Over the last few days I've seen all sorts of people get up in arms about the new changes to the facebook privacy settings, or some such. There's supposedly something we all have to opt out of unless we want the evil empire to own our lives and credit card details. Or something.
Here's the thing, people. I don't see the point of whinging and moaning about privacy when you put your whole life on the internet anyway. You give up a certain amount of your privacy the moment you join a social networking site. You give some nameless corporation your name and location. If you can't accept that, well, perhaps you should have thought about that before you joined.
Perhaps we all should have.
We can't all yell and scream and complain about facebook. Or myspace, or whatever brand of social networking you prefer. Because we made it happen. We joined in our droves and made the creators of these sites millionaires. Our own voyeurism and the need to feel like someone cares about our existense has fed these machines. The only people who have any right to complain about social networking sites taking over our lives are people who don't use them.
And then, well, they probably have no idea what they are talking about. In which case, they should go into politics as it seems they would be in good company.
Oh, and by the by, I went into my privacy options to uncheck this supposedly heinous new infrigement on our privacy. It was already unchecked. I did not have to opt out, because I had never opted in and apparently facebook didn't see the need to opt me in either. So what was the fuss about in the first place, anyway?
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3 comments:
I'm not in the outrage category, myself. I try very hard not to share stuff that I wouldn't want the whole internet to see - especially on sites like facebook where I don't control what gets shared.
All the same, I don't really appreciate facebook's tactics of share everything now and let you know about it later.
So, I don't know. I don't understand all the outrage, but I don't necessarily think Facebook goes about it in the best way, either. But they'll keep doing it, because no one's leaving over it.
The reason it bothers people is because we signed up under one set of rules, and those rules are being changed without our knowledge.
I agree that most people are too free with their information, but people like me don't put much on there, and when we do, we're very careful to make sure that we know exactly who can see it. For example, my phone number isn't on there, but I don't mind if my friends can get my email address. What I don't want is to start getting spam from Facebook's affiliates because they changed a privacy setting without letting me know.
I'm glad your privacy setting started off unchecked. Mine was checked, so I did actually need to opt out.
I do agree that if they make changes to their privacy agreements, they should let users know. I concede that the lack of notification is a little bit concerning.
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