Why do I write about what I’m thinking, where I’m going, what shoes I wear, how I felt, who I talked to? Why do I share pictures of people I meet, places I go, things I loved seeing? Because I care. And because you might also care. And connecting people and passions can help create a ton of good in the world.

TOMS on the run, New Orleans, Louisiana

Facebook has caught a lot of flak for recent changes in sharing and privacy settings.

But while most of the debate has been about privacy, the real issue is control.

Me, back in April 2009 about Facebook and privacy,

The issue isn’t about privacy, it’s about control.

danah boyd, at SXSW 2010,

Fundamentally, privacy is about having control over how information flows.

JP, in a great dive into sharing and privacy,

While everyone worries about privacy, spend some time thinking about sharing. Think about what you want to share. Why you want to share it. With whom you want to share it.

What Facebook recently did was upend the variables in the decision process we use when we choose when, how and where to share something.

And they did it without really telling us what was happening.

And so we got mad. Deservedly so.

But I think we forgot a couple things along the way.

Sharing brings its upsides and downsides. We’re people. Human. We’re using, testing and trying a bunch of different tools, bouncing into a lot of similarly different people while we learn, creating questions and answers to different situations along the way, creating a lot of friction.

Friction is good, btw. We’re meant to care. We’re meant to have passions. And they’re meant to bump into each other. Passions are meant to find each other. People that care are meant to find each other. And sharing is how passions find each other, how people find the causes they’re meant to support, how we find the jobs we’re meant to have, how we find the friends and the future we’re meant to have, how we create the lives we’re meant to live.

To be quite frank, sharing is how I’ve met almost everyone in my life today that matters to me. Sharing in public, in private, in small groups and large, to friends old, new, and yet-to-be. Sharing, and then showing up and doing something about it.

That’s why I share.

More: Deeper thoughts by JP, danah and Stowe.