By: Brandon James Scott Scholl
The other day I was watching a documentary from CNBC about Facebook on my Netflix. While I was watching it, I was very interested on the various perspectives on how they claim Facebook to be both a gift and a curse as well as how some people don't understand how a private website ownership works.
The first thing they covered was how Facebook as improved various lifestyles. One of the biggest examples that stood out to me was an 18 year old girl who was searching for her biological mother. She had a few pictures, a name, and a few other tidbits of information like where she graduated high school and where she lived when she gave birth to her. So, when she first arrived on Facebook, she decided to try searching for the name she had. However, that name was from when her mother was 16 and most likely changed her name through marriage since then. So, after giving it some thought, she started a group on Facebook asking if anyone knew her biological mother. She uploaded the pictures she did have of her mother and sent it to all her friends in hopes that there would be some positive feedback.
As things progressed for the Young Adult, more and more people were being added to this group and there would be the occasional comment of the potential that someone may have seen her mother. However, nothing had been successful. Then, a woman who the young woman had no contact or connection with had joined the Facebook group. She ran a daycare during the day and one of her hobbies was reuniting people. So, she jumped at the opportunity to do the research and find this missing biological mother. After a lot of research had been conducted on this woman's part, she finally found the woman in question. She sent a message with all the information to the young woman who had started the group and sure enough, everything matched. The young adult contacted her biological mother and set up a meeting where they would be reunited. It was a stunning and emotional visit full of happiness and tears of joy.
Then, there were other things mentioned such as a high school teacher that lead the science department. She had had a difficult day at work and decided to vent about it to her friends and family on her Facebook. However, what she didn't realize was that Facebook had done some updating to their privacy settings. A few days later, the school asked the High School Science teacher to resign from her position. This was because when the Privacy Settings were updated, they were reset. So, everything this woman said was public. Parents and students saw what the teacher had written about them and complained to the school. As a result, this teacher has had a VERY difficult time finding a job.
The last point they touched on was how Facebook is seen as a way to be a registration action for everyone in the United States or perhaps even for the world in an attempt to know things about you. But, with every popular and successful organization or idea, there's always a possible conspiracy associated with it. Of course, there's always the talks about it just being another things that the government may decide it wants to regulate. They also explained that with Facebook sending your information such as interests to third party advertisers, it is a possible breach of privacy policies. Not necessarily with information like your name associated with you interests, but more of a way of showing a consensus of how many people are interested in a topic, subject, or other various interests to help suppliers find their target audiences.
Granted, nobody likes having ANY information about them being shared with anyone else without their permission. However, I see it like this. Facebook is a privately owned website. It isn't government funded, run, or regulated in any way. Therefore, when you sign up for a website like Facebook or any other social website for that matter, any information you put on that website is your action. Nobody made you do it. Because it's being inputted by you, the user, then any results or use of the information such as being sent as a consensus to a third-party advertisement association is on you, not the website itself.
Like I said, people may not feel so uncomfortable about it if they just simply were asked for permission. However, Facebook does have a confidentiality agreement as well as a terms of use that you have to agree with to use their service. If you disagree with it in any way, you don't get a facebook account or whatever account to the social website. Even though this is seen as unfair in any way by some people, this still falls back on the user if they decide not to read the agreements and then Facebook or lets say Twitter decides to use you as a statistic. In all honesty, the percentage of people who actually read Terms of Use contract details when installing a program or registering for a website is quite low. In fact, the creaters of these contracts know this so they even put in random things like how the License Agreement for iTunes at the end of Paragraph 'G' states: "You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons." Granted, that does sound somewhat rediculous to even put that in there, but most people don't see it for themselves because they don't read the agreement before agreeing it.
Bottom line, I believe that Facebook, Twitter, even the new Google + has the right to use whatever information is put on them for really whatever they want as long as you've agreed to it within their terms of use and licensing agreement. If you don't agree with any part of these agreements or even agree with them as a whole, you don't have to use their services. Also, I have even used websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google + to get information when researching or finding someone. It can be helpful to people both personally and professionally. And if you post something negative about work or someone and you don't want them to see it, make a point to check your privacy settings first or just simply don't post it on the internet in the first place. I mean, once something is on the internet, it's no longer private. The internet can be accessed by anyone and anything put on it is available to everyone else online. It's just a matter of knowing where to look to find it. So, the next time you put something online, think about that.
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