SIGNS IT'S TIME TO QUIT
FACEBOOK
CYBERSPACE, December
1, 2011 (MSN
TECH NEWS) By Verity Burns, editor, U.K. MSN Tech &
Gadgets - Are you a certified Facebook addict? Read our warning signs to see if
it's time to step away from your computer.
Facebook, addiction(Toby Talbot.AP Photo)
YOU UPDATE YOUR STATUS
MANY TIMES A DAY
We all know one: the
Facebook friend who can't go for more than a few minutes without telling the
world (or, at least, their long-suffering circle of friends) exactly what's
happening in their life.
Whether they're detailing
the minutiae of their day, showing off about how "down with it" they are by
going on about some random band you've never heard of, or spamming the world
with mundane pictures of their latest night out, they're the people with the
least to say who spend the most time saying it.
It's an affliction like any
other, this kind of Facebook addiction, and if you're concerned that you (or
someone you know) may be falling prey to it, then read on.
Here, we've listed 15 of the
most common signs of Facebook addiction. If you tick the boxes on one or two of
these, you're probably just as addicted to Facebook as the next person. If you
find you're nodding along to most of the list, perhaps it's time to take a step
away from the monitor ...
1.
Unless something huge or so-hilariously-funny-it-must-be-shared happens in your
life, your Facebook friends will probably be okay to get status updates from you
once or maybe twice a day, max.
If you've started sharing
what's going on in your life on the hour, every hour, people might just get a
bit sick of hearing from you. That's what Twitter's for.
2. You get unnecessarily
angry when Facebook makes changes You get unnecessarily angry when Facebook
makes changes
If you're one of those
people who angrily updates their status when Facebook makes a few tweaks to its
format, it might be a sign that you care just a bit too much. But if you find
yourself discussing why on earth Facebook would mess around with the comment
button when you're at a bar with your friends, then it's definitely time to give
it a break.
3. You've ever written
'First!' (Microsoft image)
We're not sure where the
idea came from that you get special kudos for commenting on something first, but
just for the record — you don't.
In fact, doing it repeatedly
is more likely to get you booted off your friends' lists quicker than you can
say, well, "first."
4. You've created a separate
account for your baby/cat/favourite plant (Microsoft) Let's break this down — if
you create an account for someone, or something, that can't actually use it,
you're going to be the one updating it.
It'll start innocently
enough. A couple of status updates here and there "in character." Maybe a few
wall posts. But then before you know it, you'll be having full blown
conversations with yourself between your real and fake profiles. That's the
first sign of madness these days, don't you know?
5. You check in ...
everywhere (Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Blend
Images)
Here's the deal — Facebook
Places is great when you're "checking in" places of interest, places your
friends might be interested to know you've been. It's also great for taking
advantage of Facebook Deals. What it's not great for is letting people know
you're at the local supermarket doing your weekly shopping, or at home watching
TV. Frankly, no one cares. Sorry.
6. You haven't seen your
other half recently
See that person you've
listed as being in a relationship with on Facebook? Well they also exist away
from the computer too, remember? Facebook was recently found to be a factor in
one in five divorces, and we're sure the figures are even higher for
relationship breakups. If you've not seen your other half in a while, you might
want to make sure they aren't filing the divorce papers and packing their bags
while you're busy updating your status.
7. You take pictures of
yourself (Microsoft)
Are you guilty of posing in
front of your webcam? Or have ever taken a photo of yourself in the mirror just
to use as your profile picture? This is a sign of S.V.B. — seriously vain
behaviour, a condition contracted from extended use of Facebook. We'd say the
best course of treatment is to go out with your friends, take your camera and
enjoy flicking through the photos afterwards. We'd wager there'll be plenty of
great pics to use as your profile picture, and no doubt great memories captured
at the same time.
8.You check Facebook from
your phone on vacation (Microsoft)
The sun is shining, you're
on an exotic beach somewhere and you've forked out all your hard-earned cash to
get away from it all. Why then, pray tell, would you be checking Facebook from
your phone? This is addiction at its most devastating — not only will you miss
out on chunks of your holiday with your face in your phone, but when the roaming
charges land on your next bill, you'll need to take out a loan to pay them
off.
9. You speak to your best
friend more often on Facebook than in real life (Microsoft)
Previously you'd pick up
your phone if you wanted to tell your friends something, or maybe drop them a
text message to meet for a chat. If you've found you're now talking to them more
on Facebook than in real life, do your friendship a favour, close down the chat
box and grab a coffee together.
10. You'd forget your
friends' birthdays if it wasn't for Facebook reminders (Microsoft)
Remember before the days of
Facebook, when you wrote birthdays, important dates and events in a calendar? If
Facebook now runs your social life, telling you when to say "happy birthday" and
when you're going where, you could be in trouble when you can't access it for
some reason. We're not sure how popular you'll be when you forget your mom's
birthday because Facebook goes down for maintenance.
11. You've started 'friend
farming'
Let's get one thing straight
— the number of Facebook friends you have is not directly proportionate to your
popularity in the real world. In fact, there's plenty of evidence to suggest it
may well be the opposite. If you're finding yourself getting upset that you
haven't had a friend request in a few hours, or that your next door neighbour
has more Facebook friends than you, it's probably time to move away from the
keyboard and get some face-to-face time with your real-life
friends.
12. You've taken out a loan
to cover your Farmville/Fish World/Mafia habit (Microsoft)
If you've been hooked in to
playing one of these Facebook games, not only will you have no doubt flooded
your friends' feeds with news that you just bought a new sheep, but you've
probably spent a fair bit of dough on it in the process. If your bank balance is
starting to see the effects of your addiction, you might want to think about
reining it in a bit, and spending your cash on something away from your
computer, in the real world.
13. You've ever updated your
status on the toilet (Microsoft)
There are some things that
can wait, and one of those is status updating. If you've ever found yourself
coming up with something you just have to share with the world while sitting on
the toilet, put the phone down and wait until you're back at your computer. Of
course, if you've taken your computer with you, well then that's a whole
different level of addiction you need to address ...
