Facebook Update: I'm Naked (Wait That's Supposed To Be Private)

Is society aware of what Facebook has done to “privacy,” Danah Boyd would argue that many are completely unaware of the implications we are getting ourselves into when opting in to these “cool,” websites. Many are uneducated, and getting themselves into a lot more than what they bargained for in the end. Is privacy still alive, or has the definition of privacy changed since Facebook, Myspace and other social networking sites have popped up online in the last 10 or so years?
An excerpt from Boyd’s “Facebook Privacy Settings: Who Cares? Reads:
“When Facebook introduced new options for sharing content, the default was to share broadly. For example, when the site introduced a setting that allowed users to choose whether or not their basic profile content would be shared with search engines, the default was yes, meaning that people’s profile content would come up whenever someone searched for their name on Google, regardless of whether or not the person searching was logged into Facebook. As with many other changes made by Facebook, when Facebook chose to make the content available to search engines, it simply introduced a new setting: “public search” and enabled sharing to search engines by default. Default settings matter, because research has shown that most people rarely change them (Mackay, 1991)”.

This shows just how tricky the people at Facebook are and how socially aware people must be when new options are integrated into their Facebook accounts, because many do not take the time to go in and change these settings, or even read the long drawn out disclaimers that pop-up each time a new privacy issue goes into effect of Facebook. According to Boyd’s research only 26% of current Facebook users have changed their privacy settings 4 or more times throughout all of the changes Facebook has made.
However, this is not really the issue, what is, is what used to be considered taboo and strange, such as knowing where people are, seeing random pictures of them drinking or even knowing the minute they get engaged is now public knowledge because of Facebook. No longer do we have any privacy, if we choose to post these pits and pieces of information onto the Internet. Instead, all we have to do is click someone’s profile and we can see them at the most recent party bonging a beer. This used to only be known by those who were in attendance, however now we are able to see all of this information at the click of a mouse.
What once used to be considered sacred and private, seems to no longer matter to anyone, or at least the majority of the users of Facebook. What we as society used to see as unacceptable and taboo, is no just common knowledge that everyone seems like the have the right to know. If you do not keep your profile updated, people get upset with you, because they are unable to know what is going on in your life. It is scary to think what some of the images and information we post on Facebook now, could be used for in the future. Will it cost us jobs, promotions, Presidential nominations? It just may, but “privacy,” as we know it has changed and things seem like they are only going to get more personal and less private as new social networks begin to appear.