Dear CNN,
I know you’re not the whole problem, but to me, you’re today’s big symptom. CNN, if I wanted my friends to know what I was reading at your site, I would tell them. If I wanted my Facebook friends to know what I was reading at your site, I would post a link. Or I would click the “Share on Facebook” link. It really takes very little effort to let people know what you’re up to, these days. I bet you’ve even reported about this, haven’t you?
So, I’m sending out a big “Fuck you” to you, CNN, and to any other site that participates in this travesty of a Facebook scheme, whereby your privacy settings on Facebook have no bearing whatsoever on whether other websites can share your browsing habits with your Facebook friends. These sites include ABC, CBS, the Yellow Pages, IMDb, engadget, Pandora, Yelp, and MLB—among many others. So far. Just to clarify: I’m not talking about the “Like” button I can choose to press. I’m talking about reading an article on CNN—or hell, clicking on one by accident—and CNN cold telling my friends I was there.
Actually, I’m not even on Facebook, and this kind of thing is a big part of the reason. I actually think about what I tell my friends—and what I tell which friends. I’ve written here before about how Facebook and other “social” sites homogenize our friends. You can fling bits of information like poo in the general direction of your friend-mass, and your friend-mass will fling bits of poo in your general direction, too. But now, if someone who is friends with you happens to visit the same page as you—that friend will see your smiling mug at the top of the page. “Hey, Bill! Your friend Jack read this story about Larry King’s divorce too!” “Hey Sally! Your friend Roberta spent 43 minutes on this porno site! How long will you spend here?”
And that’s the other thing: Who cares if Jack was reading about Larry King? I promise you that even among the Facebook users who shrug and say that they don’t browse anywhere they’d be ashamed to be seen, there is still not one who thinks this is awesome. No one is saying, “Great! Now I don’t have to waste all that time flinging my own poo!” They’re flinging their poo because it makes them feel like they’re not alone in the world. I don’t think poo-flinging by proxy is going to give them that warm sense of personal connection with their friend-mass.
So quit it.
Your ex-reader,
Sarah
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