14. You've started
oversharing
Hey, depressed one! Facebook
isn't your personal advice columnist, ok? You shouldn't be broadcasting how
horrible your breakup was or how much you still love your ex on your profile.
Nobody really wants to read it. And we'd bet that includes your ex, too.
Of course there is the other
end of the scale — are you one of those couples who feel the need to express
their love for each other at every possible opportunity? It might have been cute
the first five times you did it, now it's just annoying.
15. When you're out,
you're wondering what's happening on Facebook (Nisian
Hughes/Digital Vision)
It should go without saying
— when you're with your friends, your mind should not be on Facebook. So if
you're finding yourself getting a nervous tic when you've been away from
Facebook for more than a few hours, it's definitely time for a break. You can
rest in the knowledge that all the news, comments and photos will be there when
you get home, and you'll have plenty of material from the time you spent with
your friends to update your status with.
MESSAGE FROM THE FACEBOOK CREATOR AND
OWNER
Our Commitment to the
Facebook Community by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 12:39pm
I founded Facebook on the
idea that people want to share and connect with people in their lives, but to do
this everyone needs complete control over who they share with at all times.
This idea has been the
core of Facebook since day one. When I built the first version of Facebook,
almost nobody I knew wanted a public page on the internet. That seemed scary.
But as long as they could make their page private, they felt safe sharing with
their friends online. Control was key. With Facebook, for the first time, people
had the tools they needed to do this. That's how Facebook became the world's
biggest community online. We made it easy for people to feel comfortable sharing
things about their real lives.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Facebook's growth as an
Internet social networking site has met criticism on a range of issues,
including online privacy, child safety, and the inability to terminate accounts
without first manually deleting the content. In 2008, many companies removed
their advertising from the site because it was being displayed on the pages of
controversial individuals and groups. The content of user pages, groups, and
forums has been criticized for promoting controversial topics. There have been
several issues with censorship, both on and off the site.
Privacy concerns Issues
during 2007
In August 2007, the code
used to dynamically generate Facebook's home and search page as visitors browse
the site was accidentally made public, according to leading internet news sites.
A configuration problem on a Facebook server caused the PHP code to be displayed
instead of the web page the code should have created, raising concerns about how
secure private data on the site was. A visitor to the site copied, published and
later removed the code from his web forum, claiming he had been served legal
notice by Facebook.
Facebook's response was
quoted by the site that broke the story: " A small fraction of the code that
displays Facebook web pages was exposed to a small number of users due to a
single misconfigured web server that was fixed immediately. It was not a
security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. Because the code
that was released powers only Facebook user interface, it offers no useful
insight into the inner workings of Facebook. The reprinting of this code
violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further. "
In November, Facebook
launched Beacon, a system (discontinued in September 2009 where third-party
websites could include a script by Facebook on their sites, and use it to send
information about the actions of Facebook users on their site to Facebook,
prompting serious privacy concerns. Information such as purchases made and games
played were published in the user's news feed. An informative notice about this
action appeared on the third party site and gave the user the opportunity to
cancel it, and the user could also cancel it on Facebook. Originally if no
action was taken, the information was automatically published. On November 29
this was changed to require confirmation from the user before publishing each
story gathered by Beacon.
On December 1, Facebook's
credibility in regard to the Beacon program was further tested when it was
reported that the New York Times "essentially accuses" Mark Zuckerberg of lying
to the paper and leaving Coca-Cola, which is reversing course on the program, a
similar impression. A security engineer at CA, Inc. also claimed in a November
29, 2007 blog post that Facebook collected data from affiliate sites even when
the consumer opted out and even when not logged into the Facebook site.
On November 30, 2007, the CA
security blog posted a Facebook clarification statement addressing the use of
data collected in the Beacon program: " When a Facebook user takes a
Beacon-enabled action on a participating site, information is sent to Facebook
in order for Facebook to operate Beacon technologically. If a Facebook user
clicks 'No, thanks' on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the
data and deletes it from its servers. Separately, before Facebook can determine
whether the user is logged in, some data may be transferred from the
participating site to Facebook. In those cases, Facebook does not associate the
information with any individual user account, and deletes the data as well.
"
The Beacon service ended in
September 2009 along with the settlement of a class-action lawsuit resulting
from the service.
News Feed and
Mini-Feed
On September 5, 2006,
Facebook introduced two new features called "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed". The
first of the new features, News Feed, appears on every Facebook member's home
page, displaying recent Facebook activities of the member's friends. The second
feature, Mini-Feed, keeps a log of similar events on each member's profile page.
Members can manually delete items from their Mini-Feeds if they wish to do so,
and through privacy settings can control what is actually published in their
respective Mini-Feeds.
Some Facebook members still
feel that the ability to opt out of the entire News Feed and Mini-Feed system is
necessary, as evidenced by a statement from the Students Against Facebook News
Feed group, which peaked at over 740,000 members in 2006. Reacting to users'
concerns, Facebook developed new privacy features to give users some control
over information about them that was broadcast by the News Feed. According to
subsequent news articles, members have widely regarded the additional privacy
options as an acceptable compromise.
In December 2009, Facebook
removed the privacy controls for the News Feed and Mini Feed. This change made
it impossible for users to control what activities are published on their walls
(and consequently the public news feed). Since users can post anything they
want, this allowed people to post things that could target certain groups of
people or abuse other users through other means.
In May 2010, Facebook added
privacy controls and streamlined its privacy settings, giving users more ways to
manage status updates and other information that is broadcast to the public News
Feed. Among the new privacy settings is the ability to control who sees each new
status update a user posts: Everyone, Friends of Friends, or Friends Only. Users
can now hide each status update from specific people as well. Cooperation with
government search requests
Government authorities rely
on Facebook to investigate crimes and obtain evidence to help establish a crime,
provide location information, establish motives, prove and disprove alibis, and
reveal communications. Federal, state, and local investigations have not been
restricted to profiles that are publicly available or willingly provided to the
government; Facebook has willingly provided information in response to
government subpoenas or requests, except with regard to private, unopened inbox
messages less than 181 days old, which require a warrant and a finding of
probable cause under federal law.
