I'll be there for you ('cause you're there for me too)

Overall, I think it's pretty neat that I was born, more or less, right when the internet was born, too. We're bassinet buddies.

Like two awkward toddlers on a first playdate, I remember being thoroughly confused while interacting with my first search engine. I believed that when I typed a question into AskJeeves.com, it required perfect grammar and would be attended to by a live, human professional on the other end of "the web." (The Internet was probably similarly confused by my oddly-worded inquiries.) I was again perplexed when I was introduced to browsers like Internet Explorer, which were accessible outside of AOL, because as far as I knew, AOL was the internet.

Hilarious childhood antics aside, by the age of eleven I was already hanging out with The Internet practically every day.

And, as is the case for many adolescents, those of us who grew up with The Internet were subjected to helicopter parenting, in the form online predator paranoia. When I was in middle school, internet safety was a big freakin' deal. Three separate times throughout my K-12 years I was sat down with my entire school for an extensive seminar on (among other things) avoiding chat rooms, suppressing my urge to post my social security number on my AIM profile, and identifying the 40-something, pot-bellied pedophiles who sound a little too enthusiastic about being fourteen. More than one of these sessions were conducted by uniformed police officers.

Still probably floating somewhere around my mom's house is the VHS recording of Oprah's show on internet safety and predation (taped for my and Cathi's benefit by our mom's well-intentioned best friend). It also featured a uniformed police officer.

Like many children who fruitlessly attempt to wrench themselves away from the phantom strings of their overprotective parents, I've found that most of those paranoid web safety lessons really have stuck with me to this day. And (like many children grudgingly admit later on) I'm thankful for it. When it comes to hanging out with my friend The Internet, I know 1) that I shouldn't immediately trust what I read, 2) that I shouldn't assume that any people I "meet" are dependable, and 3) that whenever I post any information about myself online, I'm obliged to assume that it can be shared with anyone, at anytime. Protection, privacy, and trust should never be expected and will likely never be assured to the extent it is in the unplugged world.

To the point: This is why I feel mildly perplexed when I read articles like this one, printed earlier this year in Newsweek. Newsweek (a liberal-leaning news magazine whose advertisements target the 50+ set) is presumably run and read mostly by the same generation of adults who were giving me the cautionary internet lectures when I was eight. In this article, Daniel Lyons complains that Facebook's privacy policy is delving into new levels of shady as Zuckerberg sells more and more of its members' personal information to advertisers.

Lyons makes some good points; probably due to the fact that Facebook started out as a one-man college website, it's stumbling through the complicated matters of personal privacy and billion-dollar worth rather clumsily. Contradictions and changes in policy have been frequent.

But the source of Lyons' outrage is elsewhere. "I don't trust them at all--is the key part," he states. "If you expect" Facebook to be "trustworthy, you've lost your mind." Lyons proclaims that "Zuckerberg needs your data. His business is built upon it." as if it's a surprise. Essentially, what Lyons seems most upset about is the fact that Facebook betrayed his trust by trying to make money using the information posted to the website.

(Another way of phrasing that last clause is that a wildly popular, completely free website (now used by millions of people) is financially supporting itself not by asking for fees from its users, but by using the only value that the website has (its information) to gain revenue elsewhere.)

My immediate response to Lyons' article is to think: The internet is untrustworthy, you say? Posting personal information online may yield undesirable consequences? You're telling me that the online businesses and services that I access may not, in fact, have my personal best interests at heart? Content online is subject to change?

Scrape me off the floor.

Sarcasm aside, I'm shocked that these businessmen and commentators are so shocked. They themselves were the ones who advised eight-year-old-me against releasing the name of my soccer team's mascot, lest an online predator use that in combination with other subtle clues to compile enough information about me to find and kidnap me. While Facebook's privacy policy is not as simple or protective as it once was, I can't say I ever expected "privacy" from a social networking website.

Plus, the type of bland, stockpile information-selling that goes on between Facebook and its advertisers does not, at this time, worry me. If Facebook wants to use my book preferences and birth date I willingly posted to the site to help them focus their advertising and make more money--fine. What I care about is the fact that Facebook still allows me the "security" that affects my physical person; my profile is difficult to search for and (for people who find my profile) all my information apart from my name is only visible to my friends. Frankly, until I know that there is sufficient danger of advertisers threatening to use my personal information to track me down with diabolical plans for my capture and sale to an underground prostitution ring, I'll keep my Facebook account, thanks.