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Bits&Pixels: Facebook: Big Brother is Watching you?
Tagged As: Surveillance, Media, Privacy, Technology, Internet, Social Networking, Facebook, Twitter
Image credit: pshabAs part of an ongoing column, I’ll be writing regular updates on topical issues relating to Human Rights in technology and the media.
Amidst all the (rightful) controversy over government moves towards a database state, events this week relating to key players in the world of social networking and online technology raise the issue of whether we ought to be looking a little closer to home for blatant infringements of our personal privacy.
How many of us would honestly be able to admit to checking the full terms and conditions of the countless online services they sign up to? Realistically I think the number is extremely low, and there’s an increasing willingness amongst individuals to publish every aspect of their lives in the online sphere. Controversy this week over Facebook’s quiet amendment to their terms and conditions governing what happens to your data when you delete your profile has brought this to the fore and forced them into an embarrassing backdown, at least for now.
One thing which people tend to forget when they sign up for services online is that virtually every social website out there is a profit making enterprise. Facebook has recently increased the prominence of adverts across the site, but with advertising revenues dropping sharply as a result of the economic downturn, they will inevitably be driven towards alternative ways of generating profit, and with 175 million users posting information on virtually every aspect of their lives onto the site, including photos, events they plan to attend, and detailed information on their specific likes, dislikes and even sexual preferences and political allegiances, it’s not hard to see how your profile is a potential goldmine for advertisers looking to target a particular demographic. More worryingly, as events of the past week have shown, whilst you might assume that the photos you upload onto Facebook remain your own property, Facebook themselves might take a different view.
Of even more immediate relevance, whilst Facebook status updates are generally fairly infrequent, the recent surge in popularity of ‘microblogging’ site, Twitter takes this to new extremes. Not only can I stalk your profile to find out exactly what you’re up to at virtually any time, but it’s not exactly difficult to work out where you work, live and socialise.
Yes, we should be extremely concerned at the government’s plans for our personal data, but with an increasingly lengthly data trail following your around the internet (particularly if you use the same username on several sites), the steps involved for others to connect the dots between your online existence and your real world activities are perhaps fewer than you think.
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As part of an ongoing column, I write regular updates on topical issues relating to Human Rights in technology and the media. Amidst all the political, large scale human rights issues, there are plenty of others which are closer to home than you might think.
6 Comments:
Actually retention of data is also scarily becoming common practice by one and all public and private service providers. And see our case report on Ireland v Parliament and Council, which deals with this issue: [http://www.uclshrp.com/bulletin/cases/ir...]
Very true and looking forward to further columns. Just a few points:
Contrary to the dangers of the database social networking site users wilingly (albeit probably uninformed) hand over their data for the benefit of convenience/communication. The protest against the new terms and conditions shows that a least a decently sized minority cares about their privacy on social networking sites.
Btw: Helpful hints to get the best privacy out of Facebook can be found under [http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/faceb...].
One of the biggest threats (in my humble opinion) to our privacy is the interaction between state and private corporations. Big databases of supermarkets chains, TfL (oyster card) and social networking sites like Facebook are goldmines for a state hungry for its ciitzens data.
Nonetheless I still think once people have posted their stuff on facebook, it legitimately belongs to the public domain. Maybe their should be more flexibility on how to protect one’s own information. Why should you want to publish something making it available to hundreds of ‘friends’ and then claim that it was private?!? If you wanted to keep it private, why did you put it there?
@el
I have to disagree on this. It’s a difference if you disclose information to your friends or to the whole public - be it online or offline. You might share some very personal information with your closest friends, some funny but embarassing stories with most of your friends, but you wouldn’t want this information to be available to everyone. The same goes for Facebook. Putting information on Facebook is primarily meant for your “friends” (however narrow you define them), not for the general public.
P.S. There are possibilities to tweak your privacy settings to a certain amount in Facebook, see link above.
I agree, Steph, there’s a difference between publishing on your profile to your friends (many people, myself included, use restrictive profile settings to control which information is shown) and broadcasting it to the whole world. The real issue here is with the Terms and Conditions. Even in their current form, they still read:
The reason the changes Facebook made to their privacy policy last week were so controversial is they effectively meant that not only does Facebook reserve the right to read anything you post etc, but more than this, they actually own the content you put online. As a consequence of this, if you post photos online, Facebook are perfectly within their rights to sell these to other people, and the (supposedly private) messages you send to your friends might not be so private after all. Again, the terms state:
However, prior to the change in the terms, at least when you deleted your account, Facebook was no longer allowed to use your content. In their amended form, Facebook allowed themselves to keep and continue to use this content, even after you deleted it. Yes, you’re posting information publicly, but that doesn’t mean they should be able to continue to use your content even after you remove it.
@pixel pusher
I agree, this is a big issue (not only privacy-related). They may not literally “own” the content, but they grant themselves a broad licence that achieves almost the same result. It will be interesting to see how the new participatory approach Zuckerberg suggested (yesterday?) will develop and if users will seize this opportunity.