An article by Junichi
Semitsu published in the Pace Law Review, reports that "even when the government
lacks reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and the user opts for the
strictest privacy controls, Facebook users still cannot expect federal law to
stop their 'private' content and communications from being used against them. "
Facebook's privacy policy states that "We may also share information when we
have a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent fraud or other illegal
activity, to prevent imminent bodily harm, or to protect ourselves and you from
people violating our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
This may include sharing
information with other companies, lawyers, courts or other government entities."
Since Congress has failed to meaningfully amend the Electronic Communications
Privacy Act to protect most communications on social networking sites such as
Facebook and since the Supreme Court has largely refused to recognize a Fourth
Amendment privacy right to information shared with a third party, there is no
federal statutory or constitutional right that prevents the government from
issuing requests that amount to fishing expeditions and there is no Facebook
privacy policy that forbids the company from handing over private user
information that suggests any illegal activity.
Aided by Facebook, Israel
prevented scores of pro-Palestinian activists in July 2011 from boarding Tel
Aviv-bound flights in Europe.
Complaint from
CIPPIC
The Canadian Internet Policy
and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), per Director Phillipa Lawson, filed a
35-page complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner against Facebook
on May 31, 2008, based on 22 breaches of the Canadian Personal Information
Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). University of Ottawa law
students Lisa Feinberg, Harley Finkelstein, and Jordan Eric Plener, initiated
the "minefield of privacy invasion" suit.
Facebook's Chris Kelly
contradicted the claims, saying that: "We've reviewed the complaint and found it
has serious factual errors — most notably its neglect of the fact that almost
all Facebook data is willingly shared by users." Assistant Privacy Commissioner
Elizabeth Denham released a report of her findings on July 16, 2009. In it, she
found that several of CIPPIC's complaints were well-founded. Facebook agreed to
comply with some, but not all, of her recommendations. The Assistant
Commissioner found that Facebook did not do enough to ensure users granted
meaningful consent for the disclosure of personal information to third parties
and did not place adequate safeguards to ensure unauthorized access by third
party developers to personal information.
Data mining
There have been some
concerns expressed regarding the use of Facebook as a means of surveillance and
data mining. The Facebook privacy policy once stated, "We may use information
about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to
newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services and
other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile." However, the policy was
later updated and now states: "We may use information about you that we collect
from other Facebook users to supplement your profile (such as when you are
tagged in a photo or mentioned in a status update).
In such cases we generally
give you the ability to remove the content (such as allowing you to remove a
photo tag of you) or limit its visibility on your profile." The terminology
regarding the use of collecting information from other sources, such as
newspapers, blogs, and instant messaging services, has been removed.
The possibility of data
mining by private individuals unaffiliated with Facebook has been a concern, as
evidenced by the fact that two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
students were able to download, using an automated script, over 70,000 Facebook
profiles from four schools (MIT, NYU, the University of Oklahoma, and Harvard
University) as part of a research project on Facebook privacy published on
December 14, 2005. Since then, Facebook has bolstered security protection for
users, responding: "We've built numerous defenses to combat phishing and
malware, including complex automated systems that work behind the scenes to
detect and flag Facebook accounts that are likely to be compromised (based on
anomalous activity like lots of messages sent in a short period of time, or
messages with links that are known to be bad)."
A second clause that brought
criticism from some users allowed Facebook the right to sell users' data to
private companies, stating "We may share your information with third parties,
including responsible companies with which we have a relationship." This concern
was addressed by spokesman Chris Hughes, who said "Simply put, we have never
provided our users' information to third party companies, nor do we intend to."
Facebook eventually removed this clause from its privacy policy.
Previously, third party
applications had access to almost all user information. Facebook's privacy
policy previously stated: "Facebook does not screen or approve Platform
Developers and cannot control how such Platform Developers use any personal
information." However, that language has since been removed. Regarding use of
user data by third party applications, the 'Pre-Approved Third-Party Websites
and Applications' section of the Facebook privacy policy now states: " In order
to provide you with useful social experiences off of Facebook, we occasionally
need to provide General Information about you to pre-approved third party
websites and applications that use Platform at the time you visit them (if you
are still logged in to Facebook).
Similarly, when one of your
friends visits a pre-approved website or application, it will receive General
Information about you so you and your friend can be connected on that website as
well (if you also have an account with that website). In these cases we require
these websites and applications to go through an approval process, and to enter
into separate agreements designed to protect your privacy…You can disable
instant personalization on all pre-approved websites and applications using your
Applications and Websites privacy setting. You can also block a particular
pre-approved website or application by clicking "No Thanks" in the blue bar when
you visit that application or website. In addition, if you log out of Facebook
before visiting a pre-approved application or website, it will not be able to
access your information. "
In the United Kingdom, the
Trades Union Congress (TUC) has encouraged employers to allow their staff to
access Facebook and other social networking sites from work, provided they
proceed with caution.
In September 2007, Facebook
drew a fresh round of criticism after it began allowing non-members to search
for users, with the intent of opening limited "public profiles" up to search
engines such as Google in the following months. Facebook's privacy settings,
however, allow users to block their profiles from search engines.
Concerns were also raised on
the BBC's Watchdog programme in October 2007 when Facebook was shown to be an
easy way in which to collect an individual's personal information in order to
facilitate identity theft. However, there is barely any personal information
presented to non-friends - if users leave the privacy controls on their default
settings, the only personal information visible to a non-friend is the user's
name, gender, profile picture, networks, and user name.
In addition, a New York
Times article in February 2008 pointed out that Facebook does not actually
provide a mechanism for users to close their accounts, and thus raised the
concern that private user data would remain indefinitely on Facebook's servers.
