Privacy and Social Convergence on Facebook

This course so far has mentioned a lot about online social websites, and a few weeks ago we discussed about the topic of privacy on the internet in regarding Facebook in particular. The reading by Danah Boyd “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck” really caught my eye as he suggested that this ‘gift’ of infinite social information is precious upfront but destructive long-term, issues that actually seem to be really related to me but that I’ve never been truly aware of.

Boyd talked about the issues regarding ‘News Feed’ on FB , and how it has made participants to reconsider any change they made due to the aggregation and broadcasting of information. I only started using FB last year when that feature had already been launched, and I have actually kind of taken the feature for granted as it provides me information about what people around me have been up to lately which kind of helps me bond better with them. Personally I don’t really feel and experience the feature as a problem with the loss of privacy but I do realize I have been reminding myself to take care when I make any actions on FB that I know will appear on the ‘News Feed’, which I really don’t do as much when interacting with others physically in the real world.

I found the idea of social convergence really interesting as well. Anna asked in the tutorial for us to just try and imagine how we’d feel if all the people we have ever known in our whole life were all gathered together in one room, and that was scary enough just to think about for me. Then it occurred to me that I have never really realized and thought about the case of my Facebook account, where I actually do have family, friends, and workmates all gathered together in one place. So after the tutorial that day, I ended up checking all over my FB for any inappropriate material, and hope that I have luckily untagged some of the pictures on there of myself in time:S…

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