The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, commented at the weekend that social media has ensured that privacy is no longer the expectation of his service users. I wonder, though, just how much users really think about the content they fill their profile pages with, and what effect this availability of personal information has, not on identity thieves, but on their friends and acquaintances.
The wonderfully entertaining website, Lamebook, which promises the very best and very worst of Facebook content reveals a large number of oversharers, from the couples who argue within their status updates to the hysterical few who update on every torn emotion and unrequited advance.
I have my own oversharer on Facebook: a girl I was at school with fifteen years ago has been going through a traumatic separation from her husband. I have had no personal contact with her and yet I know every detail of the break up, have read intimate details of his cheating and departure and have shared in every expletive-littered diatribe. On bad days, I could expect to see seven or eight increasingly enraged status updates and eventually hid her from my news feed. When the privacy options changed, she appeared once again in my news feed with her status now changed back to married and all of her updates now jubilant tributes to how incredibly happy she is now her husband has returned.
But what of the husband? Clearly he wasn't complicit in the sharing of every minute detail of the pain he had inflicted on his estranged wife and children, which were each commented on with vicious aplomb by members of her friend list. What of the mutual friends who were caught in the crossfire? A brief browse revealed the previous updates had been removed shortly after the reconciliation but he is sure to be treated differently by their circle in the future. We've all had that friend who breaks up with a partner and spends weeks ranting about how awful they were only to get back together with them and leave those who shared in the ex-bashing feeling exposed and awkward. This is the same thing, but instead of a handful of friends, the exercise is expanded to a group of potentially hundreds of casual friends, co-workers and old schoolmates and amounts to social homicide.
On the other hand, Facebook is making us increasingly obsessive about the actions of those around us. I have friends who pore over the profiles of the objects of their affection, whether in a relationship with them or not, on a daily basis and debate endlessly on what it all means. One friend, who was at the time posted in Afghanistan, sent me regular messages from the base computer asking who her ex boyfriend's recently acquired female Facebook friends were and analysing any pictures he put up with an obsessive eye – in one case demanding to know the identity of the owner of a lock of blonde hair just visible beside him at a business dinner. She became convinced he was sleeping with every female who left him wall messages and would go into meltdown if any of them signed off with a kiss.
There also seems to be a tendency for some to use the amount of information on some people available on Facebook to their advantage in attracting a partner. One female friend who took this to extremes was introduced to another friend on Facebook and the pair really hit it off. They messaged back and forth with the increasingly exciting feeling that they shared the same interests and mindsets. What the guy didn't know, however, was that my friend had been perusing his interests and studied his activities on Facebook at length to become his perfect woman. Her status updates changed from minor pedestrian irritations about her commute to completely out of character activities such as headbanging to heavy metal music and watching Star Trek marathons, all delivered in the same net-geek-speak he favoured for his updates. The fling eventually ended when her day became occupied almost entirely by what he was up to, hitting F5 to refresh every few minutes. If he was updating on Facebook and not responding to her messages, all hell broke loose and he was eventually on the receiving end of friend-removal and multiple text messages declaring him dumped. He eventually found a girl in the real world who doesn't have a Facebook account and is engaged to her. He admits to me that the whole experience was a confusing and dispiriting one: he is far more careful what he shares now.
Pre-Social Media, finding out information about someone required going through mutual friends or having to ask the subject directly. The very act of this ensured detachment and a curb on any tendency to overstep the mark. However, the internet has opened the door to anonymous scouring for information meaning everything you post has the potential to be chewed over by countless unknown eyes.
The amount of 'Who is viewing your profile' group invitations I receive, and reject (it is not technically possible to do this unless foolishly giving access to your movements to a third party developer anyway), seems to suggest that there will always be a paranoia (or vanity?) about how much somebody accesses your personal information through this medium.
Personally, I find Facebook a wonderful tool if you are comfortable with its potential for misuse by some people. I have moved around a lot and have friends spread widely who I am now far better connected to. My privacy settings are on the highest level on the basis that I only share information with those I am comfortable with and I censor myself with the benchmark that if I wouldn't shout it out in a crowded room, I don't want it on the internet.
And if a love interest happens to be on Facebook, he can look at my profile as much as he likes, as can any friend I have given permission to. But I won't be looking at his – the internet skews perception and I have enough trouble understanding men in the real world without trying to apply a sanity filter to every single thing he does online. It's better this way.
Friday, August 26, 2011
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