Talk:Students
"Facebook Stalking": Who's Fault Is It?
"Facebook stalking" has become a new, socially acceptable norm. Just to clarify, I'm referring to looking at someone's wall, pictures, comments and know what is going on in someone's social media life without them knowing you were on their profile. When Facebook first started becoming popular, there were concerns raised about privacy with how open and public all the information was set as. Pictures in an album were uploaded and the default settings were set as public so that anyone can see without being your friend.
Viewing pictures, status's, friend requests are all attributes that have been adjusted to by Facebook users, however its frequent updates have pushed the limits to privacy. Now, for uploading albums, Facebook uses face recognition to tag photos for you; for groups and messages, informs you of who has seen your post and what time they saw the message at; and for Facebook status's, adds the current town and state of where the status is posted from. The ethics of each of these attributes can be questioned, and some argue that these settings can simply be turned off but the issue here is that all of these settings are defaulted on. If users use their mobile devices to update their statuses, they could be unaware that the location of their post is being spread to their Facebook audience.
I think it is unethical for Facebook to release information about posts, status's without the consent of the user. There are certain agreements that the user makes when signing up for Facebook, but who is to say that users are consenting each individual change that Facebook updates? Tavani talks about a case that happened where a girl, Amy Boyer was mudered by a cyberstalker who got information from her profile. She may have intended for her status to be viewed by her friends and family but instead was defaulted to have her information viewed by the public, or friends of friends. Needless to say there were many other factors that aren't being accounted for, but this is offering one perspective on the matter. Facebook is supposed to be a social site to keep in contact with friends, family, and acquaintances; share news or information but people almost never intend to post things to the public for strangers.
