I can still remember the first time I heard about the social networking site Facebook. I was warming up to play tennis with the rest of my small private high school’s Varsity Tennis team. The seniors on the team at the time were bragging to one another that they had been invited to this exclusive website that allowed them to stay in contact with other high schoolers lucky enough to have received an invite along with a slew of college students who apparently had been enjoying this privilege for some time. I remember first thinking: “Why did my older brother never mention this clearly hip new fad?” (Yes, I thought in the dorky terms of “hip” and “fad” back in high school). And immediately after that, “I definitely want to get invited to join.”
Sure enough, later that evening one of my tennis peers sent me an email, inviting me to join this illustrious “Facebook” by registering as a user within our private school network. My parents were immediately confused what I was wasting my time doing on the Internet now, given I already used AIM and email. I assured my parents that this was much more than AIM and email for it was an exclusive website for students-both high school and college.
Oh those good old days, where Facebook limited its users as such.
Still, my teachers at school immediately began warning all us students of the dangers that these online websites presented. “They hold onto the data posted on them for life. Do you really want actions, pictures, and comments to linger after you forever just for the interim delights of “staying connected” now?”
Well, yes. We trusted our privacy was remaining intact. Facebook has an assortment of privacy settings so you can limit just who gets to see your profile, so this would keep us all safe. Right?
As Facebook became increasingly popular, the creators saw an avenue to make an incredible profit and no longer required users to be connected to a school. People could register for Facebook merely by linking themselves to their town’s network. Eventually, people could identify themselves by their office network. Today, Facebook is essentially open to anyone who has an email account.
What began as an innocuous program to keep students connected slowly transformed into a platform available to all the public. This once safe space also began to occupy a more controversial position in my life.
Again teachers warned: “You’re boss will look at your Facebook and take your profile into consideration before hiring you. Be sure you limit the content on your profile to protect your image.” Then cognizant of the potential dangers of Facebook at the time I heard this warning I immediately heeded the advice and did my best to limit my profile so that only people I had previously confirmed were my “Facebook Friends” could access my information.
As time continues I become more and more torn about how to handle my use of this website. It surely keeps me connected to friends in a simple, yet, meaningful manner. It allows me to show my peers what is going on in my life and my feelings to a certain extent. Nevertheless, I dislike how commercial the website has become. Since 2007, every time I log onto Facebook I am bombarded with advertisements that overtime become creepily more and more specialized to my interests because the site inspects topics I discuss in my profile so as to later use me as a target for advertisers to send out their messages. This is great for the advertisers, for it allows them to truly reach their niche audience, but I cannot help feeling as if a bit of my privacy is getting invaded just so Facebook and these advertisers can ultimately make more money.
Facebook continually updates its site by instituting new capabilities without offering users the opportunity to approve these decisions. If you don’t like where Facebook is going, your only way of retaliating is to deactivate your profile, for there is no platform to give meaningful feedback to stop the changes the website implements. One of the latest of these decisions that leaves me incredibly concerned is Facebook’s increased linkage ability to other websites and to itself. In the latest form of Facebook that is slowly getting implemented on each user, Facebook overrides your preexisting Privacy settings as it creates a new function: providing your profile information to other websites that you browse on, allowing these websites to access the information on your profile. Facebook essentially tries to sell you as a able consumer to any of these sites as a valued product. And with 400 million plus users, Facebook has a lot to sell.
This latest change on top of Facebook’s 2009 declaration that Facebook as a company has the power and authority to “retain users’ content and licenses after an account was terminated” creates a troubling predicament. (Admittedly, Facebook later said they would revise their policy, yet, what keeps them from re-implementing this policy in the future?) How can we users trust a corporation that holds such a large body of information about ourselves especially when that organization already seems willing to manipulate its users into specialized markets for advertisers. What will prevent people from hacking on to our profiles to access and distribute our private information? Ultimately, this leads me to a greater question and concern: can the internet really be a private space? Are we all doomed for having believed in the facade of Privacy Settings?
At this point, I think I’d rather remain a bit in denial, because I cannot imagine a communication dynamic without Facebook. As Facebook institutes further changes, I may have to accept its transformation in purpose for its users (once connecting person to person to connecting person to eager advertiser, or worse, an individual set to destroy your reputation). Hopefully, we users will gain the power to better protect ourselves from the potential damage of using a social networking site like Facebook. I will certainly remain an active user dreaming this is possible.
Projections 
Ryan Ferguson Said:
on May 2, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I also miss those days when Facebook was truly just for students. I think that allowing anyone to use it will continue to delegitimize it just as MySpace was.
And I am also concerned about the amount of information that Facebook gathers from user profiles. As you mention, it uses your profile information and activity to target advertisements at you. I think there needs to be some kind of way to prevent the website from accessing and using user information.
Additionally, I can’t stand when I log on and Facebook gives me “suggestions” of what things I should like, who I should be friends with and what groups to join. The original idea of the site was a way for classmates to keep in touch and interact. Now it seems to be a matter of expansion and making money for Mark Zuckerberg.
I think Facebook has some useful features and is a convenient way to interact with friends. However, I think that it is in danger of becoming too open, especially by letting users develop content. I have recently noticed an increasing amount of virus-like content where a user clicks or posts something and it transmits itself to all of their friends.
