Use of social networking sites is always a controversial and hot discussion recently. Mr. Rory Cellan – Jones, created his own blog in BBC news’ homepage of the UK, has raised an argument of who could topple Facebook, a social networking site. His argument mainly focused on the massive global use of Facebook while although new social networking sites are being constructed and introduced to the public, they seems still cannot act as its threats. The whole article written didn’t raised any concern related to our course though, but this leads us to do some hard thinking of different aspects like building up identities among friends and privacy concern, feasibility of cyberstalking or cybercrime and concern on online regulations in online communities.
Firstly, Boyd has suggested that teens enjoy much in cyberspace to construct their social life through social networks like Facebook, the blogger mentioned. Not only teens, adults also manage how to present themselves in the platform of social networks to others. This is the matter of impression management which is aimed at constructing the online profile of one self. However, although they thought that they are only sharing stuffs among friends, and this seems a really private place for one self to communicate with friends, it is argued that information shared on sites are actually public – shared and authorized to the sites enabling them to share your stuffs to those you are not knowing. This is to say, there are some invisible audiences always linked with the sites which may affect the building up of identities so to destruct one’s management in networked public. So, so – called ‘privacy’ is no longer private but being exposed to the public.
On the other hand, social networks have enhanced an online community for users which give platforms to some of them to bully or even harass others. In particularly focusing on Facebook, although it requires user to provide real information to the database and aims at providing a virtual and friendly environment to enhance friendship or other relationships, it fails to prove the authentication of all of the Facebook users. As mentioned in readings of week 10 which is a case study of LamdaMOO, failure of authentication in Facebook cannot remove the threat of somebody like Mr. Bungle. Yes, you may say there is a function called ‘Report this person’ but in the case of LamdaMOO, Mr. Bungle can again go back to the community with another identity called Dr. Jest so there is no way to prevent this kind of persons eventually to the case.
Besides, LamdaMOO is a community that has no regulations set by the designer but rather organized in a more democratic way like holding poll and voting by users. This is not the case in Facebook particularly which has set tones of regulations where users always neglected as they only have to tick the box ‘agree’ or allow a request for permission. Things people posted on the site would be automatically authorized to Facebook to have other access on it like sharing to someone you don’t know. So, are your updates on your profile still private to your friends? This is obviously not the case. They are all publicly shared but seem to be privately shared among friends. The writer has introduced a site called Diaspora where users maintain their ownership to their own stuffs shared. However, this cannot successfully fight down Facebook of its global massive common use as people have developed their online community in Facebook as a root that it is really difficult to move to other sites. The relationship between users and Facebook is like mutualism that users develop their niche among their friends while Facebook holds the authorization of all databases as exchange.
In this case, is there still freedom and privacy in this virtual network? Is it still private? The concept of this is being blurred as the universality of social network is being a trend. Dependence on social network is also more and more serious either. The probability of people being cyborgs is also increased.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2011/02/the_future_of_friends_-_who_ca.html
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