I’m already “visible” on the internet, with or without Facebook. It is always a bit of a tradeoff: sharing versus “oversharing”; privacy versus TMI. Facebook has several obvious problems right at the outset, most notably the one that is also its greatest strength: the concept of “friending”. If someone exists on Facebook and you know them in real life, you might be inclined to ask them to friend you. But what if, like in that video you link to, you really don’t want to share the things you talk about on Facebook?

Facebook started as a work thing for me: a lot of my co-workers were on FB, and I decided to check it out. So many of my “friends” are co-workers. That right there sets something of a tone for how I use it and, although I use it a lot more now to communicate with my family, I still am conscious that my co-workers are watching. But if I had started using Facebook in University, for example, my list of friends and what I talk about might be quite different. I find it rather disingenuous of people who claim they have nothing to hide- everyone has something about themselves that, in some context, would be inappropriate or even damaging.

I’d be offended if someone used something I said in some online forum against me in real life. But it could happen, with or without Facebook. And I’m unwilling to disconnect just because some people are jerks.