The bottom line is that it is up to Facebook to save itself. If it doesn’t take further steps to protect its users and their privacy, and to limit the amount of spam and useless features of the site, it will continue to digress.
On another note, you should watch the recent South Park episode which parodies how seriously some people take Facebook and how it is used.
arieljadler Said:
on May 2, 2010 at 5:50 pm
I also agree that the glory days of Facebook are long over. One of the reasons that MySpace failed was because its interface was too customizable and its users were able to create their own page layouts and color palettes. Unfortunately, it seems as if Facebook is headed down that path. I remember a time when there was no news or mini-feed on Facebook, and there was even a time where you could not post on other people’s walls. With the inclusion of pointless applications and fan pages (many of which now lead to account hacking), users are now vulnerable to spam and the overall uniform “look” of Facebook has been thrown out the window.
However, perhaps the main reason for the downfall of MySpace was the fact that it had a viable competitor who offered something different; that being the organized interface of Facebook. Until someone creates a social networking site that offers something valuable to new users, Facebook will dominate the social networking marketplace. Or perhaps in 5 or 10 years we will abandon social networking all together. Who knows?
gordon Said:
on May 3, 2010 at 3:38 pm
myspace was way too customizable for its own good. not every user could deign their own site, although they wanted to. It dug its own hole as today’s popular websites need to be based on simplicity and minimalism. thats what i fear about facebook. its getting too much like myspace. it was great when there wasnt ‘farmville’ and ‘vampires’ and just us college students. it felt like you belonged in a club when you first got accepted to college and could sign up with facebook. now mom and dad are signing up just for kicks- im also afraid facebook might be heading down that path of myspace and if it does… a new better one will popup soon after.
i guess its inevitable when soo many users are on one site, investment by big companies is too tempting to turn down. thats when they “sell out” and start incorporating too many features that “we” dont want and they forget about their core values.
Erin Mahoney Said:
on May 2, 2010 at 10:32 pm
I have actually found that my attraction to Facebook has waned as the site has become more intense and complicated. I, too, remember the days before the mini-feed. Now whenever I sign on I am asked to join some vampire-mafia game or I am given friend suggestions. While facebook is increasing their overall user base, I suspect that they are losing their original user. But, since facebook is a business, I guess this doesn’t bother them much.
Also, you say that ” If you don’t like where Facebook is going, your only way of retaliating is to deactivate your profile, for there is no platform to give meaningful feedback to stop the changes the website implements.” It may be true that there is no platform, but you do have the option of e-mailing the creators. A few years ago I messaged Mark Zuckerberg with a suggestion. I told him that in addition to having a “poke,” facebook should also have a hug, a kiss, a slap, a punch. Surprisingly, he messaged me back! He told me that while many people use the poke in a flirtatious way, that was actually not its intentions. If you poke someone who you are not friends with, and that person pokes you back, then you can look at that person’s profile without having to be their friend. That is what the poke is for. It is not a way to facebook flirt, so there would be no need for a hug or a slap or any other gestures.Interesting enough though, facebook added these other gestures a few months later, when all the applications began to take off.
David Derin Said:
on May 3, 2010 at 12:09 am
I must admit that I was relatively late in joining the Facebook fad. I held out for as long as possible because to me, Facebook was for college students, not a lowly high school senior like myself. But eventually I joined everybody else and became a member of the social network. At the beginning I loved it. It was fantastic being presented with an outlet to stay in touch with friends from other states and even those in California. But as has been expressed by others, over time my interest in Facebook has decreased. I admit that I still check my page everyday, and use it to stay in touch with friends who I do not see regularly. While I do this, I have issues with the fact that the network is now trying to do far too much. Facebook should stick with one thing, and that should be serving the world as the supreme social network. C’mon Facebook, be content with what you have already achieved.
cagutos Said:
on May 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I like this post, especially because it touches on a topic quite relevant to the college student.
The privacy issue with Facebook is quite scary. What’s interesting is that our roles as online observers tends to spillover into the real word. Heavy levels of Facebook, Twitter and other social media consumption on college campuses demonstrates that we have something to be concerned out.
With the details of our day-to-days chronicled through the explosion of new media platforms, the concept of living life in the public eye is quite possible for virtually anybody. Of course, there are consequences.
As we tweet away and post every embarrassing picture we have of ourselves online, it seems like harmless fun. However, through these actions, we’ve also seen how the elimination of privacy due to our excessive social media presences can sometimes be damaging. As college students, what we don’t realize is that often the photographic and textual skeletons left in our (Facebook) closets could use a great deal of cleaning up.
Similar to the the ill-kept trails of famous cheaters, such as Tiger Woods and Sandra Bullock’s husband Jesse James, technology can fail us and keep records where we don’t want it. As the Hollywood cliché now tells us, evidence of disloyal transgressions can easily be traced through saved text messages or photos that were left undeleted.
In the same vain, Facebook pictures of us surrounded by red cups, upside down drinking from a keg stand and in arms of someone other than our significant others could come back to haunt us. The black hole of the Internet might not always swallow up our past, and our use of technology should not always be taken lightly. An ill-placed Facebook comment or tweet could catch the eyes of a potential employer lurking on your profile or even worse, of your parents.
Essentially, Facebook has its pros and cons. It can be your best friend, or a frenemy. Good quote fits here: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” People just have to be responsible and once its online, it’s basically public domain.