Issues of Governance and Privacy on Facebook - Essay Example

Issues of Governance and Privacy on Facebook During the last decade online social networks, such as Facebook, have appeared and gained unprecedentedpopularity. Serving as handy means for entertainment, relations and collaboration, social networks (SNs) allow their users to use various tools to upload, share, browse and use information from their peers around the world. Quite often the information includes explicit personal data (e.g. birth date and place, home address, email and phone numbers, individual attitudes and preferences, and so on), which can be used to harm owners of the data. While users of SNs understand the possible risks, they still continue posting their private information, in a hope that they will have benefits from online socialization rather than troubles from publicity. At the same time the administration of SNs’ web-sites not always informs users about potential risks and harms (Schneier 2006). All of this causes a necessity of new understanding of privacy issues, as well as leads to hot discussions around the question of government regulation in this area. This essay aims to discuss important issues of privacy of social network users and government regulation to protect their privacy. A particular attention is given to the Facebook Privacy Policy, its development and special features. Today Facebook is the most popular social network in the world that continues to grow with increased speed. For many people in the world it became an important part of social life, influencing upon their attitudes to friendship, democracy, liberalism and tolerance. Yet, Facebook is much criticised for its privacy practices, which intend to keep a balance between visibility of users’ data, in order to make world “more open and connected” (Zuckerberg 2010), on the one hand, and users’ control over personal information, in order to protect their privacy, on the other hand. Thus, a discussion of privacy and governance regarding to Facebook will help to understand better a general problem of effectiveness of privacy policies of social networks and a role of government in regulation of issues related to protecting SNs users. Harper (2004, p.2) offers the following definition of privacy: “Privacy is the subjective condition that people experience when they have power to control information about themselves and when they exercise that power consistent with their interests and values.” This definition reveals several important features of privacy: Privacy is a condition or a state of affairs that concerns information about an individual, and this information is known (or may be known) to other people. An individual maintains the privacy, having a control over an access to his or her personal information – making decisions about who and on what terms can receive and learn this information. Privacy is a subjective condition - no one can decide for other person what personal information can be visible and accessible. Each individual has own sense of privacy, depending upon experience, culture, attitudes, and personal goals. Raab (2005, p.283) also agrees that “individuals are the best judge of their own privacy interests” and “each man is responsible for his own acts and omissions only.” But, living in society and interacting with others, people often have to share their private information, e.g. at work, in schools, hospitals etc. Regardless of whether people give information at their own will, or in accordance with circumstances, in physical or in the virtual world, they want and have right to be sure that private information will not fall into hands of third parties, for which it is not intended. Responding to this challenge, governments of many leading countries develop policies of regulations, mainly based upon the so called “fair information principles”, which establish certain norms for responsible processing of personal information. These principles include: openness and transparency, individual participation, collection limitation, data quality, use limitation, reasonable security, and accountability (Langheinrich 2001, p.276). Now, how privacy can be understood regarding SNs and Facebook, in particular? boyd & Ellison (2007) define social networks as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” So, the core of any social network web-site is a user profile comprising a big deal of data about a user personality, family, friends, colleagues, details of private life. SNs users can upload photos and videos, keep a diary, post in a blog, and communicate with other users, creating a huge amount of private data. An access to these data is set by a user, but rules of setting vary between social network web-sites. Facebook is the biggest social network in the world, the number of its users is about 500 million (Fletcher 2010). From the very beginning of Facebook in 2004, its approach to privacy was “network-centric” - whenever new features were introduced the default settings were intended to share information more broadly (Hargittai 2010). Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, explains this position by the core principles: “People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world thats more open and connected is a better world” (Zuckerberg 2010). This strategy is reflected in the Facebook’s Terms of Service, where users are stipulated to “use their real names, information and identities and only use the service to connect with “real world contacts” (Raynes-Goldie 2010). Such broad-minded goals of Facebook served as a basis for many technological innovations, ensuring a prominent success of the social network, but at the same time, according to many scholars, innovations in services also caused extreme negative reaction from some users and government officials, who declared about breaches of policy of Facebook users’ privacy protection. In 2006 Facebook introduced “News Feed”, a feature that spreads automatically information about any action of a Facebook’s user throughout all members of the user’s network. A lot of users were shocked and expressed protest; it forced Facebook to change privacy settings in order to ensure control from users what news can be