Why I am not on Facebook.

[daleadmin]

I generally do not join things, especially things that I cannot check out first. I cannot look at Facebook until I sign up for it, I will not join Facebook until I can view it and see what the deal is. Sort of a "Catch 22" there. After all I do not know if I can un-join if I do not like what I see there.

This may be a pretty pathetic reason for my not signing up for something that apparently 100.2% of the population of the Earth is participating in, but there it is.

I do not expect Facebook to change their policy to allow me to poke around there for a while to just look, and they seem so far to be fairly fine with the idea of me not joining their club. I, on the other hand, find it very easy to resist the lure of someting I know little about. So we are both good with the idea of me being a non-member.

However I do receive requests from folks to be their "friend" on Facebook. This "invite" gives me two options; 1. Become their friend (is a beer involved?), 2. Tell them to "kiss-off." I do not understand the first option and the second option seems to be pretty rude. So I do nothing. I would like to explain that I do not know what being their Facebook friend means, but that is not an option. So I just delete the email and get on with my life.

Then I get about 7 more emails from the same person asking me to be their friend. They get pretty needy after the first 4 or 5 but eventually they give up, or die of despair. I never find out which since the invite never gives me their email address so I can check. And I can't check their Facebook page to see if they are OK, because Facebook will not let me in.

So you can send an invite to me to become your Facebook friend but please do not take it hard when you do not hear back from me. I am sorry but I have no way to send you an email to tell you that I do not belong to facebook. I am probably the last living human on the internet that is not a member. Well it had to be someone, why not me?

However if you are Facebook and do have some way for me to look around without my touching anything for a short while then send an email to daleharris@prodigy.net to tell me how. But don't do anything special, I am fine without joining.

Dale

[arcovine]

maybe create a DHPOS group? so people who recognize/use the software can be a fan of the group.

[daleadmin]

See, I do not know what a Facebook group is, since Facebook will not let me on to look and learn. Please do not start one for me because I would never be able to visit.

[Dukane]

Hi Dale,

If you do sign up, you ARE able to close your account if you later decide you don't like it.

[daleadmin]

Dukane,

That eases a minor point of my concern. But I still want to just be able to look at something before I join it. It makes you wonder what they have to hide?

Dale

[Andrew]

You can close your account afterwards, however they've been (and continue to be) under fire for poor privacy policies - which (unless they've recently changed) were pretty much "we own everything you put on our site, and we don't promise to delete it if you decide to leave" as far as I understand.

[ToPS]

Dale,

You are definitely not alone in not being a facebook member.

I joined to check it out, but to be honest, I find it a waste of very precious time and energy.

Your forum is more important and much more about what you do and who you are.


ToPS