Wired UK editor, David Rowan, has written an article entitled Six Reasons why I'm not on Facebook. A not entirely convincing collection of privacy warnings arising from a conversation with someone under 30 who, hearing he wasn't on Facebook derided his abstinence with "Only old guys get worked up about privacy.” Rowan proceeds to outline his six fear and loathings, which range from the common sense to the somewhat spurious. The most odd of which drags Bob Dylan freewheelin' into the frame:

That's not just Facebook that made erasing your past a tough ask, David; the last 20 years of invasive media screwed up your great plans to pull an Orlando. How many times have we seen pop stars or rappers appear on the scene, all bombast, street and real - only for a history of private schooling and a rounded family life be thrown up by the eager, iconoclastic press? We know who Dylan was and we don't really care. Would a Facebook update by Robert Zimmerman saying 'Spent the afternoon blowin' up frogs with fire crackers down the scrub of Maggie's farm. Sheesh. Life shure is pretty.' have ruined his chances to become someone new? It matters not, The News of the World would have got there sooner or later with Freddie Starr-style 'Bob Dylan exploded my frogs!' headlines.

If you want to be someone you're not, or at least have hitherto never appeared to be, you better make sure you're genuine, for you will be called on it. Especially if you excel at it. We seem to distrust excellence; certainly the press loathe excellence and will take a scalpel, bicycle chain or wrecking ball to anything that exhibits traits exceptional. Facebook might well help them dig up the dirt these days, but its absence would never silence the sound of their shovels.

This is the weakest link in Rowan's six pack. The rest lie more on the notion of Facebook being untrustworthy with your information. That for all Facebook's privacy promises today (labyrinthine and oblique as they admittedly are) they claim to OWN the data you upload, and may one day choose to do evil with it.

This all reminds me of a recent conversation with a group of colleagues of mine re Facebook Places going live in the UK. Someone had examined the latest T&Cs and highlighted the policy regards minors:

There will be special minor privacy settings for 13-17 year-olds:

• Non friends can't see minors in any post
• Minors will only appear in 'Now here' on the places page to friends
• Default and non changeable setting of 'friends only'

To which, another colleague replied with a pointed addition to those lines:

• Non friends (except FACEBOOK - its thousands of employees employed now and in the future, subcontractors now and in the future, law enforcement agencies, agencies with powers under RIPA, lawyers, the tax man etc.) can't see minors in any post
• Minors will only appear in 'Now here' on the places page to friends (except Facebook and its employees etc)

My problem with this, and the problem I have with David Rowan's piece, is that it's a selective and seductive attack upon the great suspect subject of our times, Facebook. As if Facebook were the only organisation in the world collecting our sensitive / personal / commercial data (Google? ISPs? Governments? Tescos?) or set up with terms and conditions and EULAs that compromise the user.

Previous blog posts will tell you that I'm no great defender of Facebook, but I do object to the idea that Facebook is the only place with employees that might do ill independently of their employers while in the seat of such power and responsibility. This wasn't the broad assertion of my colleague, who I know to be a fair-minded individual, but it's a finger easily pointed at the moment - that there's something rotten in the state of Denmark while the rest of Europe glistens and shines.

When you leave home, suitcases stacked in the back of a taxi taking you to the airport, do you dwell upon the thought that after you're dropped off the cabbie could be on the mobile 10 minutes later: "Yep. 32 Windsor Gardens. Big house. Two kids. Bound to be stacked with computers and playstations. Have at it. Yep. Light on in the hall - silly sods!"