This is a post i did for the VanityShack 
Are you a face book junkie? Its become a bit of a norm for most to log into face book as the first web site when first web site as soon as you start up your pc. Updat ing your sta tus on what you did or what you plan to do or even what your thoughts are on cer tain issues. Then you browse around your friends profiles to see what they been up too and leav ing a com ment or 2 while your at it.
The “wiser” few who dont show up at work tak ing the infa mous mc but really they were just tired from wthe exten sive par ty ing over the week end or had other plans that put going to work on the back seat. This smart act has got a few lucky ones fired from their jobs ‚for get ting that their boss or their bosses, boss who are on their friends list.
Face book is a stalk ers boon from the gods above. Many have suc cumbed to stalk ers and have cause them giv ing up their social pres ence which is as hard as stop ping smok ing for some. So my advice to you socialn net work junkies, go slow on broad cast ing your activ i ties. Know who your friends are and dont add peo ple you dont know. Its not a pop u lar ity con test, its a social network!
Here’s a story of Dylani Shea who hit the delete but ton on her face book pro file after get ting stalked by cus tomers from where she works.
Dylani Shea ended her vir tual life after com ing home late one night from a part-time bar tend ing job to find a cus tomer had tracked her down on Facebook.
“Cus tomers look ing me up on Face book and send ing me mes sages is totally weird,” said the second-year York Uni ver sity stu dent. “I decided I didn’t really want myself out there for just any one to be able to con tact me. I didn’t want to be part of it any more.”
The nascent back lash is aimed pri mar ily at Face book, which boasts more than 400 mil lion active users. Other social media sites such as Twit ter and MySpace do not dis close mem ber ship details, but experts believe their net works are sig nif i cantly smaller.
The para dox of Facebook’s mete oric rise as a free-form Inter net meet ing place is that the more it grows, the more its mem bers have begun to feel vul ner a ble to pry ing strangers and busi nesses, which are drawn to a gold mine of demo graphic data for tar get ing prod ucts and ser vices. Under lin ing the anx i ety, reg u lators and pri vacy groups are start ing to sound the alarm.
Canada’s Pri vacy Com mis sioner led the charge last year by push ing Face book to tighten its pri vacy settings. In Decem ber, 10 U.S. pri vacy groups filed a com plaint with the Fed eral Trade Com mis sion, call ing for an inves ti ga tion into Facebook’s new pri vacy set ting defaults, claim ing they improp erly encour age mem bers to pub licly expose data.
A Toronto-based spokes woman for Face book said its mem bers “rely on us to pro tect their data and enforce the pri vacy deci sions they’ve made on Face book. We take this trust seri ously and work aggressively to pro tect it.”
A cot tage indus try of per for mance artists and other Inter net rebels has tapped into social media paranoia by launch ing such web sites as Web 2.0 Sui cide Machine and seppukoo.com (a play on the rit ual samu rai sui cide). The ser vices allow users to acti vate a series of soft ware codes that enter their social media accounts and elim i nate all posted images and text.
A spokesman for Italy-based seppukkoo.com said 22,000 Face book users have acti vated its pro gram. The web site of Rotterdam-based Web 2.0 Sui cide says users have cut ties to 230,000 friends and erased 391,000 tweets.
Face book blocked both sites from access ing mem ber accounts in late Decem ber, how ever. A spokeswoman said the pro grams vio lated com pany poli cies that restrict out siders from using mem bers’ login infor ma tion. After Face book sent let ters threat en ing legal action, both sites pulled the plug on their applications.
The sui cide machines may have been stopped, but Face book is still grap pling with its mem bers’ privacy fears.
“The ini tial excite ment is wear ing off,” said Hal Niedzviecki, a Toronto author and doc u men tary maker and early social-media enthu si ast. He once posted com ments about his work, fam ily and daugh ter sev eral times a day to more than 2,700 friends on Face book and Twit ter. He did it to draw atten tion to his work, but he has grown uncom fort able with the con stant exposure.
“You get the sense that you’re some one else’s enter tain ment. Your life is a prod uct and that to me is a fright en ing idea.”
Mr. Niedzviecki still uses social media to update his friends on his work, but he is much more cir cumspect about reveal ing per sonal details. “That takes the fun out of it in a major way.”
Amir sam Nakh ja vani, an employee with KYO Home Inc., said he deac ti vated his Face book account last year because he grew weary of the daily flood of per sonal infor ma tion that was shared by his net work of more than 500, mostly periph eral, friends.
“I was hav ing access to infor ma tion about people’s lives that I wasn’t nec es sar ily close to so there was kind of a dis con nect between my rela tion ship with these peo ple in real life and the amount of infor mation I had about them. It was kind of jarring.”
Source : The Globe And Mail
Recent Comments