Facebook is Scary

Facebook is scary to me this Halloween. Facebook has been criticized frequently on their default privacy settings, but what’s frightening is they continue to want permission to access more information. As a business owner doing business with business (B2B) I was looking for more tools to improve my Facebook search results earlier this week. Low and behold Facebook has Advanced Profile Search 2.2 (Beta). What’s scary about this application is what you have to allow access to if you want to use it. I’m glad I noticed the Birthday, Political and Religious views in the Request Permission notice.

So the dilemma is do I want to test a beta version of Facebook’s Advanced Search app, that has been rated with low marks, when I must grant access to birthday, religious and political views? Perhaps I need to change the content on my political views and religion to “Not applicable” before proceeding. I noticed that more than 27,000 Facebook monthly users have jumped on and started using the beta version already.

Yesterday I met Karen Thomas, Director at Global Diversity Consulting, LLC at the American Subcontractors Association membership mixer in Phoenix. Diversity is more than skin deep and having just considering trying the Facebook’s advanced search app I just had to ask her what she thought about granting Facebook this permission. “There are two rules of thought. One, it’s Facebook’s product and we have to abide by their rules…after all it is free”. Karen continued, “Two, Granting access to the religion and political affiliations is either to increase fear or revenue. Free enterprise has no limits, we should monitor ourselves to not offend or use this information to support any bias.”

By now you no longer wonder why some businesses ban Facebook at work. By talking about this in a public setting, perhaps we can all become less fearful, or just more skeptical. What do you think? Let’s share our thoughts with the public and Facebook in the comments section. All perspectives are welcome (no expletives please).