Posts Tagged: privacy concerns

1. Where does Facebook draw the line of an invasion of privacy when considering interest tracking for advertising? How ethical is it for Facebook to give advertisers your interests and information for direct ad tracking?

2. Why is that Facebook’s privacy policies and settings so unadvertised by Facebook? Is it just me or does it seem like the Facebook doesn’t really want you to know about the privacy policies? And also, is it just me or is all of the writing and information on how to use the settings overwhelming and unhelpful?

3. Why is it that people are more comfortable with sharing their information with the public? When thinking about how professionals use Facebook to find out information about possible employees, how exactly can they find information that you have deleted off your Facebook? Does this deleted information search actually happen? How ethical is that? Is there anything Facebook can do to change this?

Last spring I had the opportunity to live blog from the FutureWeb Conference, in which danah boyd led several sessions. She has a fascinating take on the impact of social networking, especially with younger generations. Many of the thoughts she shared last spring were reminiscent of her two studies that we are reading in this class.

1. boyd says the role between public and private is becoming increasingly blurred, especially within the realm of education. How is the role of the educator evolving to embrace the changes in social technologies that boyd discusses?

2. Many people argue for the necessity of “openness” online. How does this apply to social networking sites? The use of these sites implies the projection of personal data, often will relatively little control over the recipients of this information. To what degree are the teenagers in boyd’s studies concerned about the transparency of their networked presence?

3. On a similar note, with the new privacy concerns arising over the series of policy changes implemented by Facebook, as discussed in boyd’s “Facebook privacy settings: who cares?” introduction, how are younger users changing their privacy settings/online behavior in response? boyd cites recent Pew studies that prove the 18 to 29 year-old bracket immediately updated their privacy settings- but are these youth educated enough to understand the significance of such actions, or are they blindly following the crowd of users?