Things I hate about posting to Facebook.

I use ping.fm to get most of what I write to places where people prefer to read it. Pretty much all of the services ping.fm will post to support a decent subset of HTML, embedding of Flash applets, etc.

Except Facebook. And that's not entirely ping.fm's fault.

With Facebook, I can't post a "note" (Called a blog entry anywhere else) that has text content, followed by an embedded video, followed by text content. At best, ping.fm can convert that to a video post with attached text. At worst, it'll show up as the raw HTML data for embedding the video. I've found I prefer the latter approach, because there's *no* other way to embed multiple videos.

Also, Facebook's HTML subset is ridiculously limited, almost as bad as Slashdot JE's. (At least FB allows inline images!) That means that simple formatting instructions that might otherwise have worked fine, like the "div" blocks that were (and maybe still are? I stopped using them) used by places like blogthings get defanged and look as ugly as embedded flash videos. No, I don't want to add an app to show that particular survey. No, I don't want to add an app for the "which character/what personality type/what are your politics" widgets. Facebook app privacy is so ridiculously poor, I can't even refuse to add the stupid things in defense of my own privacy; Farmville and Mafia Wars already have access to my profile information, just because my contacts added them.

You think Google is a privacy threat? At least a savvy person can use them while not giving them data, thanks to their preference towards open protocols and open APIs. With Facebook, use it or lose it. I got a Facebook account to deal with all the invites I was getting. It's also the de-facto way of staying in passive touch with people you've known from the past; the modern replacement of the Rolodex.