Facebook is the Internet, Facebook is the phone – A look into Facebook Home
Facebook’s biggest problem is trust.
The above will seem obvious to some and acceptable to many. Through privacy issues, multiple changes to terms of service and a reputation for making changes first and asking questions later; using Facebook for many is deemed a reluctant necessity because “all their friends are on it”.
So when Facebook released their new software, Facebook Home, for Android devices it was unsurprising that many detractors were quick to voice their concerns: Facebook just wants to track where we are, Facebook wants to read our messages, Facebook wants to get all my phone numbers etc. There are more 1-star reviews for Facebook Home on Google Play than anything else and even respected tech journalists like Om Malik are targeting Facebook’s new software.
Funny thing is, many users who will jump to attack Facebook are also Google users. And while they will cry foul at Facebook allegedly tracking you, reading your messages and saving your contacts; they will happily allow Google to do the same thing without question. By default Android devices will send location data back to Google, people save their address book on Google’s servers for syncing with multiple devices and no one suspects Google of “reading” their text messages on Android devices even though they build the operating system.
Why? Trust.
However, in a very high level view, both companies are doing exactly the same thing: using information from your internet activities, searches, what you like and so forth to build a profile of who you are in order to better target ads in order to make money. In addition, all this is done via algorithms processing through your data without humans interacting with it directly.
So when you get past the scare mongering, fear inducing and, quite frankly, grossly over-exaggerated messages about Facebook Home’s privacy issues; you actually find a well designed piece of software that may provide a lot of value to you if you give it a chance.