Facebook weirdness
There's something very disconcerting to me about the new Facebook platform at this moment. I love the concept, don't get me wrong. I could easily make this post a total raving rant about the loss of control I feel right now having granted "applications" on Facebook to essentially "work on my behalf" with no real say over what they do, but I don't want to do that. I'm going to try not to do this because I have a lot of respect for what the Facebook team has done with the platform initiative, and I think for the most part it deserves the praise it has received.
But that doesn't mean something creepy didn't just happen to me. Because it did, and I think it has to do with the fact that I ceded the right to be "me" to a bunch of strangers. So that right will be revoked right after I hit Post by removing these apps from my profile.
So what happened? I added a friend of mine to my friends list on Facebook last night. Today, when I checked my mini-feed of recent activity, there was an entry in the list indicating that I recruited her to a cause to "Stop Global Warming". That's suspect because I did no such thing - I was asleep at the time - but since this application has access to my world, it apparently thought it would be a great idea to recruit a friend of mine on my behalf. Ick. Now, I don't know if she received an email or a request to add the application. Or an SMS. Or nothing at all. But that's part of the problem.
The second creepy thing - I scroll down the page and there's a mood indicator that someone probably invited me to a couple weeks ago. What does it say? It says "I'm feeling Depressed". Problem is: I never set that mood. It was set for me somehow. Ick again. Now my friends think I'm depressed about something. Lovely.
What else is happening on my behalf? Have I recruiting people to anything else? Am I secretly telling my friends the combination to my gym locker? Is some application listing my home for sale on the marketplace for 80% of its market value? I kid of course, but who knows what's going on? Of course, when I try and remove the Causes application (due to the fact that it appears to me to be spamming my friends) it instantly appears to all my friends. So now they think I don't care about supporting causes since I removed the little spammer. Yes, I realize I could select to hide that from my mini-feed. But this is all a lot of work!