Come now the usual whiny contrarian types with their cry of “It’s your own fault! Anything you put on the Internet is fair game! You’re stupid if you think you have any privacy on the Internet!” I’m not linking them because they don’t deserve the press; instead I will simply say: eat a dick.
I don’t “put private information online.” Simple. I did put things in a proprietary service that offered explicit granular levels of privacy and control over who could access what, and which was completely off-limits to non-members. If that service suddenly decides to revoke those privacy controls, without warning, and leave me with no recourse to control my own data on a service that was explicitly non-public previously? That service is run by cocksuckers who should eat shit and die in a fire.
I have tried to get rid of as much of that information as possible, but I have no faith whatsoever that it has not been retained for future marketing purposes by said service. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice – isn’t going to happen. The truly obnoxious thing is that other services – Tumblr, Twitter, etc – don’t really care how you identify yourself, whereas Facebook made such a big deal of true identity that their changes of policy have now become great whopping privacy violations.
So yes, this is serious. This is not a bunch of “whiny, entitled dipshits” (TechCrunch has a lot of fucking gall to call anybody else whiny or entitled) – this is a breach of trust, pure and simple.
I’m stuck with Facebook for at least a couple more months because that’s where my reunion is being organized. But if you’re not already on it, you’d be a fool to join now – and if you’re on it now, you’re an idiot if you don’t have an exit strategy in mind.