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Zuckerberg Doesn't Want Privacy

Only for himself.


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SAN FRANCISCO (Radsoft) -- Technically Incorrect's Chris Matyszczyk is on the attack against Facebook founder Mark 'Little Shit' Zuckerberg.

Perhaps you weren't aware people's comfort with sharing had become a new social norm. Perhaps you were naïve enough to think that people used laptops and social networking sites to connect very specifically with certain other people in order to share certain things. You know - in a relatively private way. Like letters that fly at the speed of light. You were mistaken.

Indeed. Matyszczyk's tirade against Zuckerberg pulls no punches and not in a single word sways from its scathing sarcasm.

In order to understand what really makes society go from tick to tock, you should use Facebook's policy changes as a guide. If Facebook decrees your information ought to be frightfully public, then that merely reflects your lassitude in realising pretty much everyone out there wants their information to be public.

Please keep up with the social norms. Society demands it.


But he's only getting warmed up.

Gosh it's hard to keep up with these pesky social norms. They change so very, very quickly. Two years ago Zuckerberg told ReadWriteWeb that privacy controls were 'the vector around which Facebook operates'.

But in order to change a social norm from, say, a tendency to cherish privacy to an embrace of indiscriminately public displays of information, what you'll need is 350 million users, a nice large number that might be very attractive to advertisers, as long as those advertisers can discover as much about your members as immediately as possible.


And that in essence is the glorious 'bait and switch' of Facebook. Facebook attracts those who want their personal details protected. Demographics from MySpace and Twitter where anonymity is still the norm are still invaluable - but what can be done with detailed accurate information is staggering. It's this information Zuckerberg, his VC backers, and his new partners are greedy to sell.



Zuckerberg is treading a fine line. Each and every single retraction of privacy protection has to be explained in language that couches what's really going on. The VC investors are in the background, always impatient. They have to continually keep tabs on membership - see who's coming in, who's leaving.

And they've never given a damn about your rights and your privacy.

Suicide Machine

A clever hacker from Holland has devised a clever way of cleaning out web 2.0 accounts. It's all scripted. Give him your acccount name and password and he'll run the scripts for you. On Twitter he removes each and every one of your tweets, your friends, your followers. And then deletes your account. All automatically.



He'll do the same on the other 'social' sites. Including Facebook. But Zuckerberg doesn't like that - that's money out of his pocket. So he's been trying to block the scripts and now has a legal team trying to get an injunction against them being run.

This is the punch line: there's never been any mechanism at any of these sites for removing comments/posts/tweets. You can still do it - but you have to do it one comment/post/tweet at a time.

But the process can of course be automated. And that's what moddr_ and his friends have done.

Tired of your social network? Liberate your newbie friends with a Web 2.0 suicide! This machine lets you delete all your energy sucking social networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web 2.0 alterego. The machine is just a metaphor for the website which moddr_ is hosting, the belly of the beast where the Web 2.0 suicide scripts are maintained.

Our service currently runs with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn! Commit NOW!


Fighting words for everybody's best buddy Mark Zuckerberg.

After more than 50,000 friends being unfriended and more than 500 forever 'signed-out' users, Facebook started to block our suicide machine from their servers without any comment! We are currently looking in ways to circumvent this ungrounded restriction imposed on our service!

Facebook's disingenuous response to NetworkWorld?

Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely. Web 2.0 Suicide Machine collects login credentials and scrapes Facebook pages, which are violations of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. We've blocked the site's access to Facebook as is our policy for sites that violate our SRR. We're currently investigating and considering whether to take further action.

And they did take action. They issued a threat with a deadline. Which ran out yesterday evening at midnight CET.

Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.
 - Facebook tagline

See Also
Digg: Zuckerberg: I know people don't want privacy
NetworkWorld: Facebook blocks 'Web 2.0 Suicide Machine'
Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - Meet your Real Neighbours again!
Technically Incorrect: Zuckerberg: I know people don't want privacy

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