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<!--#set var="title" value="Essays" -->
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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"><http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/0/08/earlyshow/saturday/main6469373.shtml></a>.
</li>
<li>TODO: Add the rest.</li>
</ol>
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