I think what made me mad about this is that Facebook makes it seem like your posts are available on the general internet, by calling them "public" but the posts are not actually readable unless you have a direct link. If I post 10 essays on my Facebook and someone tries to scroll past the first few, Facebook will fade the page out and force a log-in.

That feels deceitful to me. They try to create the impression of a public profile, but then put up an artificial boundary in the middle of your content beyond which you must be real-name identified and tracked to read.

It just feels wrong to me. Like they are hijacking the content I licensed to them (for free!) and using it as a carrot to compel people to provide them with personal information.

Do you feel that your privacy is less at risk when you give your data to Google over Facebook?

It's not strictly about that, it's an irrational fear of the API growing pains that Facebook went through. That is to say, apps the user installed having more access than the user liked. Whether through malicious means or ignorant users, it was a common trope "back in the day".

I understand it's completely irrational, but i have yet to link my FB to a single thing due to this irrational fear. I'm sure if i used FB more i would have worn away this fear, but there is honestly no page on the internet that makes me feel more old than FB. I go there and all the buttons and overload of "things" makes me feel like i'm looking at a AOL sign-on page from way back.

Mind you i'm 32, so not that old.. but still, there is some type of age and or usage issue going on in my head.

I say this not as a complaint, but more as a curiosity for fellow developers. I'm sure i'm a small minority of FB users, but it seems as if i'm a fringe user who had their trust broken and is very tough to get back.

I'm totally willing to go to FB (albeit, infrequently), just unwilling to link stuff via their API.

Also, to be clear, when i mentioned the trigger word "Privacy", i did not mean Privacy from Facebook. I was referring to spammers/scammers/etc.

I dislike it when I create an account with Facebook on some site, and then can't do basic things like update my email address.

I'm not the parent poster, but I feel similarly about Facebook so I'll take a shot at answering.

Bottom line is that I already use Gmail and a fair number of other Google services. I don't use Facebook at all.

It's not so much about trusting Google over Facebook, but rather an unwillingness to share my personal info with yet another company...and Google beat Facebook to the punch. If Facebook had offered a comparable set of services and had offered them first, the roles would be reversed.

That said, I've been looking at ways I can divorce myself from Google because I trust them about as far as I could throw Larry Page.

>> Do you feel that your privacy is less at risk when you give your data to Google over Facebook?

Yes. Google's place on the internet, particularly in search, and it's greater openness means that Google is more heavily regulated (see the 'right to be forgotten' cases). Making demands and even suing Google is rather straightforward. Their door is open formal complaints. But even finding an email address for a Facebook rep can take years.

For me, it's not something I've thought through or weighed. I just don't like Facebook.

Yes.

Happy to argue this ad infinitum but, basically, nothing (let me repeat that - NOTHING) is private once handed over to Facebook.

And that extends to data your friends upload about you.

I'm not talking about anonymous, aggregated data. I'm talking about actual personal private data.

My personal opinion is that what you've said applies to Google and most other software companies, which is why I asked the question.

For me, if it doesn't make sense to link something to my accounts then I'm not going to (Google, Facebook, anyone).