Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, once proclaimed in an interview that the age of privacy had to come o an end. According to Zuckerberg, social norms had changed and people were no longer worried about sharing their personal information with friends, friends of friends, or even the entire Web. This view is an accordance with Facebooks broader goal, which is, according to Zuckerberg, to make the world a more open and connected place. Many Facebook features are premised on this position. Supporters of Zuckerbergs viewpoint believe the 21st century is an age of information exhibitionism, a new era of openness and transparency.
Although Facebook started out at Harvard and other campuses with a simple privacy policy of not fiving anyone except friends access to your profile, this quickly changed as tis founder Mark Zuckerberg realized the revenue-generating potential of a social networking site open to the public.
Facebook has al long history of invading the personal privacy of its users. In fact, the very foundation of Facebooks business model is to sell the personal information of its users to advertisers. In essence, Facebook is like any broadcast or cable television service that users entertainment to attract large audiences, and then once those audiences are in place, to sell air time to advertisers in 30-to 60-second blocks. Of course, television broadcasters do not have much if any personal information on their users, and in that sense are much less of a privacy threat. Facebook, currently with over 2 billion users worldwide, clearly attracts a hug audience.
In late 2017 and 2018, concerns about Facebook and privacy invasion came to the fore with the Cambridge analytical scandal mentioned in the video. In march 2018, Facebook announced changes to its privacy settings, which are discussed in the video “Facebook Privacy Settings Tutorial” below —
Hello Abderrahim, Abdul, Ahmed, Bijay, Eldev-Ochir, Meetkumar, Meenakshi, Milan, Muhammad, Sameer, Selin, Shoaib, Soban, Sukru, Suresh and Rana,
Week 7 Class Discussion topic comes from — Chapter 8 “Ethical, Social, and Political Issues in E-commerce”
This class expects you to contribute three times after your reviewing Case 8.2 “Facebook Privacy” listed above (or see attachment):
Question #1: Do people who used Facebook have a legitimate claim to privacy when they themselves are posting information about themselves?
Question #2: Why did Facebook announce changes to its privacy settings in March 2018?
