So I woke up this morning, skimmed over Twitter, and saw that, supposedly, Facebook paid to initiate a Google bashing campaign…WTF? Not too bright there Facebook. But it got me to thinking about another thing that Google and Facebook have in common…privacy issues.
And that just pisses me off.
No, the privacy issues themselves don’t piss me off 🙂 I’m perfectly capable of monitoring and enforcing my own privacy standards, thank you very much.
It’s the fact that anyone cares, or thinks they even have a right to care, about how Google and Facebook treat their “private” information. That pisses me off.
You see, if you voluntarily elect to put your “private” information online, and don’t use your brain and limit what information is available to whom, then guess what…it isn’t freaking private now is it!
I mean, hell, if you don’t want everyone to know something, then don’t bloody put it online in the first place! You don’t want mom to see those pictures of you drunk? Don’t put them online. You don’t want employers finding out about your various fetishes? Then don’t put it online. Don’t want your girlfriend to know what you bought her for her birthday? Don’t put it online!
On top of that, where the hell do people get off thinking they have some “right to privacy” on a service that they get to use for free? FREE! If you aren’t paying for something, then you don’t have ANY right to complain or offer input about what that service does or does not do, beyond what they say they will or won’t do. Privacy policies and EULAs exist for a reason folks, and if you don’t bother to read them and it bites you in the ass, guess whose fault that is? Yup, yours.
If you don’t like the way a FREE service works, stop bitching and moaning and go use another service.
If it’s free, be grateful that it’s free, and use an ounce of common sense regarding what you put online. It’s as simple as that.
The privacy controls are there, for those with an IQ higher than a mouse, to go in and specify what is and is not available to whom and in what way. The privacy controls are excellent. So take the time to use them, and even if the privacy controls happen to suck, just live by the adage “If you don’t want everyone to know, don’t bloody put it online. Period.”