I had initially thought to post this on my politics blog but considering it is more tech now at least until the government steps in (which isn’t far off) I’ll post it here.

When you read stories like the growing concern over Facebook’s privacy controls or Google’s most recent discovery of mining data off of public WiFi networks you start to wonder where companies are allowed to draw the line with your personal information online.

What makes this subject difficult for me to debate is I can see both sides of the coin. From a moral standpoint, allowing corporations to market themselves upon every site you visit and shower you with ads and garbage that you don’t want or need is especially annoying. It’s for this reason I use NoScript for Firefox to block ads and popups on my web browser. But sites like Facebook and MySpace, having long sold themselves out to larger companies and corporate entities, also warp your casual browsing experience with useless ads and redirects to things you don’t need. It’s hard to take three steps online these days without something popping up and annoying you.

However, on the other side, the technology side, web development isn’t cheap, bandwidth is also never cheap, especially for sites like Facebook which receive millions of hits an hour. Ask any webmaster what happens when the “Slashdot” effect hits your web site, it can cripple a small fry instantly. How does one pay to have his creation stay online for all to see? A job? Investors? No, sadly we have become a culture that has associated everything on the internet to be free. News, weather, sports, TV, music, anything and everything we enjoy we believe we deserve for free online so long as we pay for our internet connection. Sites like Facebook which are free to use, are forced to make up money through selling ad space to advertisers, and selling itself to companies and investors eager to use the personal data of millions of people to better be able to market products to them.

The internet has become last generation’s TV, and the one before that’s radio.

I want to leave you with one simple question, and if you would like to answer in the comments section that would be appreciated, I want to hear what everyone thinks before I post my opinions and thoughts on the matter. Mostly because I’m tired and want to sleep.

Why do you use the internet? Facebook? Myspace? What value do you believe you obtain by posting your personal information online, even if it is only to your friends? Finally, if Facebook or any other social networking site were to charge a nominal fee for use, if it meant no ads or any other sort of advertising, would you do it?

Discuss.

Update: well I didn’t expect a circus or anything but here is the short of it anyway.

The internet to me is a form of communication. It allows me to talk to other people, share ideas, share media, and learn about new things. In an average day, I spend roughly a quarter of my time online on social networking seeing what is going on with people I know, another quarter reading news and blogs, and the other half for personal interests or projects. Quite a bit of personal information of mine is probably online one way or another, but the difference between personal and private is I tend not to post anything that isn’t already public information (ie can be searched on any government agency or obtained through already common methods like the phone book) Information like my birthday, my hometown, and the names of my parents and sister, to me these aren’t private information, and perhaps this is a product of today’s perception of information, perhaps 20 years ago this notion might have been different. If I had children, I would not allow them this until they are at an age where they understand personal responsibility.

As for social networking, having paid for Livejournal up until last year for the use of extended services and no ads, I am more than happy to pay a nominal fee for a service if it means no ads. The best example is Something Awful’s forums, if I could actually pay attention to forums (and I can’t, I am not a forums person I’ve found) I would pay the 10 bucks to use it freely. I know this sounds strange coming from a seasoned pirate of the high internets, but I do spend money on things I think are worth the money, and services I will use. Steam is the best example here, because they offer dozens of cheap decent games for under $15 and top titles as well. They also like to bundle a lot of games and sell them cheap. A lot of this is to encourage indie games and stop piracy, but they have the right idea for a distribution platform, and sadly I only wish the RIAA had stopped with their frivolous lawsuits and built a platform like this for music a decade ago.

The ultimate point I want to make here, is that nothing forces you to post on the internet, and if you feel so strongly about Facebook or any other site’s policies, quit. S’all it takes.

Now I’m going to get my Borderlands and Torchlight on.