shared via News Feed. In 2007 a new platform Beacon was launched, it allowed to publish automatically information about users’ purchases on other web-sites - partners of Facebook. It led again to users’ protest and to the class action lawsuit against Facebook; the Beacon platform was closed in 2009. In December 2009 after the redesign, Facebook users were offered to reassign their privacy settings, the default option was set as “Show to everyone”. A lot of users accepted a default setting without thinking about consequences, as a result all their information became visible, even that was previously restricted to public access. It entailed users’ resentment, as well as complaints of several advocacy groups and an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (Hargittai 2010). These troubles, however, did not influence a general tendency of growth of the Facebook audience – if in the end of 2007 it counted about 50 millions users, to the end of 2010 it is expected to be 500 millions (Fletcher 2010). In April 2010 at the f8 conference Zuckerberg announced new Open Graph services, which allow users to share more information between Facebook and other web-sites – partners of Facebook. At the same time Zuckerberg (2010) assures that Facebook pays a big attention to issues of users’ privacy and tries to respond properly on users’ feedback. Fletcher (2010) points out that Facebook isn’t the only SN web-site that is confronted with users’ privacy infraction. For example, in February 2010, Google also had to apologize when its Twitteresque Buzz application revealed a lot of details of users’ interactions via email and chat. But Facebook is unique and differs from his rivals in many respects. Today, for many of young internet users the Facebook is an essential part of their social life. “As Facebook replaces the phone or e-mail as the default mode of interaction, having a Facebook account makes it all the more essential for getting and staying in touch with one’s friends, acquaintances and co-workers” (Raynes-Goldie 2010). Moreover, if a young person doesn’t have a Facebook account, he or she doesn’t have an online identity from youth’s point of view, in other words, this person doesn’t exist online and a big part of social life is not available for her or him. The costs of non-participation on Facebook are much higher than possible risks of participation. Thus, one can agree with Raynes-Goldie (2010) that “contrary to much of the rhetoric in the debate around online privacy, the use of Facebook is not necessarily a choice free of coercion, nor are the reasons for sharing information on the site simply about self-obsession or exhibitionism.” Perhaps for young people it is more about social acceptance and compliance. But one can suppose that for the majority of users the Facebook is attractive as a real model of a liberal democratic society, as it is described by Westin in 1967: “The democratic society relies on publicity as a control over government, and on privacy as a shield for group and individual life” (Westin 1967, p.24, cited in Bennett & Raab 2003, p.14). Living only 6 years Facebook has had a huge influence upon the world community, making it truly more open and connected, providing more publicity and taking care of privacy at the same time. Fletcher (2010) argues that: “…our life on Facebook represents a tremendous cultural shift …Facebook has changed our social DNA, making us more accustomed to openness. The feelings you experience on Facebook are heartfelt; the data you’re providing feeds a bottom line.” In this context the privacy of Facebook users can be also understood not as “a value asserted by individuals against the demands of a curious and intrusive society” (Post 1999, p.958), but as a necessary aspect of relations with others – as means to “create rules that in some significant measure constitute both individuals and community” (Schwartz 1999, p.1663). Nevertheless, emotions and hearty relationships do not always guard from fraud, search inquiries for “how to delete Facebook account” have doubled in volume on Google this year (Fletcher 2010). So privacy protection issues are and hopefully will be on the top of agenda of the Facebook administration. But what role should play government and its regulations in these processes? Nowadays more and more journalists, politicians and scholars insist on governmental protection of privacy and warn about the danger of posting private information online. Perez (2008) cites the opinion of Andreas Pirotti, executive director of ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency), who said that the most of users don’t realize clearly how harmfully the process of online friendship can work. One may agree with these concerns, but it is important to keep in mind the words of Shwartz (1999, p.1662) who said: “The liberal ideal views autonomous individuals as able to interact freely and equally so long as the government or public does not interfere.” Thus, in a society, which strives to promote ideas of democracy, liberalism and free market, governmental policies should be considered mostly as complementary, supplementary or substitutive tools, rather than restrictive and interfering ones (Raab 2005). Private organizations should be viewed as self-regulated social institutes fully responsible towards their customers. In relation to Facebook and other social networks, it would be much better if government will focus mostly on a promotion of public awareness about possible consequences of information openness. Instead of interfering with Facebook operations, government should collaborate with the web-site administration to make sure that all users are well-informed and they fully understand consequences of publishing their private information onto the web-site. Government should seek methods to encourage users to become open-minded individuals, responsible for their actions, rather than to remain always narrow-minded, illiberal, afraid to make own decisions. References Bennett, C. & Raab, C 2003, The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective, Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot. boyd, d. m. & Ellison, N. 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