Facebook Privacy Restrictions Essay

It is alarming how fast technology is improving. Nowadays, it seems like having a Facebook account is a daily necessity or even a trend. According to a research done by TIMES magazine, more than one in four people who browse the Internet not only have a Facebook account but have returned to the site in the past thirty days. It is truly alarming how much Facebook has expanded. â€Å"Sometime in the next few weeks, Facebook will officially log its 500 millionth active citizen. † (Fletcher, 2010, TIMES, p. 6) Fletcher (2010) also stated that Facebook would be the world’s third largest country by population, which is two- thirds larger than America, if it were granted terra firma. With such a high popularity, an increasing number of Facebook users had raised the issue on privacy – limiting what others can say about you and who can say it. I believe that everyone does have the right to privacy. However, when it comes to sharing information on such a virtual yet convenient media, the Internet, can privacy restrictions really be achieved that easily and securely? In addition, will Facebook take that chance to make a major loss in its business? Devils are in the details. The Facebook’s Terms of Use may not be as fair and protective on their users’ privacy disclosure. As argued by Yoder in his website article â€Å"Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook†, Facebook not only compels its users to keep updating by threatening to terminate their accounts, it also states that it owns your data. Some may argue that these terms may only be set to defend the interests of Facebook. However, who can protect the interests of the many Facebook users? Being such a broadly used media, is it not the least reasonable to review the ethics policy and start readjusting the privacy settings? On the other hand, Facebook is not the only one to take the blame. The account users may have most likely overlooked the Terms of Use and simply jumped to click on the â€Å"I Agree† button just to start using Facebook as soon as possible. When these users found out that things are not going as they had expected, they start pointing their fingers to others and maybe neglecting their own responsibilities on the faults. Readjusting the privacy settings seems to be the only solution. However, who really has the persistence to fight for the change? How many people are really willing to give up the most widely- used socializing network just to defend a right that may take a considerable time to be protected? This shows successfulness of Facebook’s tactic – allowing a channel for emotional investments of its users and creating a cultural shift, making the public more accustomed to openness. The research done by TIMES magazine founded that over seventy percent of current Facebook users expressed negative feelings when asked how life would be like without Facebook. This may be attributed to Facebook’s development of a formula for the precise number of aha! moments a user must have before he or she is hooked, reported from an interview with the CEO (Fletcher, 2010, TIMES, p. 19). If the users leave Facebook, they might get the oh-no! moment in which they find out how much social updates they had missed. Facebook had been so successful in making itself indispensible. Who would really want to lose the connection? Some may have tried to remove their accounts. However, Yoder (2010) revealed that it is difficult to genuinely delete your account. Facebook will only deactivate your account but you will still be spammed by Facebook. Facebook is not really worried about losing its users because of the uproar on privacy control on its site. Similar protest had been demonstrated before such as the default settings of news feeds on the website which allows the action of a user to be published on the social update wall of their friends. Now, it seems silly to protest against news feeds. Though the nature of the two incidents are not at most similar, Facebook has so little to worry about as it is still operating within the restrictions set by the law. It is a frustrating matter to define the suitable extent of restriction on privacy for data disclosure on the Internet. Protection is undeniably necessary. However, when it comes to security on such a virtual ground, it seems the only one who can protect you is yourself.