Privacy and publicity on Facebook
Facebook is increasingly becoming a major part of many people’s lives, entire industries have risen and crashed on the platform (Think Zynga) and corporations are increasingly looking at it as a tool to advertise products and conduct market research.
However, not everything appears to be rosy. Facebook’s policies have long drawn critique from privacy advocates and now corporations are joining the protests.
Privacy groups’ complaints have been about ownership of intellectual property. When you put a photograph up on Facebook, it stays there forever, it doesn’t matter if you delete it or close your account. To verify this, upload a picture, save its URL, then delete it. You can still access the picture via the URL.
Everything you post remains stored as Facebook struggles to figure out a way to monetise your personal data.
Corportations that have been using Facebook for publicity have hit major roadblocks as well. The new Timeline Covers have rules expressly preventing sharing of contact information, calls to action or product price information- effectively gutting advertisement attempts.
The startup Limited Run accused Facebook of inflating advertising figures after it found that 80 per cent of the clicks on its advertisements were by automated software and not real users. Investor Mark Cuban, recently, criticised FB for limiting the reach of brand pages if they did not cough up cash.
What does all this mean for the regular user, not much really, except to expect more changes in the near future. It would serve us well to remember this bit of wisdom though, “If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”
Post new comment