Facebook: I want out
I said I was “under the weather” as an excuse for not seeing them. But I’m not ill. It’s that one of those friends works at Facebook. And this is the second time I’ve evaded them in two days, though I know they could really use my friendship right now.
I’m not punishing this friend. I ju st know that if we hang out I’m going to lose it about what I’m going through with Facebook. And that friend, who I know loves me, and also hates what Facebook is doing to me and others like me, they really don’t deserve my losing it on them.
Two weeks ago, on my birthday, I decided to check Facebook for birthday wishes because I was having a crappy birthday. It became much worse when Facebook did two things. First, it informed me it had removed an image posted to my timeline based on violating its nudity/obscenity policy — though I had not posted an image, only a link to a post in which I wrote about a new documentary on identity and the gender binary (my link was posted with an NSFW warning). No image. I’ve been around the internet a long time, and I’ve been censored — mostly under inaccurate circumstances — by everyone from the government of Libya to Flickr, feminists and Christian conservatives alike, and Facebook too, when a religious organization campaigned to (successfully) get one of my pages removed on false pretenses.
Next, Facebook said that to access my account I had to pass a security test to prove it was me, on the grounds of protecting my account’s security. These tests, which I attempted to pass for over an hour, were based on inaccurate information and literally impossible to pass. Nearly all were based on naming my “friend” in three photos — when each of the three photos were of three different people, or group shots. Facebook’s account security is apparently based on its users knowing what every one of its friends looks like (do you?) … and the core premise that user tagging combined with Facebook’s facial recognition functions are 100% accurate.
