> This debate isn't about online ads or even spam anymore.
While privacy and the mess regarding the NSA are problems, to be sure, I'd like to suggest the real problem with facebook is trying to be the ultimate middleman in society. They have the potential to become the worst "rent seeking" business we have ever seen.
Crap like their embed-in-any-webpage login and comment services are good examples of how they seduce people into their walled garden. I've already seen websites that only supported facebook logins, and one "trendy" restaurant in SF that only accepted their payment service.
Worst of all, most people seem to be able to separate the middleman threat (when it is acknowledged at all) from the privacy threat. Even when talking to friends that should know better (several engineers, one bio PhD), any time I bring up the subject. The response is _always_ something about how they don't give facebook their REAL information anyway or similar privacy-based argument. They are assisting in the creation of yet another long-term barrier-to-entry and can't even see it.
While privacy and the mess regarding the NSA are problems, to be sure, I'd like to suggest the real problem with facebook is trying to be the ultimate middleman in society. They have the potential to become the worst "rent seeking" business we have ever seen.
Crap like their embed-in-any-webpage login and comment services are good examples of how they seduce people into their walled garden. I've already seen websites that only supported facebook logins, and one "trendy" restaurant in SF that only accepted their payment service.
Worst of all, most people seem to be able to separate the middleman threat (when it is acknowledged at all) from the privacy threat. Even when talking to friends that should know better (several engineers, one bio PhD), any time I bring up the subject. The response is _always_ something about how they don't give facebook their REAL information anyway or similar privacy-based argument. They are assisting in the creation of yet another long-term barrier-to-entry and can't even see it.