opinion
THE END OF PRIVACY?
Have we said goodbye to privacy for good with the rise of social networking for everyone?
A free website where you can contact friends old and new, share music and videos with hundreds and be notified of every social event in the world. Sounds good? A free website where every piece of personal information is visible to friends, where name, age, location and friends are visible to strangers. Where advertising companies can buy your personal details, including interests and locations you frequent, to use in their campaigns in drawing youth further into consumerism. Still sound good?
Facebook launched in February 2004 by Harvard student, 25-year old Mark Zuckerberg as an exclusive social network for Ivy League students. It then progressed to peer universities, high schools and finally worldwide to anyone over thirteen.
For most, Facebook is a social utility used to communicate through ‘wall posts’ and picture storing. With 500 million members, 11 million in the UK alone and with 1 in 14 people in the world using it, it is a community known, if not used, by the entire western world. However, in reality it is not just a casual free service for all, available simply for pleasure. In 2007 Facebook launched Beacon, an advertising system that allowed advertisers to track users online activity and target them accordingly. This led to a 9.5 million dollar lawsuit in 2008.
With the recent arrival of Facebook Places, an application on mobile phones that allows the user to share their exact location with their entire friends list. Once ‘checked in’ a user’s location is viewable on his or her page, news feed and Places HQ, allowing anyone at that location on nearby to see where one is.
Guardian online commenter Fitzcarraldo134 says, “Beyond breaching privacy, Facebook supports and encourages congratulatory individualism, addictive behavioural patterns, rampant consumerism and facile time-wasting.”
Privacy complications with this new application include the ability for anyone, not even a users friend, to check another person in at a location without them knowing.
Whilst it would be easy to assume that living life online is simply a product of our culture, Zuckerberg describes Facebook’s lack of default privacy as simply the way the world is now, “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” However, simply because this may be the way things are it does not mean that it is what users want.
Dubbed “social-advertising” members are used to advertise products and receive advertising, both overtly through the on page adverts targeting their specific hobbies and subliminally through events and spam. At first these methods went unnoticed and users bought into this way of receiving advertising but now they are so acutely aware of their internet surroundings that they can see through these methods. All information posted by any user is automatically owned by Facebook upon posting and is able to be used by advertisers, government and private intelligence services.
This is highlighted by a Facebook group made by users against the privacy changes, which already has 2.3 million members. One user describes the recent changes as “one the worst things in our modern world.”
Word Count: 499
http://www.wolfjournal.co.uk/electricsheep.html
Guardian
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3848950
http://thecoffeedesk.com/news/index.php/2009/06/02/facebook-and-privacy/
Have we said goodbye to privacy for good with the rise of social networking for everyone?
A free website where you can contact friends old and new, share music and videos with hundreds and be notified of every social event in the world. Sounds good? A free website where every piece of personal information is visible to friends, where name, age, location and friends are visible to strangers. Where advertising companies can buy your personal details, including interests and locations you frequent, to use in their campaigns in drawing youth further into consumerism. Still sound good?
Facebook launched in February 2004 by Harvard student, 25-year old Mark Zuckerberg as an exclusive social network for Ivy League students. It then progressed to peer universities, high schools and finally worldwide to anyone over thirteen.
For most, Facebook is a social utility used to communicate through ‘wall posts’ and picture storing. With 500 million members, 11 million in the UK alone and with 1 in 14 people in the world using it, it is a community known, if not used, by the entire western world. However, in reality it is not just a casual free service for all, available simply for pleasure. In 2007 Facebook launched Beacon, an advertising system that allowed advertisers to track users online activity and target them accordingly. This led to a 9.5 million dollar lawsuit in 2008.
With the recent arrival of Facebook Places, an application on mobile phones that allows the user to share their exact location with their entire friends list. Once ‘checked in’ a user’s location is viewable on his or her page, news feed and Places HQ, allowing anyone at that location on nearby to see where one is.
Guardian online commenter Fitzcarraldo134 says, “Beyond breaching privacy, Facebook supports and encourages congratulatory individualism, addictive behavioural patterns, rampant consumerism and facile time-wasting.”
Privacy complications with this new application include the ability for anyone, not even a users friend, to check another person in at a location without them knowing.
Whilst it would be easy to assume that living life online is simply a product of our culture, Zuckerberg describes Facebook’s lack of default privacy as simply the way the world is now, “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” However, simply because this may be the way things are it does not mean that it is what users want.
Dubbed “social-advertising” members are used to advertise products and receive advertising, both overtly through the on page adverts targeting their specific hobbies and subliminally through events and spam. At first these methods went unnoticed and users bought into this way of receiving advertising but now they are so acutely aware of their internet surroundings that they can see through these methods. All information posted by any user is automatically owned by Facebook upon posting and is able to be used by advertisers, government and private intelligence services.
This is highlighted by a Facebook group made by users against the privacy changes, which already has 2.3 million members. One user describes the recent changes as “one the worst things in our modern world.”
Word Count: 499
http://www.wolfjournal.co.uk/electricsheep.html
Guardian
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3848950
http://thecoffeedesk.com/news/index.php/2009/06/02/facebook-and-privacy/
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