The Web,s biggest strength is also its downfall. Just about everyone you know is on the social networking sites, and more likely than not, those people are your “friends.”
That can be a good thing you can easily share all of your messages, photos and videos with everyone in your network. But it can also be a headache to assign people to different groups and slog through the Web site’s 40-some privacy control settings to parse who gets to see what.
And if you want to post a status update reminding guests about a surprise party for your best friend — but prevent the birthday girl from seeing it — good luck figuring out how to do that.
All of that is about to change, Facebook. The company will be overhauling its privacy controls to make it easier for users can share as much — or as little — as they want with whomever they choose. Is this a good thing I ask and who will benefit from this I am not sure. Is this just the business society keeping more information on us ?
It just might be me but I feel that the young are not asking enough questions before the give away their rights of choice. Who says the old have all the answers.
Think About It
Cheers
Tom
The new York Times. Times People the net. 15 Apr 2010
Seperating 'audiences' and controlling how much of your personal information and media they get to see may be a great thing if the controls are easy to use and manage. People use Facebook and other such sites for personal and business use, and sometimes content that is appropriate for one may be inappropriate for others.
ReplyDeleteHowever even if this system of categorization works, that means these apps will have a complete set of personal and business information for each user, forming some kind of new age Panopticon. Security and usage of this personal information is a very important issue more people should be asking about.
Grish