However, Facebook now gives users the options to deactivate or delete their
accounts, according to the Facebook Privacy Policy. "When you deactivate an
account, no user will be able to see it, but it will not be deleted. We save
your profile information (connections, photos, etc.) in case you later decide to
reactivate your account." The policy further states: "When you delete an
account, it is permanently deleted from Facebook."
A third party site, USocial,
was involved in a controversy surrounding the sale of fans and friends. USocial
received a cease-and-desist letter from Facebook and has stopped selling
friends.[34] [edit] Inability to voluntarily terminate accounts
Facebook had allowed users
to deactivate their accounts but not actually remove account content from its
servers. A Facebook representative explained to a student from the University of
British Columbia that users had to clear their own accounts by manually deleting
all of the content including wall posts, friends, and groups. A New York Times
article noted the issue, and also raised a concern that emails and other private
user data remain indefinitely on Facebook's servers. Facebook subsequently began
allowing users to permanently delete their accounts. Facebook's Privacy Policy
now states: "When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted from
Facebook."
Memorials
A notable ancillary effect
of social networking websites, particularly Facebook, is the ability for
participants to mourn publicly for a deceased individual. On Facebook, students
often leave messages of sadness, grief, or hope on the individual's page,
transforming it into a sort of public book of condolences. This particular
phenomenon has been documented at a number of schools.Previously, Facebook had
stated that its official policy on the matter was to remove the profile of the
deceased one month after he or she has died, preventing the profile from being
used for communal mourning, citing privacy concerns. Due to user response,
Facebook amended its policy. Its new policy is to place deceased members'
profiles in a "memorialization state".
Facebook's Privacy Policy
regarding memorialization says, "If we are notified that a user is deceased, we
may memorialize the user's account. In such cases we restrict profile access to
confirmed friends, and allow friends and family to write on the user's Wall in
remembrance. We may close an account if we receive a formal request from the
user's next of kin or other proper legal request to do so."
Such memorial groups have
also raised legal issues. Notably, on January 1, 2008, one such memorial group
posted the identity of murdered Toronto teenager Stefanie Rengel, whose family
had not yet given the Toronto Police Service their consent to release her name
to the media, and the identities of her accused killers, in defiance of Canada's
Youth Criminal Justice Act which prohibits publishing the names of under-age
criminals. While police and Facebook staff attempted to comply with the privacy
regulations by deleting such posts, they noted that it was difficult to
effectively police the individual users who repeatedly republished the deleted
information.
Customization and
security
Facebook is often compared
to MySpace but one significant difference between the two sites is the level of
customization. MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and
CSS while Facebook allows only plain text. However, a number of users have
tweaked their profiles by using "hacks." On February 24, 2006, a pair of users
exploited a cross-site scripting (XSS) hole on the profile page and created a
fast-spreading worm, loading a custom CSS file on infected profiles that made
them look like MySpace profiles.
On April 19, 2006, a user
was able to embed an iframe into his profile and load a custom off-site page
featuring a streaming video and a flash game from Drawball. He has since been
banned from Facebook.
On March 26, 2006, a user
was able to embed JavaScript in the "Hometown" field of his profile which
imported his custom CSS.
In each case, Facebook
quickly patched the holes, typically within hours of their discovery. However,
in July 2007, Adrienne Felt, an undergraduate student at the University of
Virginia, discovered a cross-site scripting (XSS) hole in the Facebook Platform
that could inject JavaScript into profiles. She used the hole to import custom
CSS and demonstrate how the platform could be used to violate privacy rules or
create a worm.[52] This hole took Facebook two and a half weeks to fix.[53]
[edit] Photo recognition and face tagging
Facebook enabled an
automatic facial recognition feature in June 2011, called "Tag Suggestions". The
feature compares newly uploaded photographs to those of the uploader's Facebook
friends, in order to suggest photo tags. Facebook has defended the feature,
saying users can disable it. Facebook introduced the feature in an opt-out
basis. European Union data-protection regulators said they would investigate the
feature to see if it violated privacy rules. Investigation by the Irish Data
Protection Commissioner 2011
In August 2011 the Irish
Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) started an investigation after receiving 16
complaints by europe-v-facebook.org which was founded by a group of Austrian
students. The DPC stated in first reactions that the Irish DPC is legally
responsible for privacy on Facebook for all users within the European Union and
that he will "investigate the complaints using his full legal powers if
necessary".
The complaints were filed in
Ireland because all users who are not residents of the United States or Canada
have a contract with "Facebook Ireland Ltd", located in Dublin, Ireland. Under
European law Facebook Ireland is the "data controller" for facebook.com, and
therefore, facebook.com is governed by European data protection laws. Facebook
Ireland Ltd. was established by Facebook Inc. to avoid US taxes (see Double
Irish Arrangement).
The group
europe-v-facebook.org made access requests at Facebook Ireland and received up
to 1.200 pages of data per person in 57 data categories that Facebook was
holding about them, including data that was previously removed by the users.
Despite the amount of information given, the group claimed that Facebook did not
give them all of its data. Some of the information not included was "likes",
data about the new face recognition function, data about third party websites
that use "social plugins" visited by users and information about uploaded
videos.
The 16 complaints target
different problems, from undeleted old "pokes" all the way to the question if
sharing and new functions on Facebook should be opt-in or opt-put.The most
severe could be a complaint that claims that the privacy policy and the consent
to the privacy policy is void under European laws. It is reported that the group
is planning to file more complaints, including one against the "Like"
button.
In an Interview with the
Irish Independent a spokesperson said, that the DPC will "go and audit Facebook,
go into the premises and go through in great detail every aspect of security".
He continued by saying: "It's a very significant, detailed and intense
undertaking that will stretch over four or five days. Then we'll publish a
detailed report and Facebook will respond".This means that the investigation by
the DPC might become one of the most severe investigations into Facebook's
privacy practice in the past years. [edit] Breach of privacy extends to
non-members of Facebook
An article published by USA
today claimed that Facebook has created a web log of pages visited both by its
members and by others. Facebook relies on tracking cookies to keep track of
pages visited by more than 800 million individuals.
