It's not an app... it's like the notification tray. You can't simply 'take' the notification tray from one OS to another. Same with this. It comes with Jelly Bean.
As I mentioned in a comment earlier this week: to many people, Facebook is the default communication medium for a large number of people. You can bet your ass it would matter! There are many sources of news that people can reach to. But people tend to stick to only a handful of communication mediums. Could you imagine if 'email' shut down tomorrow?
Absolutely. The site thrives off of a small set of human social weaknesses and tendencies. And when a competitor comes around, they do this even further. Each set of privacy changes is pushed out with a proportionate UI change; people spend their time complaining about the UI change instead of the underlying changes to privacy.
Exactly. Even if you try data poisoning (making an account with fake details), people can still attribute details to your account unsuspectingly. And you can't stop them from doing it, either. Very few people realize this lack of control.
Arguments against the Real Name policy are valid if all your thoughts, opinions, and actions all funnel through that one social network. In reality, however, there are many alternate forums for expressing your views with varying levels of anonymity, and I think that's a good thing! The freedom to choose anonymity between forums is great. I'm glad that certain networks stick to a real name policy.
I disagree with this actually, for several reasons! You're speaking about the Facebook of yesterday. Within the last year, they have introduced several features which remove the control of your privacy, and distribute the information gathering to your connections.
But first, in regards to the Facebook of yesterday, you will find many resources that describe how few people actually change their privacy settings or even understand them. This has improved over time, but I know plenty of intelligent people who don't understand many of the settings that have been introduced over the years. The product that they signed up for isn't the same as it is today.
In regards to the reduced control over your own privacy, it's important to note that your friends can volunteer information about you indirectly by using "smart lists". You can tell facebook what city someone is in, what university, whether they are in your family, or if they are a close friend. You can add geographic information to other peoples' photos. Also, because of the different levels of update subscriptions, Facebook has made it favorable for people to use the "Life Stories" feature of their profiles/timeslines because they don't know which friends have unsubscribed from seeing "all updates" ("most important" updates most likely implies Life Stories).
Also, certain features still have no privacy. Answers to all Facebook Questions are public on your profile. Even as intimate with the privacy settings that I am, I didn't know this! So you either have to not use the feature (which would require knowing about the privacy setting before using it), or deleting these answers after making them.
Edit: I forgot to mention that so many people make public posts on Facebook, that you can't comment on any of those without your comments also being public. Most people don't care. So the network is becoming more public, with less opportunity to stay private. And remember that when you comment on those public posts, your comment is shown in the ticker and newsfeeds of your friends (which, in my opinion, is a violation of my privacy. Just because I comment on something doesn't mean I want it notified to my friends). These two actions of public posts have no privacy options... the only thing you can do is avoid commenting on public posts.
whose apparent sense of inadequacy and misunderstanding of the nature of personal relationships are written large across every aspect of that system
I believe the contrary is true. Facebook is successful because Zuckerberg et al understand social ties to the point where they have locked people into their system, got them to interact more, provide all their private information, and then profit off them by serving them all intrusive advertising.
I don't think it would be at all possible if they didn't understand social relationships. They know them intimately enough to skew our idea of privacy and social communication to the point of profit.
I say kudos to them for their brilliance. But I also think they are one of the most evil corporations in existence.
I'm aware of parents who have 6 year olds and 10 year olds using Facebook so that they have access to games and family. The Facebook UI/UX does do nasty tricks to coerce people into providing more information than they prefer.
Did you know that other users can volunteer your information? Someone else can register themselves as your family member, close friend, or classmate at a specific institution, without your consent. They can volunteer your location (city) as well. This was not possible in the past, before the "smart lists" feature. They're literally getting people to fill in the information of friends so that they can be targeted ads even if they chose not to provide that information to facebook. I don't think many people know this.
What? He/she wasn't relating it to oppressive camps at all. Perhaps re-read the comment.
I think that Facebook is relatively oppressive and authoritarian in the context of online services and social software in general. Extending the analogy to another context (death camps?) is... well, I don't know how to describe the irrelevance.