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+<h2>On Facebook, Google+, and Ethical Social Networking</h2>
+<p>
+ TO COME: An introduction, a section on Google+, and a section on ethical social networking.
+</p>
+<h3>The Ethics of Facebook</h3>
+<p>
+ Facebook shares their users' personal information with third parties.
+ They use mere Web site design changes as an excuse to revert users'
+ privacy settings to unsafe defaults. Their social platform has huge
+ security holes that allow personal information to be leaked. One such
+ hole made some users' private chats accessible to all of their contacts.
+ Facebook also exposes users to malware and identity theft. [1] They
+ make it easy for application developers to collect personal information.
+ [2] The Wall Street Journal found that these application developers
+ collect this personal information, link it with other information, and
+ sell it to others. [3]
+</p>
+<p>
+ In general, Facebook has always operated on an opt-out basis. In some
+ cases, you can actually disable third-party access to your information.
+ But you must always be on the lookout for new "features" or changes to
+ privacy settings. Facebook always changes the way it collects
+ information, and it catches many people unaware. But it's impossible to
+ opt out of things you don't even know about. Recently, Facebook added a
+ feature they call "tag suggestions". If you have photos on your
+ profile, Facebook can pick out people's faces and suggest names for
+ them. This may sound useful, but it's the tip of an almost nightmarish
+ ethics iceberg in information systems. Facebook uses facial recognition
+ software to make this work; they scan already-tagged photos and record
+ distinguishing facial features and then find photos with similar faces
+ and give them names. They maintain a database of people's facial
+ features. They never notified anyone about this database. They never
+ asked users if they could record this information. Instead, of course,
+ they made it an opt-out feature; you have to explicitly disable this
+ hidden feature to keep your facial information out of the database.
+ This new feature has even sparked an investigation by the European
+ Union. [4][5] But just imagine what Facebook could do with this
+ information (and consider their track record with personal information).
+ I suspect they may soon start selling facial data to other companies,
+ law enforcement agencies, and oppressive governments (I've heard that
+ the U.K. once used video camera footage to locate and arrest protesters,
+ so imagine what they could do with facial data).
+</p>
+<p>
+ Basically, Facebook is a business. And you are not their customer. You
+ are their product. They are, in fact, selling their products to
+ advertisers. That is, they use a person's face (without getting
+ permission and without paying anything) to advertise things to that
+ person's friends. Claim to like something, and you've given a product
+ endorsement at a price advertising agencies would love. [6]
+</p>
+<p>
+ And they also seem to like selling out their users to governments and
+ limiting what their users can read and say. After their recent
+ collaboration with Chinese partners, the Facebook platform was allowed
+ into China under political censorship. At the time, Facebook lobbyist
+ Adam Conner remarked, "we're allowing too much, maybe, free speech".
+ [7][8] The Associated Press reported last month that Facebook sold out
+ hundreds of peaceful pro-Palestinian activists who had been organizing
+ events through the social platform. Facebook allowed governments to
+ track its users' activities. As a result, more than 300 peaceful
+ activists were added to airline terrorism watch lists and denied the
+ right to leave their countries. International air travel was disrupted
+ as planes from Geneva and Italy were diverted for security inspections.
+ 310 people were detained after landing in Israel on their way to stand
+ with Palestinians in a peaceful mission of solidarity and fact-finding.
+ [9][10] Imagine what might have happened if Facebook (and widespread
+ publicly-accessible computer networks for that matter) existed during
+ the civil rights movement. Would there be racial equality in the United
+ States today? Or would peaceful protesters organizing events have been
+ sold out and arrested before they could even meet?
+</p>
+<p>
+ But it seems you don't even have to use Facebook to get tracked by
+ Facebook. Everyone who sees a "Like" button somewhere on the Web (as
+ I'm sure you have) can be tracked. Facebook has the ability to map out
+ the browsing behavior of a massive number (a number that grows by tens
+ of millions each month) of Web users, even those who don't use Facebook.
+ [11] Again, imagine what they could do with such vast amounts of
+ information.
+</p>
+<p>
+ Things like these gaping holes in privacy, devious information
+ collection practices, abuse of users, censorship, and tracking inspired
+ Matt Lee, campaigns manager, and John Sullivan, executive director, of
+ the Free Software Foundation to write about Facebook's poor track record
+ with privacy and create rather amusing "Dislike" and "not f'd" buttons. [12]
+</p>
+<h3>References:</h3>
+<ol>
+ <li>
+ "Five Hidden Dangers of Facebook". <span class="cite-title">CBS News</span>. CBS Interactive
+ Inc. May 11, 2010.
+ <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/0/08/earlyshow/saturday/main6469373.shtml">&lt;http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/0/08/earlyshow/saturday/main6469373.shtml&gt;</a>.
+ </li>
+ <li>TODO: Add the rest.</li>
+</ol>