According to the article,
the United States congress and the world wide web consortium are attempting to
set new guidelines to deal with privacy concerns. It is not clear whether the
information collected in this manner is provided only to advertisers and no
others.
Psychological
effects
Envy
Facebook has been criticized
for making people envious and unhappy due to the constant exposure to positive
yet unrepresentative highlights of their peers.
Stress
Research performed by
psychologists from Edinburgh Napier University indicated that Facebook adds
stress to users' lives. Causes of stress included fear of missing important
social information, fear of offending contacts, discomfort or guilt from
rejecting user requests or deleting unwanted contacts, the pressure to be
entertaining, and having to use appropriate etiquette for different types of
friends.Many people who started using Facebook for positive purposes have found
that the website has negatively impacted their actual lives.
Misleading
campaigns
In May 2011 emails were sent
to journalists and bloggers making critical allegations about Google's privacy
policies; however it was later discovered that the anti-Google campaign,
conducted by PR giant Burson-Marsteller, was paid for by Facebook in what CNN
referred to as "a new level skullduggery" and which Daily Beast called a "clumsy
smear." While taking responsibility for the campaign, Burson-Marsteller said it
should not have agreed to keep its client's (Facebook's) identity a secret.
"Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is
against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been
declined," it said in a statement.
Inappropriate content
controversies
Identity theft
One can easily create an
account and impersonate another person, often for malicious or mischievous
reasons and to harass others.This criticism is not unique to Facebook, since any
site with user accounts has the potential for users to create false accounts but
due to its popularity and wide use Facebook is being the severe reason for this
on internet.
Defamation
On July 24, 2008, the High
Court in London ordered a British cameraman to pay £22,000 (then about
US$43,700) for breach of privacy and libel. He had posted a fake Facebook page
purporting to be that of a former school friend and business colleague, Mathew
Firsht, with whom he had fallen out in 2000. The fake page claimed that Firsht
was homosexual and untrustworthy. The case is believed to be the first
successful invasion of privacy and defamation verdict against someone over an
entry on a social networking site.
Anorexia and
bulimia
Facebook has received
criticism from users and from people outside the Facebook community about
hosting pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia information.British eating disorder charity
B-EAT called on all social networking sites to curb "pro-ana" (anorexia) and
"pro-mia" (bulimia) pages and groups, naming MySpace and Facebook
specifically.[88] [edit] Advertiser concerns
On August 3, 2007, British
companies including First Direct, Vodafone, Virgin Media, The Automobile
Association, Halifax and the Prudential removed their advertisements from
Facebook. A Virgin Media spokeswoman said "We want to advertise on social
networks but we have to protect our brand". The companies found that their
services were being advertised on pages of the British National Party, a
far-right political party in the UK. New Media Age magazine was first to alert
the companies that their ads were coming up on BNP's Facebook page.
Holocaust denial
In 2009, Facebook received
criticism for including Holocaust denial groups. Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for
Facebook, said, "We want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial
ideas, can be discussed." While Facebook's terms of use include the warning that
users may "be banned if they post 'any content that we deem to be harmful,
threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing,
vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful,
or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable'", Schnitt said, "We can't
guarantee that there isn't any content that violates our policies." [edit]
Pro-mafia groups' case
In Italy, the discovery of
pro-mafia groups caused an alert in the country and brought the government,
after a short debate, to rapidly issue a law which will force ISPs to deny
access to entire sites in case of refused removal of illegal contents; the
removal can be requested by a prosecutor in any case in which there is a
suspicion that criminal speech (a defence of or incitement to crime) is
published on a website. The amendment was passed by the Italian Senate and now
needs to be passed unchanged[96] by the Chamber of Deputies to become
immediately effective.
Facebook and other websites,
Google included, criticized the amendment emphasizing the eventual effects on
the freedom of speech of those users who do not violate any law.
Trolling
On March 31, 2010, the Today
Show ran a segment detailing the deaths of three separate adolescent girls and
trolls' subsequent reactions to their deaths. Shortly after the suicide of high
school student Alexis Pilkington, anonymous posters began trolling for reactions
across various message boards, referring to Pilkington as a "suicidal slut", and
posting graphic images on her Facebook memorial page. The segment also included
an exposé of a 2006 accident, in which an eighteen-year-old student out for a
drive fatally crashed her father's car into a highway pylon; trolls e-mailed her
grieving family the leaked pictures of her mutilated corpse.
There have been cases where
Facebook "trolls" were jailed for their communications on Facebook, particularly
memorial pages. In Fall 2010, Colm Coss of Ardick, Britain, was sentenced to 26
weeks in jail under s127 of the Communications Act 2003 of Great Britain, for
"malicious communications" for leaving messages deemed obscene and hurtful on
Facebook memorial pages.
In April 2011, Bradley Paul
Hampson was sentenced to three years in jail after pleading guilty to two counts
of using a carriage service, the Internet, to cause offense, for posts on
Facebook memorial pages, and one count each of distributing and possessing child
pornography when he posted images on the memorial pages of the deceased with
phalluses superimposed alongside phrases such as "Woot I'm dead".
Disabling of user
accounts
There have been complaints
of user accounts easily being mistakenly disabled for violating Facebook's
Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. The disabling is often automated and
can be easily triggered by a user filing a report on an account, regardless of
whether or not the report is legitimate.[104][105] Once Facebook disables an
account, whether it does so for unconfirmed reasons or a suspicion that
something may be awry, it is impossible to reinstate the account, partly due to
lack of in-person support and partly because any attempt to do so sends the
account holder into a closed loop.
Facebook's Statement of
Rights and Responsibilities is often misleading. For example, it states that
joining a school network is not a requirement, even though users are often
disabled for not joining a school network. Facebook has disabled user accounts
for having names deemed to be fake despite being real. Once an account is
disabled, it can no longer be logged into and all public traces of it
disappear.
