

Love Google. Hate Facebook. Here’s Why: - rblion
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/love-google-hate-facebook-why/

======
pluies
_A curious melancholy infests the New Yorker’s profile. You wonder, for
example, to what extent Zuckerberg actually possesses an interior life of his
own. He doesn’t seem passionate about much in particular. At the age of 26, he
bought a car but only after asking his friends for suggestions (he wanted
something “safe, comfortable, not ostentatious” and ended up with an Acura
TSX, which Wikipedia defines as “an entry-level luxury car”)._

So, err... According to Wired, your interior life is best represented by your
_interest in cars_?

~~~
Herring
_> I don't like this article, let's talk about cars instead_

Easy on the nitpicking, guys.

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shmichael
I'm not sure Google's alleged "honest" interface is only a product of company
culture: The launch of Buzz was the target of as much criticism as received by
Facebook.

It might just be that social network interfaces interact with users more
intimately, and thus are more problematic to toy around with.

Either way, Facebook's chameleon interface is definitely irritating. You can
see some of their design anti-patterns here:
<http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/wiki/Home>

~~~
sprout
Google almost always rolls back anti-patterns once it's clear people aren't
fond of them.

Facebook unveils roughly 8 anti-patterns with every re-do and rolls back the
most egregious 4. The result is Facebook get significantly worse with every
iteration.

Most of the recent ones though, I've solved with NoScript and only browsing
Facebook in a dedicated browser. (I really need to make something a little
more robust; effectively a Facebook app running on a Webkit core that opens
all external links in Firefox. That would sandbox the social graph, and let me
read links out of Facebook normally.)

~~~
copper
> a Facebook app running on a Webkit core that opens all external links in
> Firefox.

This sounds really nice, but doesn't facebook also do the sa=D-style redirects
like google? (I've no way to check.) If so, it effectively becomes a nice
cross-browser way of tracking you.

(For example:
[http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://haskell.org/hask...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellImplementorsWorkshop/2010%23Programme&usg=some-
huge-number) )

------
wccrawford
"Cuz I said so, that's why!"

It's hard to tell people what they should love and hate without coming off as
petty. Yeah, you had some issue that bugged you and Facebook was involved.
Your likes and dislikes are not everyone's. Some are happy to trade privacy
for convenience, and some aren't. That's what freedom is about.

------
jlgbecom
Because you can leave Google. You may not want to, and they do a great job of
having features nobody else has, but if they piss you off enough, there's
plenty of email providers.

Facebook, on the other hand, holds your social network hostage. We'll always
resent any site that takes advantage of that.

~~~
lehmannro
I think you are overdramatizing Facebook's importance quite a little bit here.
It's not like your friends will hate you when you quit and I _have_ seen
plenty of people quit online social networks while retaining their life just
fine.

I could make up a similar argument the other way around: to me, services like
Facebook provide little to no value; I can quit them just fine. I have
communication details of a lifetime in Google, I store my documents with them,
organize my calendar. (Note: I have heard Google's export features are quite
okayish so that argument does not really hold.)

~~~
jlgbecom
I think you're underestimating Facebook's social importance. Sure, your
friends won't hate you, it won't be the end of the world, but there is a
palpable sense of disconnect.

And there are more people who rely on Facebook for social connection, than
people who rely on Google for business and finance (especially if you're
talking about the under-25 crowd).

~~~
lehmannro
I believe your claims but is there any evidence to back it up (and is that
possible on fuzzy metrics such as _palpable sense of disconnect_ )?

From your other comments I understand you are from the US and I guess its a
wholly different matter across the pond, but I for one cannot reproduce these
effects here in Germany. Sure, most -- rough estimate: all -- of my contacts
_do_ have accounts on various social networks (me included) but we have never
critically relied on it. It never gained quite as much traction as I always
hear from Facebook.

~~~
jlgbecom
Yeah, I think it's definitely different in the U.S. than Germany, regarding
Facebook's hegemony. Hardly anybody uses anything else here.

------
amanuel
_Facebook? Why should I sign into Mark Zuckerberg’s site to download a
presentation...somewhere else...it still felt like a kind of category error.
This was Facebook pushing its nose too far into someone else’s business._

That's exactly what I don't like about Facebook being everywhere....my
solution was to setup privoxy and expunge any script debris from Facebook and
google.

Your time online should be slightly more productive and private.

------
cherisevill
Next “great” thing: logging in to our bank account with Facebook. Yeah,
Facebook was a smart idea, and, yeah, it deserves respect. But its going too
far. I will not conform. I will not become part of this stupid machine. I
still use facebook, but I use it as a means to read articles from Wired, NPR,
TED talks, etc.

This was a great article, by the way. [http://xtremenowarnings.com/xtremeno-
review-does-xtreme-no-s...](http://xtremenowarnings.com/xtremeno-review-does-
xtreme-no-supplement-really-work)

------
brown9-2
I'm confused why the author is mad at Facebook because Scribd gave him the
option of logging in with a Scribd account or a Facebook account.

~~~
skybrian
The way "instant personalization" works is that when you a visit one of the
few sites where this is turned on, you are automatically logged in using your
Facebook account (if you have one) _without asking you first_. The lack of
explicit consent for linking accounts on two different web sites together is
the privacy violation.

Once you know about this you can turn off that feature in your Facebook
settings.

~~~
skybrian
More here: [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/scribd-facebook-
insta...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/scribd-facebook-instant-
personalization/)

------
jfb
Can't we hold them both at arm's length?

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zackattack
this article sucks.

can someone please give me the reason why people feel that facebook is
"violating privacy" in a way that has nothing to do with the acceleration of
technology?

