[hack] No, I Don’t Want to Join Your Mafia
Oh, look. My friend sent me a cow. And then another cow. And then an olive tree. And then a hay bale. And then 100 Farkle chips. And then a bumper sticker. And then threw a sheep at me. And then fought me on YoVille. And NO AND THEN! NO AND THEN!
If you’ve ever spent a weekend away from Facebook, you’ve probably experienced the aforementioned scenario. Friends bombarding you with application invitations until you seriously weigh just de-friending them. The notifications. The gifts. The “Hey! Can you send me a horse?” messages. It seems like some applications were developed specifically for testing the limits of one’s friendships: “If you can endure my FarmVille usage, you can endure anything.”
On the list of worst ideas of the past 100 years, Facebook applications falls between filling the Hindenburg with hydrogen and Pauly Shore’s acting career. While some apps enhance the user experience, most are just fall into dumb and/or annoying categories.
Apart from the annoyance factor, Facebook applications present a security risk. Unless you specifically tell it not to, Facebook will share all of the information you put on your profile with outside affiliate websites and applications. It’s all to better target marketing efforts, but it’s an invasion of privacy. So here are a few ways to reclaim your Facebook sanity and security.
First, disable Beacon and Facebook Connect. Beacon allows third party websites to send stories about your actions to Facebook. And Connect sends your profile information from Facebook to outside applications. Without sounding too paranoid, both are essentially information-harvesting tools. By going to Settings > Privacy Settings > Applications > Settings > Select “Don’t allow friends to view my memberships on other websites through Facebook Connect” and “Don’t allow Beacon websites to post stories to my profile.” This minimizes the security risk associated with applications.
Second, block all annoying applications. When you have 50+ pending requests, clicking “ignore” for each of them gets a bit tedious. By blocking an application before it starts pissing you off, you’re saving yourself a lot of time that would otherwise be spent cursing at your monitor while ignoring requests. To block an application, visit the app’s page. Confirm your action. Then go back to the original request and ignore it.
Finally, minimize irrelevant content. Facebook has this rad little feature that makes the visibility of application boxes global. So if you minimize a box on one friend’s page, it’s minimized on all friends’ pages. So no more scrolling down for 15 minutes to post “Hey, how about you get a real hobby that doesn’t involve sending a stupid Facebook gift requests?” on your friend’s wall.
So what are your thoughts on Facebook applications? Love them? Hate them? Bane or blessing?
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I’m the biggest hypocrite in the Facebook universe… I used to “mentally kick people in the balls” for sending me mafia requests… then I started FarmVille and it’s fun… yeah Aimee, we’re never going to be friends… :-(
Oh, I do the FarmVille thing. But I don’t send requests. Or gifts. And half the time I forget that I have the damn thing.
Ditto Aimee, except mine is Sorority Life. And I only got it so I could name my character Skanky McSluterson.
Even better than navigating to the application’s page, you can block any application from invitations sent to you from the invitation page. Below the buttons to accept and ignore are links to the options “Block this application” and “Block all invites from this friend.”
The first is a good option for a single popular application. The second I have found useful for certain friends who don’t understand the concept of “spam.”
HAHA! this article is awesome! it was the worst when I went to church and one of the old ladies said “i can’t get Lacinda to join my farm”
I hate to admit it, but I did like Son in Law….Pauly Shore did do one thing right :)
I have facebook on my tweetdeck, and I despise the endless scroll of application updates I have to go through to get to comments I might find interesting. I once made the supreme sacrafice of actually logging into facebook to block a bunch of apps. My tweetdeck was blissfully app-spam free for a brief while. But the apps just breed and mutate and come back stronger and more numerous. I need a global and perpetual app update blocker. Maybe ssomeone will make an app for that ;)
This is the single most reason lite.Facebook.com is a godsend. Saves you all that trouble.
I loved this post! :)
Applications like photos, events (a lifesaver when it comes to remembering birthdays) and groups are pretty useful. Groups are always a laugh: You were sexy until I discovered that you liked Twilight (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=185426058838)
and: David Attenborough should narrate porn (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34032380088) are such delightful examples of shared opinions.
However applications such as horoscopes, pink cows, zombie mafia etc are just of time and screenspace.
http://bit.ly/41YsfW <- my opinion of farmville.
In conclusion:
Fb apps are like boobs- they can be used for good or evil. Both are extremely distracting when you or someone else is playing with them.
Farmville = fab. Sending requests is the best part of the game. I even went so far as to add total strangers from the fan site….
However, enough is enough. I only sent invites to people that send me invites. I have rules.
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