Facebook plays an active part in many Americans life today. With Facebook you can post just about anything from where you’re eating tonight, what you’re going to wear, who you’re going with and your favorite quotes, etcetera. Facebook also allows you to post pictures and messages and just about anything you would like as long as you’re not threatening another user. However, Derek Thompson makes a very valid point in his blog titled “Facebook Does Not Understand the Meaning of Privacy.” (Facebook Privacy) When using Facebook or any site over the internet where you post where you’re going, pictures and etcetera, privacy is a very important issue. Thompson finds it humoring to hear CEO Mark Zuckerberg brag about the “psychic mastery” of users’ privacy through Facebook. (Thompson) Thompson argues that people do enjoy publically sharing information over the internet; however, the information that was thought to be private is “suddenly being upchucked onto the World Wide Web in one messy and meaningless purge of regional networks.”(Facebook Privacy) I do agree that we tend to share many things on Facebook to our “friends” but are not things that you would want others seeing. However my belief on the matter is you shouldn’t make anything public if you wouldn’t want everyone around you seeing it. You may think that it is going to stay private but you can’t be that certain especially with all the hackers these days. Even I have experienced a Facebook hacker at one time. The hacker had accessed my account and sent out a message to all my friends with a video to watch and when they would try and open the video it would infect their computer with a virus allowing the hacker into their system as well.
Thompson also argues that “Privacy is about control, and when Facebook changes its privacy control rules every six months, its users lose both control and privacy.” (Facebook Privacy) I do agree that it’s hard to understand rules and policies if they are continually changing. Zuckerberg justifies this issue with saying they “view it as their role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.” (Facebook Privacy) I understand that most anything must change to stay “up to date”; however there are some things that just shouldn’t change unless it’s to better protect you. One of these being privacy controls for anything that you post your own private information over the internet. There are many people using Facebook including young children. It is very important to teach our children the importance of internet safety and that’s hard to do when the safety policies continually change.
The only conclusion is to make sure your one hundred percent safe from this issue is to not put anything on the internet that you wouldn’t want the whole world to see. I really like the way Derek Thompson states his opinion on the matter in his article “Don’t Blame Facebook for the Erosion of Online Privacy,” saying “I’m not blaming people whose Social Security numbers are lifted from Facebook via criminal cryptologist. That is, by definition, a crime. I’m only suggesting that we offer information online by choice, not by fiat. Occasionally Facebook screws up. But mostly, we sacrifice our privacy online for the human instinct to share and feel connected. If you want somebody to blame, look in the mirror.” (Don’t Blame Facebook) This is very true; the only fault I find in Facebook is changing the policy so frequently. Another quote I find extremely true on the issue of internet safety is the advice of Jon Kleinberg of Cornell University: “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public—because increasingly, it is.” (Kleinberg, Jon)
However I do understand Facebook has many good sides as well. It lets you keep in touch with many distant friends and family members easier than most other means of communication. So, if you absolutely still “have” to have a Facebook I would encourage a few simple means of safety to help keep your information as private as possible. First, I would only allow close family or friends, that you have known for a very long time, to be your “friends” on Facebook. Second, I would set your profile to private so not just anyone can access your personal comments and photos. Lastly, do not ever post anything that you wouldn’t want anyone other than your “friends” to see because, it is not always promised that whatever you post will be for your eyes only!
--Amanda Barnett
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