I haven't ever managed to get as many comments as the time I posted my largely negative view of Facebook, and perhaps this will be received about the same way, but here goes.
This Buzz thing. Hmmm. One day you sign into your Gmail account (if you happen to use it you know what I mean, if you use another server this doesn't apply to you), and what do you know but it tells you that you are now a part of "Buzz"! That's fine and dandy you think to yourself, wondering just what in the world "Buzz" happens to be.
I guess you all know what it is by now, if you're a gmail user. Basically (my perspective here) it's a rip off of Facebook's basic gossip site idea. Don't get me wrong anyone (I love Facebook:), it's probably going to be popular for Google, but I do have a few problems with it.
In the first place, it seems to me that Google could allow users to decide for themselves if they want such a thing, rather than arbitrarily forcing it on them, thus making them have to figure out how to get rid of it if they don't want it. After all, if I want to spend my free moments sending little personal blurbs about my life to the whole world I can find plenty of social networking sites to do it on, why force it into my e-mail? There is a little "turn off Buzz" link on the homepage, if you get your microscope out you will find it. Fine. I can live with that.
Next problem. Like Facebook, it assumes that I want to "follow" a whole bunch of people. Now if I wanted this in the first place that would be great, but could I have the option to okay this? I guess not, I'm automatically following them. Oh, and by the way, it will just go ahead and allow anyone who happens to stumble onto my account to see my full name, e-mail, and other google related sites by default! I'd be okay with those being the default settings if default settings were the first thing you saw the first time it announced itself, but it just isn't that way. Unfortunately you have to figure out how to edit your account to even know that's how it set you up!
Unlike Facebook (I'm comparing Facebook favorably to Buzz, wow!) it doesn't allow you to decide if you want someone to be your "friend" (i.e. follower), it just allows them to follow you. Of course, if you don't want someone to follow you (sounds like stalking, doesn't it?) you can block them. So by browsing from one friends friends to another, you could quickly follow a lot of people you may or may not know.
As I understand it, Google (Like Facebook, by the way) pretty much never destroys pictures or other media you post (not to mention text) even if you delete your account. It's still theirs. Of course, if this is a big concern to you then don't ever post anything online or use e-mail. It's all digital and very archive able.
So let's put this together and see what we've got now. By default it will display my name and e-mail (Facebook doesn't even let others see your e-mail address). In theory, over a very short period of time it can grow to such an extent that total strangers are able to not only read whatever I post but can access personal information about me as well. I would guess that it's very few of us who are so careful about the things we say online that we couldn't be physically located by someone who wished to do so. Unless you're looking daily at your "followers" to see if there are any names you don't recognize and block them, you could have anyone following you. On top of that, there's not much of a guarantee that Google itself is not archiving everything we write for its own data purposes, and its a cinch that any pictures or other media posted can be archived indefinitely as well. This is the giant search engine after all. Fine, so you or I can handle all this because we understand the risks.....
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I don't think. But do you see where I'm going? If you parents with children who use the internet aren't sitting up and taking note of what Facebook and other sites like Buzz, Twitter, MySpace, etc offer and aren't monitoring very closely what's going on, I frankly question your good judgement. If you've never heard the term internet predator, do some research and find out for yourself just how much information about a given person one can find using only the tool of "social networking". Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but please do your homework!
That all said, I think I'll leave the Buzz icon there for now. I enjoy seeing what other folks are up to (my theory being that if they want to share, I'll read it if it interests me at all). But if I have something of any importance whatever to say (and if I didn't I could always use Faceb- er, okayI'll lay off), I'll stick to chat or e-mail. Or maybe even something as outdated and impractical as a phone call. How quaint.
~GB
5 comments:
Thanks Gabe!
Well said.
Do you ever feel like a voice in the howling wilderness?
Thank you Gabe!! I appreciate your thoughts on such things!
Thanks Gabe, you're not the only one. I was going to do the same as you leave it on, so could see what everyone else had to say, but when it changed my name to xx simply because I didn't want the whole world to me able search for me. I quit. Don't miss it at all.
i agree wholeheartedly w/ your views on the "buzz" (what a name :) anyway, i turned mine off for two reasons, #1 i fb so why would i want buzz? :), #2 my main e-mail is also the one i use for financial transactions so i try to keep it relatively secure. i was especially annoyed (as you mentioned) that they automatically assumed i wanted it, to quote Arla "it doesn't help my trust in google". somewhat along the same lines, what about blogspot?
To answer that Noah, the reason I use blogspot as opposed to facebook is because I have more control over it. I put what I want up there, and can limit access as much as I want. Of course, I still can't control whether Google keeps everything I write (which they do), I just recognize it and live with it. ~GB
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