Leave. Srsly. I left. Never understood the hype from the start anyway but the whole emailing-me-via-facebook-thing really annoyed the hell out of me. Plus, groupd frickin messages! ARGH!

just close the account and never look back. You do not need to sell that much information about yourself and your friends to advertisers and the CIA anyway.

cia???

I hate all social networking sites and never respond to people's messages to join them on Bebo and other crap like that.

I'm too private.

Yeah, a dude with CIA ties is on the Board of Directors. I'm pretty sure they try and use it to track terrorist cells in the US. Kinda freaky, but eh.

Oh I share messages with people all of the time. Not much into the social networking stuff but been lucky enough to catch up with some old friends through it.

And of course there's scrabulous...

gaah fuckers!

Considering I am in a shitload of Palestine, etc. themed groups lots of which have majority Muslim members,

THE CIA CAN EAT A HEMORRHOID-LACED FETID ASSHOLE.

I am not going anywhere. And nor am I going to carry a fucking ID card, nor am I going to prove my fucking contribution to society based on the government's terms.

(seriously, there's no way you would have terrorists posting shit in a facebook about their terrorist crap! all you get from these investigations are a bunch of very expensive trumped up "support of terrorism" cases based on what web sites you link to or read! this is political intimidation, same as when law enforcement does it elsewhere on the internet! this is a huge, under-reported problem and a dire threat to free speech.)

What, ermmm? Who are you? stranger from Glasgow. I'm sure I've never heard from you before. I sure hope nobody has been using a hacking program to send messages which appear to be ostensibly from me, and which yet are not from me. To you. A complete stranger.

Sometimes I get faux-personalized group messages about shows from my own goddam band.

Get out!? Really? I'm gullable at this time of night no, I'm always gullable, I even believe it was taken out of the dictionary

On that other thing, yes, CIA. cute flash animation detaling it.

Considering I am in a shitload of Palestine, etc. themed groups lots of which have majority Muslim members,

Actually, just the fact that you're thinking that alone means don't join any freaking online groupings, ever.

Considering I am in a shitload of Palestine, etc. themed groups lots of which have majority Muslim members

I had no idea Gracie:)

I adore the fact that I may be wasting valuable CIA time by sending plant tendrils and quizzes to people who pose no threat to national security.

Facebook itself is not necessarily the only place people track for terrorist activity. They track everything all over the web. I read an essay once about one of the giant hives in Virginia that employ this sort of miner -- recent college grads who sit at terminals all day running search strings like "government + Palestine +terrorist +CIA." This is a full-time occupation for dozens if not hundreds of people, and they compile reports on the activity and feed those into the Homeland Security operations. I wouldn't be surprised if foreign governments are doing it as well (they certainly should be if they can afford to). So I don't see a need to single FaceBook out. Heavens, if we knew about the extent of CIA ties, we'd find out they're not that uncommon.

I'm by nature pretty crippled by anxiety when it comes to talking to people. It's even worse when I consider getting in touch with old friends, since my operative assumption is that they probably hate me and are glad I haven't been in their lives (yes, yes, I'm aware this isn't healthy, I'm gonna have it looked at soon). Facebook is kind of a low anxiety way for me to have a simple neutral presence that people can find.

Also, the Visual Bookshelf application is making it easy to keep track of my current reading, in between updates of my main booklist spreadsheet.