If you have been following my blog, you know that I have repeatedly reported on how evil FaceBook is.
You may also know that I had disabled my profile on FaceBook. Well if you know me on FaceBook you may of noticed that I did indeed re-enable my profile a couple months ago. Now I know this sounds a little bit hypocritical. Well the reason is I was coerced into developing a couple of FaceBook applications with a business partner.
These applications (which I will not name) did quite well and generated some decent income. They derived most of their income from data mining and selling the information gathered from our users. All through the process i did not feel right about doing this. I tried to convince myself that this was okay. My partner would say things like “They are going to call you a prick anyways, they might as well call you a rich prick.”.
For a while I somehow managed to settle my conscious on this. But always in the back of my mind I knew it was wrong. Hell I used to be one of those guys developing encryption software so people had the tools to protect their privacy. Now here I was invading the same privacy I once was trying to protect. In some ways I felt like I did indeed sell my soul.
Now don’t get me wrong I do not think making money is evil. But I do think it should be done in an honourable way. I felt like a spammer by using peoples personal information in a profitable way. Sure I didn’t take their information, I didn’t force them to reveal so much about themselves. Its not my fault that they don’t know any better. I mean I don’t even know them so why should I care?
Well I still do not know why I care and why it bothered me so much. However I am happy to annouce that as of 13:00 h today I have sold off all my interests in these FaceBook applications. I will no longer be developing FaceBook applications.
Maybe it was dumb to get out of a money making enterprise. Maybe I just don’t want success. In any case I feel much better about myself now.
I was tempted by the dark side, lured by the money. However I am a JEDI and will never turn to the dark side. 
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