Out of some 4,500 posts here to date VW has been linked a 20 times. I’ve linked to a few other places (and people) I don’t particularly care for even more times than that. Probably should use on these links I’m not voting for but still can’t bring myself to use rel=nofollow on anything. Nofollow has done nothing for spam and I really dislike how Google wants (expects?) us to use it as some kind of sword. Look, they should be able to figure out that if I’m linking to something hundreds of times over thousands of pages versus 20 that I consider the former source more of a vote. I’d like to think the SE would figure that out.

With that aside even the National Enquirer gets things right once in awhile, so while I hope you are correct about the people you know at FB (and I have no reason to believe otherwise, since I don’t know anybody who knows anybody there directly — you’re the closest person to the truth that I have any experience with), please contact them and ask them to consider changing their privacy policy to something that prevents user information at their site from being accessed for anything other than malicious or routine/maintenance means by them or vendors they do business with.

I don’t think this request is unreasonable and could be a positive PR for FB. Would this addendum feed VW ego? Perhaps a little, but I’m one that tends to believe in business in acting on information regardless of the source if it can bring a positive solution. So many companies would be better if they’d be better listeners.

I certainly respect your concerns about privacy, but I’d be a lot more worried about Valleywag, frankly. Unlike other companies that *could* cause you harm in theory, Valleywag’s very existence seems to be based upon hurting other people through lies and innuendo. From the FB’ers I know personally, I’d doubt that they’re looking through profiles. Valleywag folks, though, and in particular Owen Thomas have no shame, no ethics. On a related note, I’d rather see people reframe from giving VW any links, any publicity; just feeds their egos.

Don’t get me wrong; I like Snarky. Not everything has to be puppy dogs and love. But there’s a difference between GMSV-style humorous/thoughtful barbs and Valleywag’s immature nastiness.

(oh, and you personally can see who I am via my e-mail address, but I didn’t feel like having Valleywag do some charming character assassination of me, too, like they’ve done with others who were equally undeserving of the negative attention).

No one who’s not in college really needs Facebook.

Providing too much information can be a form of unpaid servitude, so better to starve the hungry beast.;-)