G.I.Jim wrote:How many of you get requests from co-workers to be friends on Facebook? Do you accept them? I have many co-workers that I don't hang out with, don't talk to at ALL socially, and they all send me requests. I've been accepting them, and once I add them, more and more of them send them to me. I ended up having about 20 people that I don't really know, or care for, added as friends.
This has been bugging me, because I was afraid that some of these people would be using it as a tool to keep track of what I'm doing (I work with some SERIOUSLY nosey people). So anyways, I decided to delete ALL of them today. I just did so, and while it felt good, I wonder how many of them will be pissed!

Several of them were higher-ups that work in the headquarters of my unit. Oh well... it's done now!
Would you have deleted them as well? Just curious.
Facebook definitely forces the modern thinking man into uncomfortable social dilemmas such as these. To entertain the company of smidgits and lemmings, or nay? I was like you at first, and as hidden as Ehwmatt -- people couldn't find me unless I wanted to be found, but when Facebook changed their privacy settings to where "Friends of Friends" can see you, the floodgates opened and I had to make a choice. I left a lot of friend requests sit out there for about a month while I stewed on the matter. Then I just decided to dispense with conventional logic. I accepted all the strangers and kicked out all my real world friends and family to shield them from the foolishness and the "serial frienders".
I barely use my account at all, and it weren't for keeping in touch with a few people and posting a few pics here and there, I'd close it. Facebook has a way of leeching personal info out of you one way or another, and if it's not hard enough to protect your own data from scammers and creeps, your buddies' friends lists (with your info) give it away freely anyway -- friends lists these days are nothing but marketing databases easily scooped up by all the games, apps, and stupid quizzes they are addicted to. I won't even push a "Like" button in Facebook, because the design is specifically to track your interests for marketing purposes, which Facebook hopes to share with the rest of the Internet via Web 2.0 technology.
If people enjoy Facebook and don't mind the tradeoff for a little bit of fun, fine with me. Me, I can enjoy it as long as I don't include one single iota of legit personal info in their system. The Carnegie Mellon institute did a study last year, and found that a computer program was able to accurately guess about 8.5% of people's Social Security Numbers based on info scooped up from social networking sites and other online sources. Not for me, no thank ye.
