I am one of the millions of Facebook junkies, hopelessly addicted to reading the status updates from my friends, viewing pictures of their children and their vacations, and finding out about upcoming events. I even use Facebook to get updates on the news, with the political bent that I subscribe to. Checking Facebook, and perusing its many wondrous features, has become a comfortable routine for many of us, similar to reading the morning newspaper.
However, when Facebook recently updated the features of our home pages, many of us were outraged. How dare they change OUR Facebook! We have the right to decide how our own pages look! There have also been rumors of Facebook starting to charge for using the site.
One of the new features is that Facebook decides, based on an algorithm, which stories should be shown first on your page. What!?!? They don’t get to decide which stories I deem important! That’s an invasion of my privacy, to look into updates that I receive, and decide for me which ones I see first!
There have also been many recent stories and rumors about internet regulation, net neutrality, privacy concerns, and charging for the internet. Activists and scholars are becoming quite concerned that some of these rumors may become reality in the near future, and I don’t think that they are too far off track. I’m definitely not a conspiracy theorist, but there is mounting evidence over how much our lives, including our lives online, are monitored and regulated. Algorithms, similar to Facebook’s top stories program, are used to display advertising that is specific to your online profile. If you click the Like button on UNC’s Facebook page, advertising for other universities may pop up. I understand the need to get your message to a targeted audience, but it seems a bit Big Brother-ish to me.
There is a group of people who believe that these rumors are more than just idle. This group will be gathering at a conference in New York in October to discuss, among other topics, the creation of an alternate internet, which is being termed a “mesh network”. With the recent riots and protests in the Middle East that were fueled, in large part, by organizing on social media sites, the group is working on a mesh network that will wirelessly connect computers in close proximity, which in turn will be able to send signals to other nearby computers.
They also do not believe that “the internet has not lived up to its social potential to connect people, and instead has become overrun by marketing and promotion efforts by large corporations.” I think we all remember the time before pop-up blockers were invented. Just by visiting one page, another fifteen windows may pop up. Once systems began using blockers, advertisers found other ways to get their message out there, including ads on main pages. The authors of the article in The Chronicle also compare the internet to a bazaar, where people gathered to trade and share ideas. The internet, as it was imagined, has strayed very far from that ideal.
Perhaps we should be more concerned. Perhaps this group of scholars and activists are not that far off the mark. Perhaps we should be keeping a closer eye on things. But watch what you post online…you never know who may be watching.
The internet has become more than a way to communicate and disseminate information; it is a way to connect, develop, share, learn, and essentially waste time, especially since the expansion of social media. While I agree that Facebook and other sites have become so engrossed in our daily lives, I do not think that it is entirely the fault of the internet or those running the major sites so many of us use. Does anyone remember when Facebook required an edu email address to have an account? And that there was no such thing as notifications or a news feed. The first time a news feed showed up when I logged into Facebook, I remember all I heard for weeks was that it had become Stalkerbook, it was an invasion of our privacy, and what right does Facebook have to publish everything I'm doing on Facebook on other people's homepages? Yet, we are all still using Facebook, and I do not know anyone that deactivated their Facebook account after the change. This is just the next big step in social media and computer usage, and if the consumers weren't still going to use it, I don't think they would be changing it.
ReplyDeleteI think it's time we take ownership for our own internet usage and what we choose to post online. We, as professionals, students, and educators, need to be accountable for what we use the internet for and be conscious of the things we share. Saying something on Facebook or any other site is about the equivalent of walking into a crowded room and yelling something at the top our lungs.
Steve, I do understand your point that technology has made its way into every part of our life and how alarming is it that we can be tracked in almost every way. It seems to be the price we pay to be up to date and in touch with a fast pace world.
If Steve really didn’t like the changes to Facebook a little while ago, the proposed upcoming changes are not going to help matter. Facebook will be attempting to lay out each user’s entire life, from birth to the current date and time. If this goes through, it will look more like an ongoing yearbook than the “wall” we all know and love. I am not sure I agree or disagree with the Chronicle attitude that the Internet has strayed from the original purpose. Case in point, here we are sharing ideas on all sorts of current issues without having to actually call or see anyone else. It all depends on how you use the tools you are given. I believe Kelsi's statement "saying something on Facebook or any other site is about the equivalent of walking into a crowded room and yelling something at the top of our lungs” really hits home when we speak to accountability and responsibility regarding our opinions and actions. As we live more and more in the global community, we have to be prepared to work through and with the technology to maintain our sense of engagement with the world.
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