Stop, Facebook. You're Embarrassing Us Both.

My Facebook homepage brings shame upon me and shame upon Facebook.

Me first (as always): That right-hand column of the homepage, where pictures, videos, notes appear totally remembers who's stuff you've clicked on and continues to promote that person's postings. Some of this I don't really mind: Dani, a girl I knew in high school, has a lot of hot male friends who are half-naked in many of her pictures, and I'm not embarrassed to say her photo albums get more than their fair share of clicks. But for some of my frequent clickees, I'd prefer they not dominate the entire right column with pictures posted two months ago that just got another comment. If Facebook at some point starts keeping track of profile views, I'm doomed. I'll start getting messages like, "Dearest Facebook user: We'd tell you to ask out Joe Schmo already, but we're pretty sure from his click patterns that he's gay. Sorry! Maybe we can suggest a date with Jack Sprat, who's clicked on you a substantial but not obsessive number of times." At which point I'm switching back to Friendster.

Facebook next: I haven't read Facebook's privacy policy in a while, but I think I'd know if they told me they'd be actively dipping into my gmail address book. And they most definitely are. At first that friend suggestion box in the upper right was pretty innocuous. I figured there was some algorithm where they looked at percentage of friends shared with another person and suggested them. And then my real estate agent showed up. This is the guy who found me and Amy our Hell's Kitchen apartment in early 2006. We have zero Facebook friends in common. We have zero real friends in common. We haven't had any contact in years. But his email address is in my address book, and there he is. I thought maybe it was a fluke, but recently a researcher I once contacted through my gmail account showed up. Unless Facebook has other reasons for suspecting I might be interested in research on children of gay parents (and I suppose it might), it's digging through my stuff.

I'm generally not a big privacy person—I think the world would be better if we all knew how weird other people are—but the crazy thing about privacy violations is that they're always just one step away from dangerous. Watch it, Facebook.