Analyse critically the following statement by Mark Zuckerberg while comparing it to privacy issues raised by online social networking collaborative practices:
http://www.tubechop.com/watch/146252
This statement given by Mark Zuckerberg is only a short snippet from a larger discussion on the new privacy settings of Facebook. While I agree that the more control people have over what they share will lead to greater sharing I cannot see it necessarily leading to a more open and connected world and one where our problems will be easier to solve.
I can understand where Mark Zuckerberg is coming from with wanting his site to improve and allow it to grow by getting users to share more and more content. And I think this can lead to a more open and connected Facebook but the world’s problems cannot be solved by a social networking site, they are a lot larger than that.
This statement and the changes to Facebook were created after many users were complaining that their information was being used and exploited by advertising companies, other users and programs within Facebook. Many groups on Facebook were even created to express their concerns and ideas of how to improve the privacy settings on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy#!/pages/I-hate-the-new-facebook-privacy-settings/246372636176
http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy#!/privacycampaign?sk=info
So it seems that Facebook took these concerns and ideas on board to create an easy to use system. They however didn’t change the privacy settings so much just the ease of using them by adding one master control or switch where in the click of a button your information can be restricted to only your friends or open to everyone. They have even supplied a page to help users understand the new settings and how to change them, even offering video tutorials.
http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy#!/privacy/explanation.php
The privacy issues with Facebook really started with the launch of the ‘news feed’ in 2006, the aggregated display outraged Facebook users although the information had ever actually been private (Boyd, 2008:13-4). As Zuckerberg claimed no privacy was compromised but the anger of the news feed was more than that. It was the fact that now that information was at the forefront, people no longer had to go searching and the sense of control was lost (Boyd, 2008:18). Boyd states that “information is not private because no one knows it; it is private because the knowing is limited and controlled” (2008:18). This is what the new privacy settings have allowed on Facebook, although most information still remains visible to some people like your friends or friends of friends it is back in the control of the user.
To me it seems that people aren’t as concerned with their actual privacy, if they were they wouldn’t be on Facebook, but they are more concerned with their amount of CONTROL over the access of their information. Mark Zuckerberg was clever to see this relationship and appeal to the need to control in people to settle these privacy issues.
– Danah Boyd, ‘Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreak: Exposure, Invasion and Social Convergence’, Convergence: The International Journal into New Media Technologies 14, 4 (2008): 13-20.
michellebarraclough 