While claims are generally made in opposition
to the social networking sites alone, it isn’t just the sites who are at fault;
not only are users willing to share large amounts of their information online
and then just expect a free site to keep it unexplainably safe from them, but
most of them will not change their privacy settings upon making a profile, or
even be willing to update their current settings (Debatin 93; Stutzman and
Kramer Duffield 6). Social networking
cites, however, aren’t completely innocent; while they shouldn’t be expected to
single-handedly keep everyone’s privacy locked away indefinitely from the exact
people individuals don’t want accessing their information, their current
privacy regulations are still not one-hundred percent user-friendly. While social networking cites have close
reigns on ad generators that target specific interests of one individual, even
the administrators don’t know the extent of information available to databases
that use “SocialAds”, which target a person’s friend-list, the interests of
individuals on the friends list, and the person’s interests, cross-referencing
the information to create a unique ad that mentions one’s friend and a mutual
interest (Tucker 12). If they don’t want to appear to be the bad
guys in the ongoing debate, they should at least try to come up with new
regulations in which they know how their users’ information is being used and exactly
what information those users are comfortable with giving away: but can a user really
give the consent for an ad generator to use a friend’s information, even if
that friend has also agreed to the privacy policy of the social network?
In any case,
online privacy is not an issue that is easily approached; however, according to
one study, there are three potential ways to address an issue in online privacy:
social, technical, and legal solutions (Barnes 7). While the social solutions involve people
taking it upon themselves to become educated on the extent of privacy
regulations and the methods and functionality of ad generators and other groups
that have access to personal information, technical and legal solutions require
either schools and other official groups or organizations to try to educate
people, or to have the social networks themselves take measures to avoid
privacy leaks (Barnes 7-8). But it would
take a combined effort of at least two of those entities to truly make a
difference. If sites like Facebook
stepped in to resolve issues such as ease of access and extent of information
available to ad generators, by putting stricter regulations on the companies and
corporations they allow to generate ads, made it possible for people to report
ads if they felt they were infringing on a privacy agreement or accessing
information their current privacy settings should not make available, and made
the sign-up process include an essay response or quick quiz assuring that the
person producing the profile was actually aware of what was going to happen to
their private information and was assured, personally, what they would be
comfortable with posting, it would be a large step forward. But the sties can’t fix the problem
single-handed; people would have to compliment this measure by taking it upon
themselves to become educated, and, knowing that it’s the young people who
generally end up the victims of privacy regulations on social networking sites,
this is not likely to happen; that means that it will probably have to be a
sponsored, non-profit campaign, much like the ones putting up meth awareness
posters on the billboards on the side of interstates, and perhaps even the ones
that are behind posting the non-intrusive ads on sites such as Facebook, that
ultimately create some sort of program that gently but efficiently makes
information on privacy and smart networking available to those who would
otherwise suffer an invasion on their personal information. If there was this collaborative effort
between stricter, more efficient privacy regulations by the social networking
sites and the distinct awareness and restricted posting and availability of
information on behalf of the users, both by not posting what they don’t want
accessed and by changing their privacy settings to better suit their desires
without infringing on their relationship-cultivating uses of the sites, then
perhaps the endless game of blame-throwing would end and online privacy would
no longer be an issue in an age where tools like networking can be rewarding
and profitable if done correctly.
No comments:
Post a Comment