Facebook is, once again, under criticism for not protecting its users’ privacy. Apparently applications have been sharing your information without your knowledge. Over the past year Facebook has had numerous security breaches–even one breach that allowed your friends to read your private messages–not to mention the changes it made to privacy settings without much warning.

I could go down the list of reasons we should all be careful what we share on Facebook, but it won’t matter. The reality is Facebook can do whatever it wants because the average user is too informationally disconnected to realize how consequential use of the site can be.

The average user of Facebook doesn’t mess with the privacy settings at all. I still know people who don’t know that privacy settings even exist!

One columnist broke down all the many reasons we should care about our privacy on Facebook. I bet I was one of about 25 that read it and took it seriously. Numerous journalists have written instructions for how you should manage your privacy settings, but, once again, not many people do.

I guess my question is what would it take to make people hold Facebook accountable for its missteps?

I deleted my Facebook account earlier this year and created a new one from scratch where I do share my real name but not much else. I felt pressured to maintain my facebook page because, no matter how I may feel about the site, the vast majority of people I know who use the site think it’s great.

As a compromise to my dwindling social media principles, I clear out my wall every couple of days, I don’t post pictures beyond my profile picture, I haven’t joined any networks or groups, and mostly don’t use the site beyond changing my status once maybe twice a day and accepting friend requests.

Still that’s quite a bit of activity for a web site I claim to be unable to stand.

I fear we are so concerned with keeping our easy connections we’ll allow the site to do anything as long as it remains free. But your privacy is precious whether you realize it or not, anytime you use real information on the site you are, in actuality, compensating Facebook for the time you spend using the site.

As a heavy user of twitter, I’m afraid that the site is looking at how facebook operates and is thinking that if they can only get a little more popular they can begin to do whatever they want too.

So what do yall think, are we all Facebook’s bitches?

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