sure there is an algorithm for that. I am actually in touch with elementary school friends, most of whom I probably would be done with after a lunch. Whatever. Creepy that elementary school remembered faces are recognizable in 60 y/o's.

I don't use a mic, don't use facetime or Skype. I am sure that my handle can be linked to my name.

but I use it entertainment and for social purposes, friends from both the net and real life and my family are all wired in. I do belong to a fb group called Stop Demolishing Portland and Over the Hill Bernie DFH supporters. I follow both Jill Stein and Bernie and am a member of a Snowden group . I don't have a cell, I don't tweet, I don''t have a TV and I don't buy stuff on the net if at all possible. I work hard at buying local real space and I care where any thing I buy came from or was made.

I try to use cash as much as possible as plastic, even debit cards, makes money to abstract and I spend more. Banks are a scam too so we use a credit union. I do research products like computers, radios or gardening overhauls online. For weeks after researching a product the fb ads or any ads in my internet travels are all about whatever I was looking at. Last night I had a nightmare about the ugly net ads that pop up. I think I spent too long on you tube yesterday. Big establishment sites are the worst. The network cable sites like MSNBC freak out my computer and me too.

You can control your feed on fb and if any unsolicited magazines or bogus RWNJ articles come in I block them. Trending doesn't interest me in the least. An old artist friend who's now on fb. describes it as a stream of 'drivel'. I like the art, music, jokes and pictures that my friends share. You can also use your settings to see less of whoever is driving you nuts.

I can't believe i am on fb. I held out for years but got an account when I started marketing for our business. Ironically I never have used it for business purposes as I quickly figured out I don't want our clients or potential clients to really know that much about our personal life or political life or be able to track our reading, buying or online history.

I figure that since I've been mouthing off for 12 years on the internet and going to sites like wikileaks, Anons. or OWS live streams etc. if the spooks are going to get me I'll be in good company. 'Paranoia runs deep into your life it will seep' but at this late date it's too late to cover my tracks. I just keep my presence on social media and electronic gadgets at a low level for my own sanity. I don't like being told by my refrigerator what I need to get, nor do I want to view the world through google glasses or adobe clouds.

Here's a great NYT book review from 2013 written by Julian Assange of The book The New Digital Age written by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen of Google infamy

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles...
The Banality of 'Do no Evil'

“THE New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

Here's the punch line or paragraph but the entire review is short sweet and to the point..

This book is a balefully seminal work in which neither author has the language to see, much less to express, the titanic centralizing evil they are constructing. “What Lockheed Martin was to the 20th century,” they tell us, “technology and cybersecurity companies will be to the 21st.” Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever. Zealots of the cult of consumer technology will find little to inspire them here, not that they ever seem to need it. But this is essential reading for anyone caught up in the struggle for the future, in view of one simple imperative: Know your enemy.

One of the big things are letting these sites get a hold of your e-mail. I used to think they were very smart about finding people who I might know (e.g., associates, former co-workers, etc.); then I realized that there was no real way they could make that match (i.e., a soils engineer I had e-mailed once to get a quote for looking at a lot's buildability). Thus, I figured that the site (linkedin in this case) was rifling through other people's email (the e-mail account I gave it is one I don't use for mail). What makes it annoying is that linkedin runs around soliciting endorsements of ones technical skill without asking. FB apparently does all that and more. It's pretty audacious to eavesdrop on users; one wonders whether they're peeping toms as well?

And when those folks access our data, Big Brother is probably looking right over their shoulders (well, if they've got a court order or warrant—ha, ha, ha ;-).

Big Brother would end up

being so "user-friendly"?

Do you have a link or a quote?

We have a flat screen that I picked up when our local video store moved and they were selling all the floor models cheap so they didn't have to move them. It seemed like a good deal at first, but the damn thing had a camera and an Internet connection (which I ironically hooked up so we could stream Ghandi) and it started complaining when I turned the camera off! Cheeky buggers.

They call it, "IN YOUR FACE!"

But seriously, folks. Who expect a site where people post, "Hey look at the consistency of little Johnny's diapers!" to have any privacy at all? As George Takei said, "When I was young, I wanted to read minds. Then I got on Facebook, and changed my mand."

When I didn't accept the terms my chat-mate was giving me, a paragraph appeared, with more clear grammar, and corporate things like, "we will review this dialogue and our engineers will blah, blah." I could tell it was a cut/paste robot paragraph because the font was a little heavier and the language was different. So I wrote back, "your last paragraph was from a robot." He responded with another robot paragraph thanking me and telling me how much Microsoft appreciates my feedback, blah, blah blah."

to escape Microsoft?

to be a nonconformist. I have a computer that I use for internet browsing and email. It has no camera or microphone. I have a camera for, well, camera stuff like taking photos or video. I can move the camera card to the computer....if I want. I have a cell phone, worth $12.88 at Walmart, no contract, voice/text only, for travel only, otherwise it stays off. My GPS has no cell capability.

The ACLU once posted a privacy survey that I took, and they rated me "Harder to find than Waldo", a badge I wear proudly.