What Do You Expect?

In a recent New York Times article, " Some Privacy, Please? Facebook, Under Pressure, Gets the Message" by Vindu Goel, The privacy of information posted by Facebook users is examined. Face book has been around for over ten years now, and they are just now starting to become privacy conscience. Facebook has started to revamp their privacy settings, first by making posts by new user viewable only by friends as a default. This action seems tardy by about 10 years in my opinion, to think that by default anything you post is viewable by anyone seems ludicrous to me. This preposterous fact can only be outdone by the consumer service representative Facebook has chosen, a cartoon dinosaur, to walk its existing users through their existing account privacy settings.

Is it too much to assume that in the past when making a new Facebook account privacy should be expected? That if one should choose to post something to Facebook, its ability to be seen by the entire world would not be by default but by intended selection by the user. Also, that if one would choose to make these postings private it should not take an afternoon and an associate degree in computer science to successfully setup all the privacy setting associated with a single Facebook account. Now this may seem strange to you to expect privacy in social media, granted they seemed to be opposing theologies. However, just because one may wish to share some things to anyone some of the time does not mean everyone should share everything to anyone all of the time. The only thing I find more insulting than Facebook's lake of respect for a person's privacy is their obviously demeaning choice of privacy mascot. It's as if Mark Zuckerberg is saying your too feeble minded to handle these privacy setting yourself so our cartoon dinosaur will come hold your hand and walk you through it all, there will be milk and cookies along the way and when we're done he'll put you down for your nap.

I may be biased when it comes to these things, I enjoy an unplug life off the grid. I find there are few occurrences I want to share with my friends much less the entire world. However, there are people who would disagree with me. If Facebook is your outlet of expression far be it from me to dissuade you from posting your life to the internet, just don't be surprised when the information you so joyously pasted upon the internet wall is not as private as you may like it to be.