Why Is Facebook An Invasion Of Privacy?

In the article “Facebook Is Using You,” Lori Andrews describes the damaging consequences of corporations collecting and selling personal information retrieved from internet users. She explains how this information is often used to create personalized advertisements and while seemingly harmless may have negative implications on internet users’ employability, legal battles or ability to receive credit (552).

So many users of the internet blindly browse and post on these sites without any thought to the online identity they are creating for themselves. Shares, tweets, hashtags, likes, and comments all combine to make up an amalgamation of marketable information. In November of 2016, an average of six thousand tweets were made per second, and ninety-five million Instagram posts were made per day (Sayce; Parker). Facebook “has become the largest database of personal information ever collected,” says Richard, and Facebook takes advantage of this. With almost two billion users, Facebook has no shortage of information to gather (Sparks). They do this mainly for targeted advertising. There is no small profit to be made in this. In 2011 Lori Andrews wrote, “Facebook made $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, 85% of it's total revenue.” However, Facebook and other internet corporations also relay data gathered on users to the

From different online social media websites to virtual adventure games, software that helps people meet, talk, and work with others is getting billion of online users. The use of social media comes with a price, though. Every photo upload or click of a “like” button deposits users' personal data online, many of which gives businesses the statistics they need for advertising. To some, such data being collected is an invasion of privacy, but social media supporters say it is a little price to pay for the benefits of online socializing. Meanwhile, people criticize

This article focuses on media platforms (Facebook & Google) recent transition from privacy policies to data usage policies. The privacy policies have become obstacles for the economy of social media. The online platforms benefit from encouraging individuals to disclose information publicly by selling clustered profiled information of its users to advertisers and marketers. This source is relevant to the proposed topic because it addresses the excess of information for analysis that are available to multiple

The United States is a culture of sharing. People share their personal lives on almost every aspects with social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The idea of free online services have attract people’s natural instinct to indulge themselves into these free services. What they do not know is how these “free-services” ask in return. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have revolutionized how people connect with one another and the way people retrieve resources, which also allows massive private information accessible to organizations. In the article called “Twitter’s Lucrative Data Mining Business” published in The Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Dwoskin talks about Twitter’s disclosure that its company has “$47.5 million came from selling off its data to a fast-growing group of companies that analyze the data for insights into news events and trends” (Dwoskin). Although the internet has opened doors to many business opportunities and innovations, it has invaded social media users’ private information and often exposes them to unauthorized organizations such Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat for monetary gain. Legal standing has make it possible for these companies to appropriately set user’s policies regarding the disclosure of user’s privacy, but people often disregard on how companies are distributing their information that may expose their privacy to unauthorized organizations.

Social media is defined by internet-based websites and networks that create a virtual platform for online users to share ideas and information, build social communities, and create a space for self-expression. As of 2018, an estimated amount of 2.6 billion people in the entire population actively have social networking accounts. As the digital age becomes more prevalent, and thus expanding, social media enterprises, such as Facebook, are devising ways and software that enhance marketing. These methods, however, have recently triggered criticism for collecting information that users may not want to be meddled by unknown parties. Seeing how this infringes the right to privacy, it can only be resolved by refraining from social media.

In “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure” danah boyd reveals the faults of Facebook and how it affects the actions of its users. boyd observes that when users have access to a privacy feature they feel freer to post and comment as they please. When we are in pubic we acclimate to our surroundings and then choose how to we talk and what we share. boyd points out that normally each users actions were not overly obvious until an update to its system that caused the each user to get notifications each time they logged in based on their friends actions. This generated a new problem where the users had to really question and think about what they posted and shared on Facebook knowing that everyone could interpret their actions differently.

Facebook is a well know social networking site that has taken all over the world with over 500 million people using the site. Social networking sites such as Facebook share information about the user over the Internet, where it can be freely accessed by anyone. This is where issues of privacy to the individual arise. As of July 2010 Facebook has more than 500 million active users, Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. As of December last year, Facebook called its 500 million users to review their privacy settings at the launch of its new user control tools which allow the user to control their information easily depending on

In the article ‘The Right to Privacy is Not a Right to Facebook’, Castro (2010, p.1) suggests that there is a growing concern in the content of the social media companies' privacy policy as these companies have been observed to be using their users' private data to provide suggestion products and services to their consumers. While this allows companies such as Facebook and Google to tailor their services to their consumers' preference and need better, Privacy Fundamentalists argue that such targeted marketing has already violated users' privacy rights by exposing private data. In the view of whether companies should be allowed to access the data, the author suggests that it is purely up to FTC to decide whether to conduct legal action in checking

First is the advertising. According to the case, we know that the major revenue of Facebook is advertising, which took up 98 percent in 2009, 95 percent in 2010 and 85 percent in 2011. Facebook uses all information uploaded by users to become the property of the firm. By analyzing database, Facebook provides advertisers target customized services and products based on users’ preferences and connections. In its view, the advertising which based on social

Since the inception of social media with SixDegrees in 1997 (Hendricks), people have been able to post and share their daily lives for the whole world to see. This wasn’t a real big problem for the most part until the more prominent social media sites like Facebook came to be. Ever since then, the companies that use Facebook and other social media sites have often used and abused people’s personal and oftentimes private information for publicity and advertisements. This is a major issue that needs to be stopped somehow, and there’s one possible way to do it.

As many stories fill the news of databases being compromised or government laptops being lost or stolen, the “Shibboleth” project will win many supporters. However, even with privacy being protected and security being enforced, it is up to the consumer to be vigilant regarding their personal information in the same way. Many internet users fill the web-sphere with personal information from Facebook to LinkedIn. These networks (professional and social) encourage users to divulge information about themselves that may end up being dangerous, especially for our youth. There have been stories of people killed or hurt because they posted a specific status on their Facebook page. This can be simply taken care of by using the tools already resident on the site (privacy tools).

Social media is growing rapidly year by year due to society’s standards changing and the urge of wanting to fit in. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook give users a voice to provide personal information with others such as their likes, dislikes, and even explain how they feel on topics. The information people publish, retweet, like and share within these platforms becomes free-game for anyone in the world with an internet connection to view, screenshot, blackmail or even repost anyone’s info. Therefore, it causes a threat to personal privacy and social security especially for celebrities and popular people on these social media platforms. Social media creates a lot of good such as connecting with peers and advertising, however a major downside is the loss of personal privacy.

Social media applications have skyrocketed in the past couple of years. With the increase of technology, millions of people are able to communicate and share information with family, friends and people all around the world. Although there are many positive features when using social media applications, there are major consequences as well. My research questions states: Is social media applications affecting our privacy and if so in what ways? The use of social media applications affect our privacy in many ways including the collection of personal information such as messages, photos, videos, location, credit card information, phone information, device settings and monitor habits. They also affect our privacy by distributing a huge portion of personal information with third parties and allowing hackers to hack the application due to low security measures. In addition, problems such as identity theft, and effects on early teenagers relate to the problem of privacy. The use of social media applications have changed the way we communicate with people, but it is important to understand the problems that rise from downloading these applications.

A study by Dwyer et al. [17] have found that Facebook’s users were willing to share their information due to a high level of trust. Additionally, Acquisti and Gross [3] found that users’ privacy concerns, at Facebook, only weakly influenced their membership. Therefore, privacy is not an issue to users while participating on Facebook.