There have also been
instances of user accounts being memorialized, even though the person listed on
the profile was not deceased.
Enabling of
Harassment
Facebook instituted a policy
by which it is now self-policed by the community of Facebook users. Some users
have complained that this policy allows Facebook to empower abusive users to
harass them by allowing them to submit reports on even benign comments and
photos as being "offensive" or "in violation of Facebook Rights and
Responsibilities" and that enough of these reports result in the user who is
being harassed in this way getting their account blocked for a predetermined
number of days or weeks, or even deactivated entirely.
In addition, Facebook does
not ban the IPs of users who have proven to create multiple accounts for the
purposes of trolling or stalking others, thereby enabling the harasser, even if
they do have one of the offending accounts deactivated, to simply create another
one and continue the harassment with no lasting consequences.
Lack of customer support
Facebook lacks live support,
making it difficult to resolve issues that require the services of an
administrator or are not covered in the FAQs, such as the enabling of a disabled
account. The automated emailing system used when filling out a support form
often refers users back to the help center or to pages that are outdated and
cannot be accessed, leaving users at a dead end with no further support
available.
Downtime and
outages
Facebook has had a number of
outages and downtime large enough to draw some media attention. A 2007 outage
resulted in a security hole that enabled some users to read other users'
personal mail.[116] In 2008, the site was inaccessible for about a day, from
many locations in many countries. In spite of these occurrences, a report issued
by Pingdom found that Facebook had less downtime in 2008 than most social
networking websites.
On September 16, 2009,
Facebook started having major problems with loading when people signed in. On
September 18, 2009, Facebook went down for the second time in 2009, the first
time being when a group of hackers were deliberately trying to drown out a
political speaker who had social networking problems from continuously speaking
against the Iranian election results. On August 10, 2011 Facebook was
in-accessible.
In October 2009, an
unspecified number of Facebook users were unable to access their accounts for
over three weeks. On September 23, 2010, nobody within the UK, US, and Latin
America could log in to Facebook. Facebook quoted a DNS failure.
Upgrades September 2008
In September 2008, Facebook
permanently moved its users to what they termed the "New Facebook" or Facebook
3.0. This version contained several different features and a complete layout
redesign. Between July and September, users had been given the option to use the
new Facebook in place of the original design,[126] or to return to the old
design.
Facebook's decision to
migrate their users was met with some controversy in their community. Several
groups started opposing the decision, some with over a million users.
October 2009
In October 2009, Facebook
redesigned the news feed so that the user could view all types of things that
their friends were involved with. In a statement, they said,
Stores your applications
generate can show up in both views. The best way for your stories to appear in
the News Feed filter is to create stories that are highly engaging, as high
quality, interesting stories are most likely to garner likes and comments by the
user's friends.
This redesign was explained
as:
News Feed will focus on
popular content, determined by an algorithm based on interest in that story,
including the number of times an item is liked or commented on. Live Feed will
display all recent stories from a large number of a user's friends.
The redesign was met
immediately with criticism with users, many who did not like the amount of
information that was coming at them. This was also compounded by the fact that
people couldn't select what they saw. Immediately, groups formed, one getting
over 1,600,000 within the first two weeks of the update.
November/December
2009
In November 2009, Facebook
issued a proposed new privacy policy, and adopted it unaltered in December 2009.
They combined this with a rollout of new privacy settings. This new policy
declared certain information, including "lists of friends", to be "publicly
available", with no privacy settings; it was previously possible to keep access
to this information restricted. Due to this change, the users who had set their
"list of friends" as private were forced to make it public without even being
informed, and the option to make it private again was removed. This was
protested by many people and privacy organizations such as the EFF.
The change was described by
Gawker as Facebook's Great Betrayal, forcing user profile photos and friends
lists to be visible in users' public listing, even for users who had explicitly
chosen to hide this information previously, and making photos and personal
information public unless users were proactive about limiting access.For
example, a user whose "Family and Relationships" information was set to be
viewable by "Friends Only" would default to being viewable by "Everyone"
(publicly viewable).
That is, information such as
the gender of partner you are interested in, relationship status, and family
relations became viewable to those even without a Facebook account. Facebook was
heavily criticized for both reducing its users' privacy and pushing users to
remove privacy protections. Groups criticizing the changes include the
Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union.Mark
Zuckerberg, CEO, had hundreds of personal photos and his events calendar exposed
in the transition. Facebook has since re-included an option to hide friends
lists from being viewable; however, this preference is no longer listed with
other privacy settings, and the former ability to hide the friends list from
selected people among one's own friends is no longer possible.
Journalist Dan Gillmor
deleted his Facebook account over the changes, stating he "can't entirely trust
Facebook" and Heidi Moore at Slate's Big Money temporarily deactivated her
account as a "conscientious objection". Other journalists have been similarly
disappointed and outraged by the changes. Defending the changes, founder Mark
Zuckerberg said "we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just
went for it". The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada launched another
investigation into Facebook's privacy policies after complaints following the
change.
Tracking Cookies
Facebook has been criticised
heavily for 'tracking' users, even when logged out of the site. Australian
technologist Nik Cubrilovic discovered that when a user logs out of Facebook,
the cookies from that login are still kept in the browser, allowing Facebook to
track users on websites that include "social widgets" distributed by the social
network. Facebook has denied the claims, saying they have 'no interest' in
tracking users or their activity. They also promised after the discovery of the
cookies that they would remove them, saying they will no longer have them on the
site. A group of users in the United States have sued Facebook for breaching
privacy laws.
Censorship controversies
The warning box that appears
when Internet users try to view censored or blocked content on Facebook [edit]
Search function
Facebook's search function
has been accused of preventing users from searching for certain terms. Michael
Arrington of TechCrunch has written about Facebook's possible censorship of "Ron
Paul" as a search term. MoveOn.org's Facebook group for organizing protests
against privacy violations could for a time not be found by searching. The very
word privacy was also restricted. Facebook claimed that the problem was a
bug.
