Facebook Privacy

I think it's time that I weigh in on this whole debacle.

This whole thing started around the beginning of the year, when Facebook decided to roll out new privacy settings. Not a bad thing in itself, except that they also decided to reset all of your privacy settings also. Whether this was an accident or intentional I don't know, but it started one hell of a fire storm.

Recently, Facebook rolled out simplified privacy settings in order to placate all the naysayers. It works pretty well and things seemed to have quieted down somewhat.

However, as usual, people have started acting stupid.

The biggest thing that gets me is people complaining how Facebook's privacy pages are longer than the Constitution and that they're difficult to navigate. And this isn't casual web users. This is the TECH industry. It simply boggled my mind how much people were whining. Especially since I was able to change my settings to my satisfaction in less than five minutes.

Another thing people have said was that back when it started, Facebook was THE place for privacy. True. Back then, you had to have a college address to use Facebook. It then opened up to allow everyone, but it was still rather closed down. That was four years ago. In the last two years, Facebook has taken a more Myspace approach. With all the games, notifications and the like, you'd have to be a TOTAL MORON to claim this was the same Facebook of old.

I understand that people have an expectation of privacy, and Facebook DID fuck up royally, but people are also being a little unfair. So what if it might take you a little longer to have your privacy settings the way you want them. If you're that concerned about it, you'll do it.

Even better. If you're extremely paranoid about certain information becoming public, then DON'T FUCKING PUT IT ON THE INTERNET! Facebook has fields for your address and phone number. Is it required? Hell no! It's a general rule of the net. It applies to EVERY social network and not just Facebook.

It seems like people are using "Expectation of Privacy" as an excuse to be stupid. I agree that people should have privacy, however I also believe that people should take an active role in maintaining that privacy instead of complaining so damn much.

Gamefly, what the HELL happened to you?

I've been with Gamefly on and off since 03 and I generally didn't have any problems with them.

I resubscribed with them in November and I've had three hiccups so far. The first one wasn't really their fault. I had reported a game as missing since it had been about a week. They were in the process of shipping a new copy when I received the first game in the mail. So I let them know, but since they were already shipping my game, I ended up with two copies of the same game. No big deal.

Second hiccup was when I noticed that sometimes, my queue would be out of order when they receive a game. No biggie. I just reordered it, thinking it was a glitch.

Today was the biggest hiccup so far. I see they received a game I sent and I checked my queue to make sure it was in order. It was. I had Final Fantasy X on my number one slot. So everything's fine right? Wrong. I check back in a few hours and see that Final Fantasy X-2, which was in the second spot in my queue, was shipping instead, despite the fact that Final Fantasy X was "Available Now." To add insult to injury, FFX-2 wasn't at my shipping center in Pittsburgh and instead shipped from LA. So now I have to wait two more days for a game I didn't even want yet.

Needless to say, I fired off a complaint, so we'll see how it's taken care of.

I just have to wonder what happened to Gamefly? In 2003 when I started using them, they were very friendly. They prominently displayed their phone number and I remember one occasion in which they conference called my bank to see why they were taking out too much money. (Long story there.) I also remember when I could just set games in my queue and forget about them, reordering them only when I wanted them to ship in a different order, or when a new game came out.

Now they've become this huge corporate sellout. The only way you can contact them is through e-mail (I can't stand when companies don't even acknowledge that you might want to call them), the queue is fucked up to the point where you have to make sure everything is in order whenever a game is returned, and they've just lost their "gamer" feel altogether.

It's really quite sad. If this keeps up, I'll have to take my business elsewhere.