I don't know what the technical issues Facebook may have with regard to hacking but I do have a sense that it lowers the barriers to social engineering. It blurs what is acceptable use of your information and not, it can be difficult to know when it and where it is a good idea to enter your password. I'm amazed at how many people will apparently give a new social networking site access to their email account for purposes of spamming all their friends to join the fun.

It makes it hard to give clear rules to the less savvy. I can tell my grandmother to never click a link to her bank in an email but that doesn't work so well in Facebook if you want to feel like your participating in all the fun.

Even after hiding the annoying applications, there are still people who post way too boring updates way too often, so I've begun hiding them from my feed. Thing is, if someone you know responds to their update, you have to see it in your newsfeed. Laaaaaaame.

Somehow, unfriending in Facebook due to boringness seems harsh, while I did cut back in Twitter with no qualms. Perhaps because on Twitter, someone can follow me without me following them back?

I've stopped using Facebook (same time I deleted by Twitter account, about two months ago) but I while I never unfriended anybody for boringness, about 95% of my friends were in a filter called "Don't Care - Don't Read." That same filter was blocked from seeing anything I did.

Perhaps some of you should start your own anti-social social networking site.

I'm sure one exists but the problem is I can't get any of my friends to join (as mentioned above LiveJournal was the perfect level of social networking for me but it is increasingly useless as fewer of my acquaintances are on it).

The problem for me with Facebook was the default assumption of using your real name (something that has declined as an assumption over time). This immediately meant I would never use it for communication of any real value. The fact that Facebook now seems to be primarily a tool for letting me know how good people are at Flash-based computer games was just bonus.

Ruduzu

See, now, wallowing in hatred of others and self-pity is something I'm trying to avoid...guess I need to avoid Facebook too...;)

I have roughly a zillion facebook friends, and I have this amazing ability to scroll past stuff I'm not interested in. I certainly don't have any among the zillions who never posts anything I'm interested in.

Alex, I find it ironic you would shy away from a site where using your real name is customary, since you have always been known by your real name on message boards where it was customary to have a moniker.

I too have a very good ability to scroll past the zillion things I'm not interested. But it is at the cost of scrolling past the many things I might actually be interested in.

On the name thing, I've only ever used my real name within the Disney community and that was only because there was a purpose in making sure people connected me to my role running MousePlanet. Everywhere else I have always used a set of names, varying depending on which sphere it's in.

You'll recall that as soon as I was no longer in that position I changed the names here and at MousePad. I would have gone with complete fabrications but since within these communities I was already well known I decided to keep using Alex.

I think the "hacker" vulnerability comes from 3rd party apps - such as the games and quizzes - but usually those involve getting past your privacy settings and getting ahold of your friends list so they can target spam to them that looks like you endorsed it. More an annoyance than anything else as long as you don't do things like use your date of birth, friend or pet names as passwords.