IT@Pitt

nugget2: Facebook privacy

I must admit that I am a member of facebook. I joined while I was pursuing my undergraduate degree at the urging of some of my classmates and friends. I have never really been a facebook fanatic, I check it maybe biweekly just to see what is going on in the lives of friends in other parts of the country. For this very reason of only wanting to see what was new and important enough to change a profile over when I went on to facebook I usually just check the recently updated profiles of friends. Therefore, I , unlike most facebooks users from what I can gather, liked this new feature that allowed me to quickly see what what changes friends had made to their profiles without having to click through all of their "new and improved" profiles.
I can see how some people may feel that the new facebook system of automatic custom alerts could be annoying, but I fail to see how they are truly an invasion of privacy. All of the people that would be getting these alerts would be people that you actively put on you list of friends. When a friend request is made by one party the requested party has the ability to approve or reject the other partys request to be friend. If you do not approve someone as a friend they do not have access to your profile. Anyone who can see your profile and would be getting the alerts has already when invited to see any updates that you make to your profile. In my opinion facebook was just making it easier to keep up with friends. If Facebook had opened up peoples profiles and made them visible to anyone who looks you up (like myspace) or sent alerts to everyone who had ever requested you as a friend regardless of approval, ignored or rejection status then I could see how this could be a privacy issue. Allowing pre-approved persons,who would be able to access the same information by simply clicking into your profile, to more easily view changes to your profile is not only not an invasion of privacy in my opinion, but it actually a rather helpful and timesaving measures. If you do not want people to be alerted of a change in your life do not write about the change on a website. You have to actively change some fact about yourself that you had already posted about in order for other to alerted about the change in your profile.
That lecture aside, I must say that I am both impressed and distress with how quickly Facebook was willing to appease their user and try to make stride to "fix" the site. I am very happy to see that Facebook listens and is responsive to its users wants and concerns. However, I am also slightly distressed with how quickly Facebook folded to the demands of some of its users without trying to explain to its users the perks and reasoning behind the new feature. I would have liked to have seen Facebook defend it new feature. I personally liked it and I am sure that they did too and this this was not just come fly by night decision.
Here is what some more information about the facebook change and what some other bloggers are saying about this new change.

posted by julie @ 1:56 PM