Time Magazine's Cover Story--Facebook and Privacy

What’s your definition of privacy? According to the recent issue of Time magazine (dated May 31, 2010), Facebook is “redefining privacy” for the rest of us. Facebook (FB) has previously faced accusations of violating privacy through its open sharing of user information. In fact, according to the Time article by Dan Fletcher, FB faces new accusations from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which filed a complaint with the FCC earlier this month in regards to the mega-social networking site’s “frequent policy changes and tendency to design privacy controls that are, if not deceptive, less than intuitive” (p.34). FB’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg is quoted in the Time article as saying “What people want isn’t complete privacy…It’s that they want control over what they share and what they don’t.” Hmmm….It seems that if FB is defining privacy for us, then perhaps we’ve already lost part of our right to privacy.

So I’ll ask you again: What’s YOUR definition of privacy? How much do you share on FB or other social networking sites? How much is too much, and is privacy an objective or subjective aspect?

Fletcher, D. (2010). Facebook: Friends without borders. Time, 175(21), 32-38.