Oh yeah, that'll probably really make the real people behind Zynga feel bad as they're sitting on their solid gold throne and eating imported rhinoceros steak and ostrich eggs for breakfast...

Face it, if Zynga goes down it won't hurt those people one bit, they have their money. It'll just shaft a bunch of employees. Not that we should keep bad companies open just because they have employees, but there's no reason to pop the cork on any champagne bottles even if you do get your wish.

A quick Google search shows my profiles on at least 2 sites in first 2 pages, and the rest is populated by some unknown people with name same as mine. I certainly didn't expect this result but still I'm not too worried about it. At least my FB is not there...

There's several reasons. Invasion of privacy is one thing that's easily dodged in a relatively sane country were employers can't demand to have a look at your wall or your private party pictures.

I struggle to understand how Facebook really took off at all. Accessibility I suppose. But it's come to the point where an active Facebook account is practically required, and that I loathe with every inch of my being. For example, a potential employer / date / client / whatever is bound to look you up on Facebook. If you're not there, some people will claim that it fires red flags about you and your total failure as a human being. I've seen this being used as an argument from recruiters; that people without Facebook accounts are more likely to be social rejects and the like.

Also, these days you can't enter a contest without using ... Facebook. Spotify keeps bugging me to share my Facebook account. There are achievements on Steam for linking my Facebook account. People want me to communicate my intent of joining their events by logging onto Facebook and joining their event. People send me messages on Facebook instead of say, a text message, or calling me, or just fucking showing up at my door to have a chat. People take pictures with me in it, post it on Facebook, and then spend time drawing little squares around my face and tagging it with my name. A spider crawl later this information can be found on google. I didn't consent to it, it's just that this fucking mindless drone of a person I'm unlucky enough to have hanged out with at the time has to post every goddamn fucking thing he does on Facebook.

The real topper is when they went public. I don't know how much Facebook is worth now, and I won't look up the number in fear of having a heart attack induced aneurism while shitting my pants in rage.

The technology behind Facebook isn't really that advanced, and as a former web application dev I should know. It's just large. The total worth of their physical assets is nowhere even remotely close to the inflated value they are catching on the stock market, making their owners rich beyond the dreams of Avarice. So what are they selling to catch that price? They're selling their users. Each user is worth a certain amount of money.

This means, in sum, that every moment you spend playing fucking Farmville or drawing squares around your friends faces, is time you spend making somebody else richer.

The solution; quit Facebook. Except you can't even do that. The information you've entered is never deleted, even if you "delete" your account.

I have to be honest, my facebook account only exists because it's easier to have it then spend the weeks fending off the 'Are you ok? What happened? Why did you delete me? Do you hate me?' crap because I got tired with it. My current view is, I'll keep it (I barely use it), until it's become more annoying to have then I'm willing to deal with (which, to be fair, isn't THAT high to begin with).

You've hit on my main gripes about Facebook. I really am sick and tired of hearing about Facebook, and I would not hold so much resentment towards them if it wasn't shoved into my face so frequently. No, I do not have a Facebook account, and no I do not want to start even a fake one. It is not that I have anything to hide either, I just don't see how it is anyone's business what goes on in my private life. I intend to resist the borg as long as possible, at this point it is also about pride.

Well said!

I always thought Facebook was an overrated unnecessary piece of trash, I mean come on they made a fucking movie about it like was that even called for?

agreed, but on the bright side the movie was not flattering towards Zuck :)

This.

Zynga has made their millions on the backs of other people's effort. They haven't created one game that was their original idea, just stolen someone else's and put prettier graphics to it.

Oh and yes, they treat their employees like crap too.


I was asked for my Facebook login information recently from a US company that I was going to do some freelance writing work for. They wanted to make sure I hadn't posted anything negative about them before they gave me the job.

I told them to go "F*ck themselves" and that you can guarantee I'd be "posting something negative" about them now. Think they got the message as I never heard anything more about the writing job. LOL.
I think many people THINK a Facebook account is necessary. It's not.

I have one, I log in about once every six months and never share any personal information. Mine doesn't even have the city I live in, the university I went to, any personal photos -- nothing. I just keep it to be able to contact old friends that seem to have an aversion to private email.

And btw, I've been doing online writing for 10 years and am all over the place under about 5 fake names. There isn't one reference to my real name though as I've never used it. I intend to keep it that way :)

Good for you, nice to see someone not bending over :)

LOL. I never have.

Thankfully my parents brought me up to question everything and not to be a "sheeple". It's why I work for myself, as I am the world's worst employee. I despise authority when it comes from people dumber than me or people who are trying to screw me over, and have a huge problem doing something an employer tells me to do when a) I know he's an idiot and b) I know he's wrong. Needless to say, working for myself has saved a lot of employers a lot of grief :)

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people weren't brought up like me so, in every country, it's Sheeple R Us. That's how Facebook has been so successful.

The more people that refuse, the better. Unfortunately, many people aren't in the position where they can refuse to give that information.

I think it's more common for them to require employees to friend them on FB than require them to provide log in details, but even that is IMHO not OK. If it requires one to be friended in order to find it, then that's probably not something that's going to be widely available.

That's true. If you have to support a family, for instance, you don't always have the freedom to turn down a job like I do.

I've always been thankful I don't have kids (never wanted them), as I don't have anyone to support but me. The boyfriend manages to pay his own bills, thank God :)

I actually have no qualms about the actual purpose of Facebook, but I do hate what it has become - basically a platform for sub-par businesses to spam you with useless information. I still use it to maintain contact with distant friends, but I never play games on it.

That being said, even if you don't play Zynga games, it encourages its users to spam everyone on their friends' lists for free items, which means we keep getting these fucking invites every 20 minutes, which in turn causes my phone to keep beeping every 20 minutes.

Worse still, Facebook doesn't allow you to block all invites, only all messages from certain apps, so you need to set up blocks for every single fucking Zynga game.