Since announcing proposed updates to both our Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, we've heard from many of you through both our comment process and those pointless copyright "notices" that everyone keeps cutting and pasting onto their walls. Despite the terrifying fact that some of you believe that a post on a social networking site can be a legally binding document, we are still somehow grateful that you took the time to share your thoughts. This feedback allows us to respond to your questions before our proposals are implemented.
Some of your comments related to the changes we proposed to our site governance process, which we will respond to in more detail here. But you mostly had questions about other proposals. For example, you asked us to clarify proposed language in our Data Use Policy explaining that we will share information with our corporate affiliates. I am unsure what part of "we will share information with our corporate affiliates" you don't understand. You put your information on our website for free, for some reason that I still don't quite understand. We sell that information to our advertisers. But it's not like we're getting rich off you individually; you're only worth like a fraction of a cent to us, give or take. It takes you and all your idiot friends and all their idiot friends to make Zuckerberg rich enough to buy a flotilla of platinum yachts.
Let's face it: Personal information is cheap. That's part of the reason why I agreed to write this column for The Stranger, to demonstrate how utterly pedestrian information is treated like it matters, somehow. Look at this article on marriage by GOLDY. It's basically an excuse for him to go on and on about his divorce. Don't get me wrong: I love divorce stories—I'm in the whining-about-divorce business—but the sheer fact that this story will be printed tens of thousands of times and delivered to street corners throughout the Seattle metro area indicates to me that you can pick this shit up anywhere. The only reason this schmuck gets to whine about his poor ruined hopes and dreams in The Stranger is because he knows people at The Stranger. Otherwise, he'd be dumping it all on Facebook, desperate for the validation of a click or two on a digital thumbs-up icon.
Reading The Stranger reminds me of a time when people pretended that all this stuff—DAN SAVAGE's advice, what CIENNA MADRID thinks about a Christmas variety show, DAVE SEGAL's esoteric musical tastes—actually mattered. But really, they just had a platform. Now, thanks to Facebook, everybody has a platform, and we can stop pretending. See? It's a valuable service. You're welcome.
Oh, hell. I just remembered that I promised to get further into the information about the changes we proposed to our site governance process. Ah, fuck it. You don't really care about that, do you? You just like to get huffy about the thought of some FBI agent whacking it over your vacation bikini pics. Like that's ever gonna happen.
