You may not know it, but you may be giving more information out to the world than you thought you were.
Facebook’s privacy settings have been one of the top concerns for users. It is not that we don’t want to share anything on-line, but it’s that we want to have control on who can see those things. In the past, facebook has had a shaky history on privacy, making people opt to just delete their profile from facebook altogether.
With a new privacy setting that it will be rolling out soon, facebook plans to integrate itself more on the web, to enable us to document more of our life – and for us to share more to our friends.
Facebook wants us to be transparent. That is why it has somehow gained the infamous title of the Web’s sketchy Big Brother. Anyone can see what we’re up to… At least up to what we share on-line.
People want to share. It’s why we like to tell stories, take photographs and chat with friends. Facebook has become a platform for this. That is why a lot of people seem to like it – plus the fact that it took steps to hook us to the site.
But as much as we want to share, there is something unsettling about giving the entire world a front row seat to our lives. But that is not stopping people from sharing, so facebook thrives.
Have you noticed that the ads on facebook seems more targeted to us specifically than other sites? It’s simple – what we do on facebook, what we share, what we like and even what our friends share or like are stored, analyzed and advertisements more suited for us are given. It is very different from Google who gives us ads based on our searching habits or the content of the site that we visit.
Games were only able to store our personal information for 24 hours, but now, they can store it indefinitely, until we delete the application, of course.
In April, they launched a major initiative called Open Graph, which lets us weigh in on what we like on the web – from a blog article, a game, a movie, or maybe a band. And the idea goes around that if your friend likes it, you’re most likely to like it too. This allows facebook to position itself better to advertisers, for since it has a lot of users, a lot of companies want to attract those users’ attention.
With a mission to make the world more open and connected, what else can we expect from the site, eh?
All we can do is to stay alert with these privacy changes, although it is hard to do. Facebook has the tendency to enable by default whatever changes it sets. Should and when the user notices that his shield has been lowered, it might have been too late already. Users counter this by spreading via status messages any of these things, passing it along to their network.
This issue has been a great concern that it even made it to Time’s front page. You can read more about the Time article here. It’s where we got that nifty image above, too.
What are your concerns on this issue? Leave your ideas on our comments below.
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