Facebook Doesn’t Know Everything

Friday, August 12, 2011

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Facebook Doesn’t Know Everything

By J’AMY PACHECO

I recently read that a group of hackers intends to converge upon and eliminate Facebook on Nov. 5. I suppose this is what you could call one of those “good news, bad news” things.

As I understand it, their intent is to damage Facebook as punishment for the way it tracks and retains information about its users. “Facebook knows more about you than your family,” the soon-to-be-hacktackers wrote.

I don’t know about that. My family, for example, knows that I was probably the first person to use the term, “googling.” That historic moment took place on a summer afternoon during the late 1970s. My younger brothers were driving me nuts. As my annoyance swelled, I clenched my fists and screamed the first words that popped into my head:

“Would you two stop your googling?” They froze.

“Ken,” my brother, Kevin, said. “Were we googling?” It’s the stuff of legends.

Only my family knows why, when I used to enter a room, my siblings would hold their fingers by their ears like antennae and call out, “Doot…doot…progress report.” Facebook doesn’t know what one brother did with a fork back in the early 1970s that still makes people laugh when the story is retold. Everybody but the other brother, that is.

Oh, sure, Facebook knows that I used to tend a digital farm in FarmVille, and that I never quite understood the game, “Mafia Wars.” They even know my telephone number. Big deal. So do half the telemarketers in the free world—and some in the other part.

I would hope that anybody who launches information into cyberspace knows it may end up rocketing into the public eye. There are no secrets in cyberspace.

What I don’t understand is why anybody would want to take down a site where millions of people spend hours tending their farms, rearranging jewels, building little cities, cooking up digital dishes and showing off pictures of their grandchildren.

It’s been said that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. That was said before Facebook was invented. Take away our Facebook, and you’re not going to be feeling the love.

I’ve always wondered why hackers don’t go after the world’s bad guys, like terrorists, extremists and flash mob looters mobilizing via Twitter. If someone had figured out how to do that over the last few days, England would probably be grateful enough to create a cyber-knight post. The Queen might even substitute a light saber for the traditional sword.

Nobody likes a hacker who disrupts something that is important to them. But everybody loves a hero who goes after bad guys. Hackers who shut down evil-doers could be modern day heroes, like Superman or Spiderman, only they wouldn’t have to worry about good looks or muscles. Which would probably be good.

I’ve often thought it was a shame that hackers didn’t put their skills to use doing something positive. Instead of stealing, pirating, destroying or boldly going where no decent human being should go, I wish they would put something good out there. And I mean good as defined by the general population, not by other hackers who think taking over traffic signals and airplane guidance systems is good.

The wanton destruction of someone else’s property is the “bad news” part of the potential Facebook attack. The “good news” part is that I’m not exactly a defender of Facebook. I find it a little scary that some things can’t be accessed unless you agree to allow access to all of the information you make available to your friends — including your friends list. That’s why I never acquiesce to requests from friends to vote for them in contests through Facebook. I can’t say, “okay” to that.

I get enough posts on Facebook that I suspect a lot of us are spending waaaay too much time on it. Losing Facebook might turn us into productive citizens again.

But to shut down Facebook because it knows too much is silly. Nobody knows more about me than anybody who has been reading this column for the last 16 years. I’ve kept few secrets; I’ve shown no shame.

By the way, my siblings did the progress report thing I mentioned because I was a tattletale. Now you know something about me that Facebook doesn’t.

As for the fork event—well, stay tuned. It will come up.

It always does.