Breastfeeding
photos
Facebook has been criticized
for removing photos uploaded by mothers of themselves breastfeeding their babies
and also canceling their Facebook accounts. Although photos that show an exposed
breast violate Facebook's decency code, even when the baby covered the nipple,
Facebook took several days to respond to calls to deactivate a paid
advertisement for a dating service that used a photo of a topless
model.
The breastfeeding photos
controversy continued following public protests and the growth in the online
membership in the Facebook group titled "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not
obscene! (Official petition to Facebook)."
Censorship of editorial
content
On February 4, 2010, a
number of Facebook groups against the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and
Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) were removed without any reason given. The DAB is
one of the largest pro-Beijing political parties in Hong Kong. The affected
groups have since been restored.
On May 21, 2010, Facebook
disabled the account of Sulphur Springs, Texas radio station KNOI after it
posted editorial comments critical of Facebook's privacy policies and shared
links to articles about Leo Laporte's decision to delete his own Facebook
account.[148] [edit] Accusation of politically biased granting of group
upgrades
In May 2011, Facebook
announced that in the coming months it will be "archiving" all groups in the old
format, part of the consequence of which is losing all the existing members of a
group, which would effectively destroy many groups, forcing them to re-acquire
members from scratch. A few groups have been given an option to "upgrade" to the
new groups format, which keeps the members, but the criteria for determining
whether a group is offered this "upgrade" are unknown. Some groups have had
success in getting this upgrade by having activity in their group, while others
have not. One article has claimed an empirical observation that
disproportionately more "liberal" groups have been able to upgrade than
"conservative" groups, leading to accusations of potential political bias, or of
politically motivated censorship of conservative groups.
Student-related
issues
Student privacy concerns
Students who post illegal or
otherwise inappropriate material have faced disciplinary action from their
universities, including expulsion.Others posting libelous content relating to
faculty have also faced disciplinary action.
Effect on higher
education
On January 23, 2006, The
Chronicle of Higher Education continued an ongoing national debate on social
networks with an opinion piece written by Michael Bugeja, director of the
Journalism School at Iowa State University, entitled "Facing the Facebook".
Bugeja, author of the Oxford University Press text Interpersonal Divide (2005),
quoted representatives of the American Association of University Professors and
colleagues in higher education to document the distraction of students using
Facebook and other social networks during class and at other venues in the
wireless campus.
Bugeja followed up on
January 26, 2007 in The Chronicle with an article titled "Distractions in the
Wireless Classroom", quoting several educators across the country who were
banning laptops in the classroom. Similarly, organisations such as the National
Association for Campus Activities, the Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communication, and others have hosted seminars and presentations to
discuss ramifications of students' use of Facebook and other social networking
systems.
The EDUCAUSE Learning
Initiative has also released a brief pamphlet entitled "7 Things You Should Know
About Facebook" aimed at higher education professionals that "describes what
[Facebook] is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning".
Some research on Facebook in
higher education suggests that there may be some small educational benefits
associated with student Facebook use, including improving engagement which is
related to student retention. Furthermore, using technologies such as Facebook
to connect with others can help college students be less depressed and cope with
feelings of loneliness and homesickness. According to one case study, students
surveyed who were regular facebook users had, on average, lower grades than
those who were not.
Third-party responses to
Facebook
Government censorship
Main article: Censorship of Facebook
Several countries have
banned access to it including Syria, China, Iran, and Vietnam.
In 2010, Facebook reportedly
allowed an objectionable page, deemed by the Islamic Lawyers Forum, to be
anti-Muslim. The "ILF" filed a petition with Pakistan's Lahore High Court. On
May 18, 2010, Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry ordered Pakistan's Telecommunication
Authority to block access to Facebook until May 31. The offensive page had
provoked street demonstrations in Muslim countries due to visual depictions of
Mohammed, which are regarded as blasphemous by Muslims.
A spokesman said Pakistan
Telecommunication Authority would move to implement the ban once the order has
been issued by the Ministry of Information and Technology. "We will implement
the order as soon as we get the instructions", Khurram Mehran told AFP. "We have
already blocked the URL link and issued instruction to Internet service
providers yesterday", he added. Rai Bashir told AFP that "We moved the petition
in the wake of widespread resentment in the Muslim community against the
Facebook contents".
The petition called on the
government of Pakistan to lodge a strong protest with the owners of Facebook, he
added. Bashir said a PTA official told the judge his organisation had blocked
the page, but the court ordered a total ban on the site. People demonstrated
outside court in the eastern city of Lahore, Pakistan, carrying banners
condemning Facebook. Protests in Pakistan on a larger scale took place after the
ban and widespread news of that objectionable page. The ban was lifted on May 31
after Facebook reportedly assured the Lahore High Court that it would remedy the
issues in dispute.
In 2011, a court in Pakistan
was petitioned to place a permanent ban on Facebook for hosting a page called
"2nd Annual Draw Muhammad Day May 20th 2011."
Organizations blocking
access
Ontario government
employees, Federal public servants, MPPs, and cabinet ministers were blocked
from access to Facebook on government computers in May 2007. When the employees
tried to access Facebook, a warning message "The Internet website that you have
requested has been deemed unacceptable for use for government business
purposes". This warning also appears when employees try to access YouTube,
MySpace, gambling or pornographic websites. However, innovative employees have
found ways around such protocols, and many claim to use the site for political
or work-related purposes.
A number of local
governments including those in the UK and Finland imposed restrictions on the
use of Facebook in the workplace due to the technical strain incurred. Other
government-related agencies, such as the US Marine Corps have imposed similar
restrictions.
A number of hospitals in
Finland have also restricted Facebook use citing privacy concerns.
