10. "See? Two-sided." - Ooooh, you mean just like a random guy deciding to beat you up - he trashes your a$$, and you get to see the inside of a trash bin..... also two sided and of equal value of the second party.
9. True.... just as true as the counter-argument. Choosing whether to have a settlement or not is in all cases choosing between having your name cleaned or loosing a substantial amount of money (and that is in case you're actually innocent of the accusations).... when Facebook's CEO decided to go for the settlement he clearly stated he'd rather have the money than the clean name - enough said.
8. "The site is designed to shared information about yourself." ...... with the people in my life(as the slogan says) NOT with the people who'd like to spy on it.
7. "Members, by and large, don't care.".... Yeah, right, and you're basing this on what serious grounds!?!?!? My statistics professor would probably say - if you're not completely sure ...... avoid to assume.
6."Maybe they should update their robots.txt, but that's hardly a reason to stop using them.".... yeah, hey, while we're on it, why not use this old cable wire to tie all the expensive TVs and stereos we have around the house - just because it's old-dated and will potentially fail doesn't mean we shouldn't be using it too.
5."This is because most of Facebook's users, even the ones with privacy settings turned up, only care about privacy when it doesn't get in their way, and when having to choose between privacy and easy functionality, they will take the latter." - Is it just me or you're assuming far too much..... plus if FB's considers most of it's users to be morons, I don't want such a friend, thank you.
4. "They are obviously technically competent based on the various open source projects they have released which are seeing wide adoption." ..... uhm, like which ones!?! Seems to me FB is adopting ALL other open source applications available.(thus becoming increasingly more unusable and annoying but that's a whole other story)
3. "If my friends are any indication, many people who delete their accounts eventually want them back. Keeping those people from making a mistake they will later regret is probably a feature." - Now that's so thoughtful - I do exactly the same when my girl friends want their crappy lame a$$ boyfriends back right after a break-up just because they haven't seen any better..... Now seriously, if only FB admins would do the same as I would with a friend and NOT MESS IN...
2. "Facebook's incentives for maintaining their walled garden to some extent probably outweigh the loss of every user account for every person that even cares an iota about this issue." - maybe if they CARED ENOUGH TO EXPLAIN IT properly to their users, it would bother more of them.
1. "Seems like a lot of people like it and derive some use out of it. Sorry you don't." - HA HA, by "deriving use" you must mean the people all the regular FB users are trying to PROTECT FROM - ad agencies, etc. who derive PROFIT out of the FB platform and the way it's rules are constantly being twisted for legalising spying and obtaining personal information without permission. You actually sound like you're one of these people.... hmmmmm, strange.
All in all – I don’t completely agree with the idea of permanently deleting your FB profile – it can be fun and relaxing and useful, especially for people like me who have friends they can’t visit as often as they’d like. BUT the recent privacy changes and the secrecy (or not so wide publication and promotion) alerted me that something seriously wrong is going on and I know a lot of people harmed by it in one way or another ( their pictures used inappropriately, their job information exploited, etc.). So I’m saying what I’ve always had in mind when using the internet to upload anything – what goes in never comes completely out…. IF YOU DON’T WANT SOMETHING TO BE PUBLICLY KNOWN – DON’T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET.