In a society that wants to be more social and asking for ways to make the world a smaller place, we haven’t taken much time to ensure our privacy.
We are indulging in social networks such as Twitter, Stumbleupon, YouTube, Facebook and many other social sites that have been provided to us for free.
Free? Maybe that is where the answer lies and we have mistaken that free is never really the case, like the old saying goes, “Nothing in Life is free”. With every action there is a reaction in the waiting and we are slowly starting to scratch our heads with curiosity of why our time spent on the web is not so private.
Sharing Personal Information Publicly IS No Longer Personal
In the days when the Internet first began, there was fear of it; fear of talking to people and putting any type of personal information – was something we were not willing to do. It was the case of common sense, however, with the Internet’s growth creating easy access from the comforts of home such as; online shopping, gaming, and especially social media. We seemed to have left our common sense to the waste side and now are furious that our personal information that we publicly share is no longer personal. With that said, today we should not fear, but instead make sure we continuously stay educated.
As the most popular social network continues to break down boundaries that is unforeseen to us. Facebook has challenged us with not providing information up front or as easily accessible as we would hope for them to do. With insurmountable discussion’s questioning its methods and scaring many who use the social network to consider leaving the site. Is it really Facebook’s fault?
But it’s FREE
Facebook has nearly 500 million active users on a free site where we have the ability to chat with friends, family and play games. Join pages, create pages, and enjoy a variety of applications. We can share videos, pictures, and links and the list goes on. All of this and more are available to us without paying so much as our internet bill every month.
Facebook is foremost a business and in order to keep it free for us, they must find a way to monetize. They use third-party sites to create advertising on Facebook. Those third party sites pull information from your profile and pages to make the ads you see more relevant to your location and interests.
Facebook has made a statement that they want to make the Internet’s default to be social, isn’t that what we want? As Facebook continues to step outside of its box they will continue to utilize your information to monetize the site. They are looking for ways to make the advertisements and websites to be more social by using developer’s to create what we as a society have asked for.
Yes, Facebook could make it easier on us if every change they made that affected our privacy was announced to us and for some, given the ability to opt out if they chose to. However, how will it stay free, if we all opted out? It wouldn’t. The reality is, we need to use our own common sense when using any platform on the Internet and not share anything that you don’t want seen or used since it is not only a Facebook issue, it’s an Internet issue. If you want to leave Facebook, that is your choice, although, missing out on the one site that is most likely going to change the way we communicate on the Internet forever, may not be the best of decisions.
The responsibility is up to you to continue staying in the know of what is going on with whatever platform you use and to do your best to inform others. We cannot expect a free site to tell us what we can do to help demonetize them. This doesn’t mean that we have to agree with the workings of Facebook’s choices, nor do we have to like it. It is what it is, and we shouldn’t act so surprised or appalled that we cannot have our cake and eat it too, for the reality is, the more Social we get, the less private we’ll become.
With that said, here are some steps you can do to stay in the know about Facebook and your Privacy:
Do you think Facebook has crossed the line or are we overreacting?
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Read more News about Facebook on Soshable.
About Erin Ryan
Good article, Fantastic site.
Hi Jose
Thanks so much for your wonderful feedback!
Socially Yours,
Erin Ryan
another good article actually very good articles that do get their attention
was great
In my opinion the security in the social networks have to give a user if one does not want you to know private information it is best not to publish.
Thank you very much for all this wonderful information, helping us to publish these articles always excellent.
Hector R.
Excellent article as they talk about the network security is very important sociles think many people social network occupies a minimum.