Facebook: Positive or Negative? [View All]

[Syrinx]

I was watching the (very) late replay of O'Reilly. And I'm sorry for the sin, but nothing else was on. I have about 200 channels, but half of them were trying to convince me my penis is too small, and most of the others wanted me to buy overpriced fake jewelry.

John Stossel was Mr. Bill's guest. Stossel was defending Wall Street and the banks "occupying" Wall Street against the "dirty hippies," while O'Reilly, very unconvincingly, played the good cop.

Stossel said that without those nice bankers directing money into productive sectors, we would be left without great things like Facebook.

I don't know if Facebook ever took out a bank loan or not. I've never read any of the histories of that company that have been published. I did read one entertaining book about the temporary rise of MySpace, but that seems all very moot today.

But forget about how Facebook was financed, and all that.

In your opinion, is Facebook, net, a positive or negative force today?

Some good things have happened on Facebook. For example, a lot of money was raised for the victims of the tornadoes that tore through my area six months ago yesterday.

But in the larger picture, I see Facebook as a net negative. Mark Zuckerberg believes that any notion of privacy is an outmoded concept.

That sounds to me like the ravings of a lunatic... a madman.

Facebook is soaking up intimate details of the lives of all of its members, and selling those details to all comers. It's all up for sale.

I think that is a revolting development, but it has been achieved with the acquiescence of it's participants.

I've never joined Facebook, and I never will. I think it is a commercial effort to subvert the internet, to turn it on its head, and to rob the privacy and freedom of its users.

I think poorly of Facebook. Do you call it a net positive, or a net negative?