facebook. it’s getting tedious in some respect, yet it fascinates me. reidar wasenius, known for inventing the visual radio – that sucks by the way – has had his profile on facebook shut down. he claims facebook gave him no reason. whatever the case, here’s an example of the enormous influence the owners of facebook has, and will get, should facebook become the de facto standard in communication over the internet. it’s similar to the position google holds, although there are actually decent alternatives.
at the moment though, there is little to prevent you from:
- communicating through email, instant messaging
- exchanging information through bittorrent
- searching on the internet more or less anonymously, without your identity being connected to your searches
- publishing content on a server, like this blog.
i’m guessing facebook aims to become the tool of doing much of this. if most people were on facebook, it would often be more convenient to use facebook’s built-in system of communicating and publishing content. with microsoft acquiring parts of facebook, they might also intend to compete with google by incorporating a search function into facebook.
as long as facebook isn’t all that important to you it doesn’t matter much whether or not facebook accepts you as a user. but if it becomes as necessary to have an identity on facebook as it is to have a mobile phone number and email adress?
the thing is, if facebook decides reidar wasenius – or any other facebook user – is a persona non grata, there is no way to get back into facebook. now how is that, you say, since it’s simple as hell to register as a user, with a fake name? the answer is as simple: the profile you had before will be matched with the one you create, so sooner rather than later, facebook’s algorithms will have discovered that it has to be you behind the new profile and boom, you’re banned again.
