A recent news article caught my eye at the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2024449/Anonymous-threaten-close-Facebook-November-5.html), where 'hacktivist' group Anonymous was planning to take down Facebook over their supposed misuse of personal information (keep in mind that whether this is an 'official' threat from the group looks to be false).
(http://www.xssed.com/files/Image/News/facebook.jpg)
Are Facebook and other forms of social media such a privacy concern that we need a group like this to consider shutting them down? People seem to like the idea of Facebook holding less information about us, with groups like 'MILLIONS AGAINST FACEBOOK's PRIVACY POLICIES' continuing to pop up, however no one seems to be doing anything about it, whilst still uploading 191 pictures from last weekend's festivities. Furthermore Facebook's facial recognition capabilities have recently hit the news, being labelled as 'creepy' and 'scary', with the ability to automatically recognise and tag people in uploaded photos.
Facebook itself has recognised the strong concern around its level of control around people's information and privacy, and has provided the users of its service with a number of ways of altering, viewing and changing their information and the way it is seen by others, and the company itself. This attitude revolving around a positive view towards its users privacy clearly needs to continue, in order to counteract such negative publicity. However, its methods of generating revenue have also changed from its beginning, as ads within the service are now tailored to each individual user, becoming intertwined with their friends preferences and activities.
I feel that Facebook and other forms of social networking really are what we make of it. It has proven to be a force for good, and one for bad, as Karina spoke about in her recent blog post here. The only information which the site can hold is information which we provide it with, so it is really up to us to decide how much we want to be out in the public domain. I recognise the concern about one entity holding such a large amount of information on one person, especially if the issue of misuse comes into play, but it really is easy to not post any information which you wouldn't like others to know about. Does Facebook need to be stopped? Or should people be responsible for their own privacy?
2 comments:
As many of us are probably aware, Facebook's privacy settings are often eventually found after about 4 or 5 clicks and can be incredibly difficult to interpret and tweak. It will be interesting to see whether the emergence of Google+ and the ease of their "circles" in sharing information with different subgroups will force Facebook to once again alter their privacy settings.
People do need to be responsible for their own privacy, but corporations like Facebook need to respect individuals' information and rights when divulging this to advertising agencies and other businesses.
I agree, It'd be interesting to see if Google+ does gain a more positive light with regards to privacy issues, and if so, will this push people across from Facebook?
It is clear though, a real balance is required upon the organisations behalf between generating revenue through advertising and respecting individuals' privacy.
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