Does Facebook's five-year plan include me?
I just clicked on an advertisement in my Facebook NewsFeed (for the new The Hold Steady album) and it opened iTunes. Not only is that obnoxious, but it also frightens me to think of what else they and others could open via unmarked links without my consent.
I am consistently amazed with Facebook’s inability to squash bad ideas like this in their meetings and planning sessions. People bash Google for things I usually don’t even consider “being evil,” but nobody even holds Facebook to that high “don’t be evil” standard.
It’s like we expect Facebook to suck. We expect them to share our private information, leave sections of their site unchanged for years, abuse our somehow-easily-earned trust, and think of users only as sources of money and data.
I, for one, could potentially use Facebook (and Google) for my entire life. With such a lock on me and millions of other people, these companies should make it their business to think not only about their five-year plans, but about what they can do to ensure we’re there in five years.
