PSA: I am old-fashioned and stuck in my ways

[maradydd]

What's the deal with people using Facebook messaging in lieu of email these days? I don't understand this phenomenon, and I don't like it.

Just so everyone knows: I rarely use Facebook. My account there exists only because I needed one to do some development there for work. It might look like I use Facebook, but that's only because I have my Twitter client set up to push messages to Facebook (in point of fact, I set this up when I configured the client and promptly forgot about it, and was then surprised to get a mess of Facebook status replies). If you send me a message via Facebook, whether by scribbling on my Wall or sending a private message, assume that I either won't see it at all, or won't see it for a week or more.

I have three email addresses. One is my personal email, one is my work email, one is a dumping-ground account that gets a whole lot of mailing list traffic that I really don't have time to read. Where do you think Facebook notifications go? If you guessed the third one, hurray, you win a No-Prize. Those itty-bitty status notifications get drowned in a sea of bug reports and developer chatter, maybe three to five percent of which I actually read. Stuff gets batch-deleted every week or so, and it's easy for the only indication that a Facebook message has arrived to get lost in the noise.

"But, Meredith," I hear you say, "why not just point notifications at an address you actually check?" Simple enough: like Bartleby the Scrivener, I would prefer not to. I don't like the interface, application-layer protocols riding over other application-layer protocols is a stupid implementation choice, and if you think I trust Facebook with my private data, I've got some beautiful oceanfront property in Luxembourg I'd love to sell you. I'm twitchy enough about gmail. I expect to have control over my email, and anything I expect to have control over lives in a place where I can shred(1) it if the need arises. Data on Facebook is not data I own, plain and simple. (Neither is data on gmail, for that matter. Or LiveJournal, but I've got enough time invested in this blog and the community it's part of that leaving would be a hassle, so I censor myself, and hate myself for doing it.)

If Facebook someday decides to set up an SMTP gateway, so that I can reply directly to your.shortname@facebook.com, then perhaps I'll change my mind. I doubt that will ever happen, though; they're heavily invested in their walled garden and don't seem too inclined to change that. (Perhaps I could have done something about it if I'd taken that job there, but I'm pursuing academic goals instead, and that door is closed. If you're reading this, Larry, I genuinely am sorry; I think I would have enjoyed working with you, but I have to follow this dream.)

This is a facet of today's Internet that worries me. On the one hand we've got Web 2.0 sites like Twitter, Flickr and Amazon publishing data and providing services via openly documented formats that I can read, use, and mash up any way I like ... and on the other, we've got Facebook and MySpace building extremely large ghettos on top of privately documented protocols that lock users into set patterns of behaviour. I don't like this. It stifles my creativity and harshes my mellow. It might be a nice-looking ghetto ... but it's still a ghetto.

/me sighs. Should I implement SMTP in the Facebook dialect of Javascript? I probably could; some psychopath (and I mean that as a compliment) deployed IPv6 over Social Networks there, and if my steel sieve of a memory serves, SMTP can be modeled with either the same computational mechanism as IPv6 or a weaker one. I expect it's feasible, but I don't expect to like it. (Besides, it'd be a hell of a way to ship out lots and lots of spam. I'm sure Facebook would appreciate that.)

So, yeah. If you want to send me a private message and actually have me read it, suck it up and send me an email.

Comments

[shingkhor.livejournal.com]

"If Facebook someday decides to set up an SMTP gateway, so that I can reply directly to your.shortname@facebook.com, then perhaps I'll change my mind."

In a possible case of a little too late, MySpace is launching this really soon(the actual launch was delayed for product cleanup).

[cloakedwraith.livejournal.com]

I actually got your Bartleby reference. 11th grade English win!

I have not even got a facebook at all

[kekhmet.livejournal.com]

Having not had a need to set one up for a project (yet)

I do not trust them with my personal data (especially they've already made their complete disregard for their users quite blatant) and I have a long-standing, deep rooted, dislike of putting things about me as a social person under my name. (If you look at my LJ you will find my full real name is nowhere in it)

I realise, since I have not been overly careful, that the determined cyber stalker could possibly play a game of connect the dots and work it out, but damnit, if they really care they'll have to show it by making that effort at least ;-)

I've only slowly been loosening my discomfort about having an online presence under my real name for professional matters.

My email is all on servers out of my control, since there've been too many times where my only option was free webmail, but I at least do operate under a principle of separation of concerns by having multiple accounts with multiple providers which are used for differing purposes.

I'm getting really frustrated how many people now seem to be using Facebook to do all social organising 'round these parts...
Even funnier in an annoying way is when they come on LJ just to mention "I'm organising X. Here is the facebook invite if you want to come along all the info is there! :-) " arggghhhh. If I had a ruddy farcebook I'd have seen your invite there silly, and as I do not, I still can't see your event info! SIGH

Of course, when LJ started I resisted joining until I started never hearing about anything 'cos everyone was using LJ to organise get togethers and tell each other amusing stories (then when I saw folk they were halfway into a conversation started on lj) ;-p

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

My fingers slowly contort into the rock and roll sign of the devil as I read this post.

[kekhmet.livejournal.com]

one thing I should probably add to what I said: I don't actually mind at all the idea of people I used to know being able to find and contact me again online. I don't like the idea of what I get up to day to day just being out there for anyone to peruse though. I'd like to know that I've got some idea (most of the time) of who is (potentially) reading personal stuff I actually talk about.

And of course there's the whole bit about not wanting to volunteer too much information for some commercial operation to make use of in some way that suits them.

[ben.livejournal.com]

My wife's daughter said something that surprised me a few months back. The reason she and her generation do not use email much is because they consider it an old technology that only we older people use. The younger generation mostly does stuff like myspace and text messaging (SMS). She is loath to make a voice call too.

We're used to dealing with email spam as a chronic disease, I guess. If email had kept up with the times, we would have long ago adopted digital signatures as a prolific technology to authenticate senders, and completely eliminated unwanted spam. But alas that never happened, so we continue to chisel crude iconographic scribbles into stone tablets and deliver them via the spam mail transport protocol.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

You know...I could be wrong but I read somewhere that gmail has function that forwards to SMTP, and depending on the filters applied, doesn't keep a copy.

But I'm with you on Facebook, took a look, recoiled in disgust at the UI, left and never looked back.

Me Three

[neoliminal.livejournal.com]

I have a facebook account so my mother will know where I am. But I never update it so I guess that didn't work.

I ditched my actual named facebook account awhile ago in favour of a pseudonym. People recognize my face and friend me but I'm never online there.

Who wants to fight another mafia war or face off against (ninja||pirates)

[nibor.livejournal.com]

I joined facebook to play Scrabulous, which was promptly killed. Now I'm sucked in as a million or so family members have started using it as a way to keep in touch (something our personally controlled website was unable to do, even though it's still running).
I turned off all the email notifications from facebook, though, so if I don't happen to notice something, it's lost forever. Oh well.

[radven.livejournal.com]

Yes. This. Exactly.

I really hate sites that send me notices in email telling me to come to their site for the content. At least Facebook gives you the text content - Ning is vastly worse and doesn't give you anything at all. *ugh*