Anil on Facebook: We're Sharecroppers

Anil Dash on Facebook and the social Web, from a recent interview in The Morning News:

I think the most practical and pragmatic first step is for people to get educated. If I said, “I’m going to come by your house, survey all of your personal data, rifle through your files, and share some parts of what I’ve learned with whomever pays me the most money, under terms that can change at any time to be even more in my favor,” you’d kick me out without even thinking twice. If I said, “But wait! If you let me do this, I’ll reintroduce you to people you hated in high school, and let you play with virtual farm animals!” you’d probably be beating me while I was on the way out. But that’s the exchange we make with Facebook every day.

I’m not saying there’s no value in it, I’m saying there are 350 million people who don’t understand how much they’ve given up control over the most valuable part of their identities, and they’ve sold short their futures online without even getting paid.

Once you get educated, get your own web site and your own email with your own name on it, that you own. Someday very soon you’ll be able to be just as connected as you can be with Facebook and Twitter, but on your own terms, and that’s when we’ll see the real value of today’s real-time social networks. Right now we’re all constrained by the fact that we’re sharecroppers.

For me, aside from the exceedingly rare gem (to wit: a recent video clip posted by a gradeschool pal, in which all of us gradeschoolers sang songs and played ukeleles -- that was quite a find, indeed), or the odd status update announcing the birth of a new baby, or colorful sociopolitical rant, Facebook has become a gigantic waste of time and energy. Like Anil, I'm not saying it has no value, because it does have some -- but I am saying it has very limited value, and probably costs us all a lot more, in a number of ways, than it gives back.

Nick Carr elaborates on the idea here.