Canada’s Privacy Commissioner has declared Facebook to be in violation of Canada’s privacy laws in a recent report. Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddar questions the site’s policy of only allowing users to deactivate, not delete, their accounts. The report also blasts Facebook for sharing users’ information with third-party advertisers. These are reasonable concerns. However, Facebook’s users don’t really care about their privacy; otherwise, they won’t be on the site in the first place.
Yes, Facebook violates Canada’s privacy laws in several ways but users cannot complain because they voluntarily sign up for the website. Also, users can choose how much of their personal information they include on their Facebook page. Some people engage the highest level of privacy settings and don’t let anyone see their information, except their name. Some users even have a giant question mark in place of where a photo would be. These people want to look at their friends’ pages without having anyone gain access to their own information. These are smart, cautious people who won’t have their identities stolen.
At the other end of the privacy spectrum are people who share too much information on their Facebook page. These users post their phone numbers, their address, their work information and the photos from their recent trip to a nudist colony. These users also leave their profile open to the public so anyone who clicks on their name can see their entire profile. These exhibitionists are just asking to be stalked by strangers.
Many Facebook users are smart enough to balance the cautious line between over-sharing information and not giving out any information at all. These users put up photos from last weekend’s birthday party but make sure to delete any incriminating photos. These users may put their birth date on their profile but would never give out their home address. These people want to stay in touch with friends and families but don’t feel the need to have their existence validated by a random friend-of-a-friend liking their latest status update.
Sadly, there are plenty of people on social networks like MySpace, Twitter and Facebook who use the Internet to get attention from friends and strangers by posting racy pictures of themselves or constantly updating their status every three minutes. However, savvy online social butterflies can now also use the Internet to their advantage. People advertise their job search on Facebook, hopeful that the kid they sat next to in Grade Two but haven’t seen in 20 years will know of a cool job. Guys message that cute girl they were in love with in junior school but never had the courage to talk to in hopes that they can reconnect as adults.
Baby boomers may not understand youths’ obsession with online blabbing but marketers and businesses are paying major attention to online social trends. Movie studios are starting to realize that people can easily ruin a movie by tweeting about how crappy a movie is before they have even left the theatre. A movie that opens solid on a Friday night can bomb on Saturday because Friday night’s viewers have alerted the entire online world that the movie isn’t worth seeing. Word of mouth can kill things and now online word of mouth kills things faster and more effectively.
Other companies are also learning to respect the awesome power of online forums. After baggage handlers for United Airlines damaged a Canadian musician’s guitar, his band wrote the song United Breaks Guitars, which features the snappy chorus: I should have flown with someone else/ Or gone by car/ Because United breaks guitars. The guitar’s owner Dave Carroll spent over a year trying to get compensation from United Airlines with no result. Only three days after posting the hilarious video for United Breaks Guitars on the popular video site youtube.com, the airline agreed to “make things right.” The airline was undoubtedly feeling the pressure from the number of YouTube users calling for a United Airlines boycott.
The Internet is a powerful tool which must be used carefully. While Facebook should strive to keep the strictest levels of privacy settings available for those users who wish to use them, the privacy commissioner’s report was an unnecessary waste of time and money. Users know what they are getting into when they sign up for social online sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. No user can say they expect total privacy when they willingly invite people to be their friends on the Internet.
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