hmm... Facebook for all it's faults, and even though they have abandoned their discussion boards, remains the most popular general purpose social networking site --this is because it's an effective and enjoyable way of finding and keeping in touch with large numbers of people
i sympathise with the writers of the article about Facebook on nadir.org, but IMHO it's naive to think that privacy can be preserved simply by not using Facebook -- the same criticisms can be made of Microsoft (including Windows and Bing), Apple, Google (including Gmail, YouTube and Blogger), Yahoo (including Flickr and Tumblr), Twitter and any other major Western internet companies
to keep personal info out of the hands of authorities and commercial organisations, it's necessary to make it so difficult to to get hold of, that it is not worth their while -- to be extra safe it's best not to use email or the web
what's left is the dark net, which still offers protection, but it requires a level of expertise most people don't have -- (also it is unregulated, so there are dangers including viruses, scams and honeytraps) -- few of us will take precautions such as connecting to the net via a VPN (virtual Private Network), using proxy web sites, hiding our locations with Tor, PGP encrypting our outgoing posts and messages, buying and selling stuff in bitcoins etc
keeping one step ahead of the system has never been easy
