Extra Blog- Facebook

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010608F.shtml
Ari Melber's article About Facebook was extremely interesting and intriguing. I found many of the issues Ari brought up to be some of the most crucial concerns I have about Facebook. I'll be graduating in 3 weeks and will have a career so knowing that the information I post on Facebook may end up in my future boss' hands is frightening! One major topic Ari discusses is the idea of privacy and how teens post information on Facebook and then get mad that random people have access to that information. Here is my opinion: I post photos and comments about myself (not my address or phone # of course) because I want my friends to see it and other people that I choose to be able to see it. I have my privacy settings at the highest security and I don't accept friendships unless I know you. This is because I am trying to restrict who has access to my profile. Its not the fact that I don't want people seeing these pictures, because otherwise I could just erase them. Its the fact that I only want my friends to see them, no professors or employers.

I think this is a big issue that some people don't understand. They ask questions like "well why do you post the pictures if you don't want people seeing?" I already answered this question by stating that I want to choose who views them and I believe that I should have the right to know if Facebook is sending my information to other companies or allowing users I don't know to view my profile. Ari made a good point by saying that we are always under surveillance whether it is at the mall or ATM or even a grocery store. This is all very true but I don't walk around with my phone number written across my forehead. However, I agree with what Ari said in the fact that we are being tracked all the time, without permission. To track what I purchase at the grocery store is information I never agreed on giving. So what can we do about this? Not purchase food? Of course not; we just have to be careful and watch what information we give out. Same goes for Facebook. Teens need to set their privacy settings to restricted and only allow those whom they know to access their profiles. Then, teachers and employers can't view their profiles without consent.