The dark side of Facebook

Everybody and their dog has an account on Facebook today. But do you take enough care to ensure that your data (photos, posts and the rest) remain as safe as possible?

Facebook as a social media platform serves more as a photo album for most people these days. But the sad part of all this is that people do not have control of what's posted on the internet. 

In the movie Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg's then girlfriend Erica Albright says

The internet's not written in pencil, its written in ink.

People should understand the seriousness of this point. When you post something on the internet, it is almost always impossible to remove all traces of it. Do a Google search of your name and see for yourself. 

Everyday I see so many people upload photos of everyday happenings. Men, women, dogs and cats alike. How secure are these photos? How much control do you have on who sees and doesn't get to see these photos? Not much. But you can ensure it is as safe as Facebook allows you to be. 

You ask me why you have to care about taking the effort to make changes to your privacy settings on Facebook?

Take a look at this page: One of the million ugly pages on Facebook This is just one of the so many pages that share photos of women that are publicly available on Facebook, rate them, discuss them and post obscene comments about the women whom they don't know all this without the knowledge of the respected girl. You could be happily uploading your picture showcasing the new pretty dress you bought for your birthday, which would then get shared across the world for perverted men to discuss things about you in public. Please go report abuse on that Facebook page, you'd be doing good to someone's sister/wife/girlfriend.


Try not to upload a lot of personal photographs. Getting 'likes' and comments praising you are of course internet validation metrics, but definitely not at this cost.

I'd like to list a few things that you can follow to ensure that your photos on Facebook are protected:


Use Facebook's privacy settings. They provide you with options to control right from the person who can message you to the persons whom you can completely block.

This can be found by clicking the 'lock icon' found in the top right corner of your Facebook page.  If you click 'Who can see my stuff?',  you'll see something like this:

Make sure you change the 'Who can see my future posts?' to 'Friends' or choose a list of people if you've created one such list already. If you click 'Use Activity Log' you can see what all you've done on Facebook. Right from the posts you 'liked', to the comments you posted and also the posts you hid from your timeline. This cannot be accessed by anyone but yourself, use this to check and monitor your own activity.


If you click 'Who can contact me?' you'll see something like this:

I suggest you choose the 'Strict filtering' option unless you care about messages from people you do not know. Also the second option helps you choose who can send friend requests to you.

If you want to block someone, make use of the third option. You'll see something like this:

If you click 'See more settings' you'll be taken to this window where you can alter setting concerning tags, posts, timeline and how others see your timeline.

SETTINGS SPECIFIC TO COVER PHOTOS AND DISPLAY PICTURES:


As a thumb rule, ask people before uploading their photos. Even if you're changing your display picture which has someone along with you (man, woman, dog, cat doesn't matter) ask them if they would mind. It is polite and would avoid unnecessary trouble.


Remember the following:

1) Your cover photos are ALWAYS PUBLIC. You are not allowed to change the visibility settings of your cover photos so as much as you can, ensure you don't upload photos of yourself or your friends which you do not want to be shared. 

2) Your CURRENT PROFILE PICTURE is PUBLIC. So when you upload a picture as your DP it is by default public. When you upload a new profile picture, you'll see something like this:

Instead of 'Friends' it will say 'Public'. Click on that to change it to 'Friends'. If you keep it as 'Friends of friends', people who are friends with your friends and are NOT your friend will be able to access it. As far as I know, even this is potentially dangerous.


I think everyone who uses Facebook must follow at least these basic steps to take care of their Facebook data, especially photos. Pass this to your friends and family so that they can avoid unnecessary trouble.

So the world has shrunk, is it?

There used to be a time when your only friends were those whom you went to school with or those that you played with after school. There used to be a time when cousins of your same age were categorized as friends. But today, the thing that scares you the most is a friend 'request' on Facebook from your mom/dad. For those familiar with Twitter, a colleague or a long lost school friend following you is something that would scare you. Not because you don't like them, but because it would be harder for you to maintain the image you have created for yourself. 

The internet has made our lives into something like a restaurant. We choose what we see and work with. If you do not find someone's posts on Facebook interesting you unsubscribe from their news-feed. Yes, internet today can be summed up as Facebook + Twitter + E-mail client. Less than one percent of our internet time is going into constructive work. We read one Wikipedia article for every hundred tweets we read. I'm being generous here. Only one percent of the Wikipedia pages are completely read. It is indeed sad that the internet is eating into our lives.


I happened to stumble upon a fact that Google search results vary from person to person. Even computer to computer for the same person, depending on attributes like location and even the browser you use. We are not reading news in the form of facts. We are reading what the algorithm assumed to be our topic of interest.


You make friends with people whom you haven't even met. You are far more comfortable talking to them about stuff you probably won't discuss with your classmate. One, it is because you find these people to be anonymous and well cut out from your life for the information to come back and bite you. Two, it is because you think these people match your wavelength or in layman's terms they crib about the same thing you do.


Ask yourself how many good friends you had and how many good friends you have?
How many of them have you met online? 


Imagine the number of personal data you have let out into the internet. None of us have the faintest idea about how much of it is recoverable. Facebook is using the data to try and make it more user-friendly. 


Did you notice how many of your friends have disappeared from your news-feed? Do you think it is because they are inactive on Facebook? If so, you have been fooling yourself. It is because you did not pay enough attention to their posts for a certain period of time. You stopped 'liking' their posts. You stopped commenting on their photos. Facebook assumes you do not find them interesting anymore and has made ignoring them easy by removing them from your news-feed entirely. Facebook is phasing out your friends. It is playing the boss by showing you what interests you. It is a machine and it probably is wrong.


Like I said your life has become a restaurant and you are choosing what to see while the internet decided what not to see. It gives you the illusion that you are connecting with people across the globe all the while losing touch with your next door neighbor. Day by day you are becoming an island where all you can see are  the things you once found interesting and the internet assumed that summed up your world.