Employees of Broward County,
Florida have been blocked from accessing Facebook and most social networking and
blog sites since 2009. [edit] Schools blocking access
The University of New Mexico
(UNM) in October 2005 blocked access to Facebook from UNM campus computers and
networks, citing unsolicited e-mails and a similar site called UNM Facebook.
After a UNM user signed into Facebook from off campus, a message from Facebook
said, "We are working with the UNM administration to lift the block and have
explained that it was instituted based on erroneous information, but they have
not yet committed to restore your access." UNM, in a message to students who
tried to access the site from the UNM network, wrote, "This site is temporarily
unavailable while UNM and the site owners work out procedural issues.
The site is in violation of
UNM's Acceptable Computer Use Policy for abusing computing resources (e.g.,
spamming, trademark infringement, etc). The site forces use of UNM credentials
(e.g., NetID or email address) for non-UNM business." However, after Facebook
created an encrypted login and displayed a precautionary message not to use
university passwords for access, UNM unblocked access the following spring
semester.
The Columbus Dispatch
reported on June 22, 2006, that Kent State University's athletic director had
planned to ban the use of Facebook by athletes and gave them until August 1 to
delete their accounts. On July 5, 2006, the Daily Kent Stater reported that the
director reversed the decision after reviewing the privacy settings of
Facebook.
Closed social
networks
Several web sites concerned
with social networking, such as Plugtodo.com and salesforce have criticized the
lack of information that users get when they share data. Advanced users cannot
limit the amount of information anyone can access in their profiles, but
Facebook promotes the sharing of personal information for marketing purposes,
leading to the promotion of the service using personal data from users who are
not fully aware of this. Facebook exposes personal data, without supporting open
standards for data interchange. According to several communities and authors
closed social networking, on the other hand, promotes data retrieval from other
people while not exposing one's personal information.
Facebook Settles Privacy Complaints of U.S. Regulator
November 30, 2011, 7:51 PM EST By Sara Forden and Jeff
Bliss (Updates with Gaskins comment in sixth paragraph and Zuckerberg statement
in 10th paragraph.)
Nov. 29 (Bloomberg)
-- Facebook Inc., the world's biggest social networking site, agreed to
settle complaints by the Federal Trade Commission that it failed to protect
users' privacy or disclose how their data could be used.
The proposed 20-year
agreement would require Palo Alto, California-based Facebook to get clear
consent from users before sharing material posted under earlier, more
restrictive terms, the FTC said today in a statement. It would also compel
independent reviews of Facebook's privacy practices.
"Companies must live up to
their promises about privacy," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said on a conference
call with reporters. The settlement "will protect consumer choices and ensure
they have full and truthful information about their data."
The settlement is part of an
effort to resolve legal issues that could be a distraction as Facebook moves
toward an initial public offering, said Francis Gaskins, president of Los
Angeles- based IPODesktop.com, a Web site that tracks IPOs. Facebook is
considering an IPO that would raise $10 billion and value the company at more
than $100 billion, a person familiar with the matter said.
'Clear the
Decks'
"They're obviously trying to
clear the decks to take off," Gaskins said in an interview, adding that the
settlement "should give some comfort" to potential investors.
In a blog posting, Facebook
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the company should have been more
vigilant in protecting users' privacy.
"I'm the first to admit that
we've made a bunch of mistakes," he said.
The FTC is stepping up
enforcement of privacy requirements at Internet companies and this year has
settled complaints with Google Inc. and Twitter Inc.
Marc Rotenberg, executive
director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based
advocacy group that filed a complaint against Facebook over privacy issues in
2009, said today's settlement "is a sweeping order that will prevent Facebook
from disregarding the privacy interests of its users in the future."
It should also should send a
message to the Internet industry at large, Maneesha Mithal, associate director
of the FTC's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, said in an
interview.
'Good Practices'
"The provisions of the order
are good practices for all companies to follow," Mithal said. "Companies should
seek permission from consumers before they make changes to how they treat
personal information."
Zuckerberg said the company
already has addressed many of the FTC's concerns. Today he appointed Erin Egan,
a former partner at Covington & Burling who specialized in data security, as
chief privacy officer, policy, and Michael Richter, the company's head privacy
counsel, as chief privacy officer, products, Zuckerberg said.
The settlement, which the
FTC's commissioners approved 4-0, requires Facebook to establish a
"comprehensive privacy program" and block access to a user's account within 30
days of it being deleted, according to the FTC's statement. The company also is
barred from making any deceptive claims about its privacy practices.
Independent
Audits
Audits by an independent
third party will help build faith in Facebook's efforts, said Elliot Schrage, a
Facebook spokesman.
"Oversight fosters trust by
providing users with additional assurances that the commitments we make are
being upheld," he said in an e-mail.
Michael Gartenberg, an
analyst at Gartner Inc., a Stamford, Connecticut technology research company,
said, "There's no doubt Facebook and privacy have not gone well together in the
past."
The FTC said Facebook shared
users' personal information with advertisers after promising it wouldn't.
Facebook also pledged it would restrict sharing of information to designated
"friends" of users while the data also was accessible to third-party
applications used by the friends, the FTC said in the statement.
Facebook assured users that
third-party applications only had access to data required for them to function,
while, in fact, the applications had access to almost all of a user's personal
information, according to the agency.
'Verified Apps'
The company's "Verified
Apps" program to certify the security of applications didn't work, the FTC
said.
In other FTC actions on
Internet privacy, Google Inc. agreed in March to settle claims that the Mountain
View, California-based company used deceptive tactics and violated its own
privacy policies when it introduced its Buzz social- networking service last
year.
That same month, the agency
accepted a settlement with Twitter, resolving charges that the San
Francisco-based company deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk.
The regulator has said the
online-advertising industry's self-policing effort allowing Internet users to
block ads based on their web browsing fails to protect consumers. --Editors: Fred Strasser, Justin Blum (OTHER IMAGES ON THIS
PAGE COURTESY OF Google
Images)
Reported by: Sol Jose
Vanzi
© Copyright, 2011 by
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS
ONLINE
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HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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