@jbaldy22 You are being quite disingenuous. Facebook is a social networking tool and is built to encourage people to connect and socialise with each other.
It has always been possible for a savvy user such as you to retain their privacy and only use Facebook for, say, socialising with family or male friends but this is not what Facebook itself is designed for, and time and time again they have proven that their goal is to make all their users connect with as many people as possible. That you as may use it “correctly” in with limited social connections is entirely besides the point.
The entire Facebook business model is built around making it incredible simple to connect with anyone, to suggest people befriend others with similar interests or who are in some way related, and to update as many people as possible with what you like and what you’re doing. You may befriend only male friends, but one of them will almost certainly be a Facebook friend with someone else (wife, cousin) and these users will be suggested to you and you to them.
Yes, they’ve recently been forced to improve their privacy options, after complaints from even the secular world about how difficult Facebook makes to to maintain private, closed connections with a limited number of people. Yes, it’s possible to lock down your privacy settings, ignore or reject friend requests from (say) girls but you’re fighting the tool, and there is always a massive risk that Facebook will push a notification at you, or suggest you as a friend to someone else in way that makes dodgy social contact. For instance, if a girl makes a friend request and you ignore it instead of rejecting it then her events and activities will show up in your news feed (“Gila just liked YBC album”) and this makes the temptation to connect and socialise a daily challenge. Again, this can be blocked out, but 99% of the users won’t do this and Facebook have repeatedly forced such social connection suggestions on users despite all the privacy settings.
I have used Facebook, so please stop the “well you don’t understand it so you can’t criticise it” refrain. It’s getting fast old and is a poor rebuttal.
The rabbonim have heard too many horror stories of the terrible ruinous effects of FB and it has rightly become chareidi ememy #1. Few rabbonim have used it, but after a short description understand exactly what it’s advantages and disadvantages are. They can comprehend the most intricate lomdus and they sure as heck can comprehend the social network paradigm and have far more experience than any of us about what can (lo aleinu) go wrong.
The old argument about “it’s how you use it” can be made for almost anything. TV? Just watch educational programs. Internet? Just install filters and let your kids on unsupervised, it’s safe (right?). Guns? I’ll keep it locked in my draw. It’s not how we work. This is a chareidi forum and the concept of constructing gedarim should be a understood by any chareidi YWN user. Many have basically given a heter for the entire internet (for either work or necessity) but with a filter and yet somehow it’s impossible to give up this one part of the web called Facebook. Must everything be allowed for convenience?
I do agree that for (say) long distance family updates Facebook can be great and almost the ideal tool but that in no way mitigates the terrible risk it brings with it. So live with the inconvenience, use tools that are less problematic such as Skype, Email and any number of tools that aren’t “social networks”. It’s very difficult for me to eat only glatt but if I want to call myself chareidi then I will accept the cost and inconvenience. And if I’m not chareidi, I won’t comment on YWN.