Ask yourself, has the world really shrunk?

Every dog has it's day

"Happy Friendship Day"

Now that 'friendship day' hath cometh, my mobile inbox and facebook wall are being flooded with deeply thought messages like this. I am teary eyed as I read through every single message just like the million other people on whose wall you 'ctrl+v'-ed it. So what is all this hoopla about one particular day to spread fraandsheep? I firmly believe all these 'days' were started by greeting card companies to improve marketing. Except for one particular day which was the brainchild of Cheran in Autograph. It's 'Happy vayasukku vandha day' of course.

So as I sit here overwhelmed by the number of friendship day texts I receive and disgusted by the ultimate pichakarathanam of my mobile service provider I try to place myself in the shoes of those creative geniuses who come up with such 'days'.

There is Mother's day. There is Father's day. And then there is - Wait for it- Parents' day. I am nothing short of spell bound to know of all this. Might work in America but nevertheless its nothing but ultimate douchebag-ism.

You think Google is the source of all the info that is available today, right? You might want to rethink.  Facebook status updates have replaced Google's databases. Did you know that 'International Brother's week' and 'International Sister's week' both fall on the same week? Also thrice in the same month every other month? Beat that. Added incentive is that if you are the first person to put up such a status everyone on your friend-list will wish your brother/sister instead of 

their own brother/sister. Yes there are so many smart phones but very few smart people to note that ctr+v will not change their friend's brother's name into their own brother's.

There is 'international cute puppies day'. Where people upload pictures of KITTEN! Yes, KITTEN!

There's 'World AIDS day'. I don't want to know what people do on that day and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to either.

There's 'International Mommies day' which I don't know how is entirely different from International Mother's day. You should be careful to wish your mommy and not your Mother, not even accidentally.

Oh wait, these days are not just days but 'events' on Facebook. Some lonely teenager who couldn't grab a beer or a girl to get laid on a Friday evening decides to spam everyone on Facebook by creating 'events' like FDFS for Korean movies which don't even release in the same continent as his.

Amidst all this there are cool days like 'Pi day' which makes me relieved that some sanity exists in today's world.

All said and done, happy friendship day all. I won't text or wall post you people for I am scared that this post will be reduced to a single twitter hash tag: #meta.

So long.

How facebook changed the face of people..

Came across this Mark Zuckerberg's shutting down Facebook news. The first thing that came to my mind was " Oh no what am I going to do without Facebook?" And when I started thinking, yes thinking, what the big deal about Facebook was, I realised I'll be one of the few who is not so heart-broken. Yes, I'm addicted to Facebook, waste plenty of my quality time on it. There was one 16 year old kid who'd commented " Everyday, I spend about 10 hours on Facebook. What would i do with all that free time now?" My reply would be, "May be try growing up in your free time". It has become an obsession for so many like me. Though I made a few really good friends on Facebook, I think I'd've made many more of them if I were interacting with people for real. I personally feel that with every random friend we make on Facebook we get more lonely.

What life was and what Facebook has made it into?


When someone's in a distress we used to feel sorry for them, now we 'like' when someone's sad.

When someone gets a girlfriend/boyfriend they used to TELL people, now they update their relationship status.


We used to make friends, no we are making fraands.


"How are you" used to make sense, now its plain nonsense.


Personally, I love those 2900 plus pages that I've 'liked', still its creepy.

Relationships break because some boy/girl scribbles something-that-is-not-to-be-expressed-in-public on your wall.


One used to feel happy when people remembered your birthday, now even genuine wishes have become meaningless because you think Facebook notified them.


When people slapped you cried, now you 'like' it or worse, others 'like' it.


Half the number of people who were interested in Farmville actually know nothing about farms.

Parents used to talk to kids, now they 'chat'.

If one had updated his status as much as he did with his Facebook account in real life he'd be the most respected man in town.

When you see people being bullied on Facebook forums, its plain sad.


One wouldn't even smile at strangers, now he adds random people because they both 'like' the same brand of toilet paper.


There used to be genuine fans for people, now there are more fan pages than fans.

I'd love hugs but sadly they don't exist offline.


Patriotism was a feeling of the heart, now the more one hates others the greater patriot he is.


Saying 'fuck you' is easy, being on the other end is hard.


Creativity existed, now Plagiarism is the new creativity.


You made friends, now you request people to be your friend.

You used to quote people, now you imitate people.

Those and so many, Facebook had played its part in changing people forever. This reminds me of a couple of fan pages, yes Facebook effect,


Facebook is the only place where you are allowed to write on walls and poke people.


If Facebook was ever shut down, people would be walking the streets poking strangers and writing on walls.
Now, we'll know if that's the case if the shutting down of Facebook is not some sort of hoax.


Get real. Get a life.

Life

There are so many lovely videos people keep sharing on Facebook 
I'm a big fan of those.. which make you laugh,cry and even think but all in a minute or two.I have always admired anything that is short and sweet.
People usually give me so many philosophies on life.There was this video which is helping me out right now to overcome the void in my blog page :D


Life as it beautifully says must witness us doing this..

Show up


Follow your heart


Find a new perspective


Have a sense of wonder


Find people you love


Set goals


Help others


Dance


Pamper yourself


Face your fears


Go to a museum


Exercise


Limit television


Get in touch with nature


Lighten up


Get a good night's sleep


Read books


Buy yourself flowers


Don't compare yourself with others


Be open to new ideas


Don't focus on negative thoughts


Focus on creating what you desire


Make time just to have fun


Keep up the romance in your life


Make a gratitude list


Love your Mother Earth


Want what you have


Be true to yourself

All these were wonderfully depicted in this video :)






Cheers.. :)