On Facebook, Biggest Threat to Your Private Data May Be You. (Text Response)

In this article author Jacquielynn Floyd pulls her audience in with a hooking attention getter, “Don’t friend me! I mean it.” She argues that all the hysteria and hand-writing over privacy could readily be sidestepped by not posting private information on the Internet. It grabbed bloggers attention when they noticed a change in the micro-print of Facebook’s terms of service stating, “Facebook owns you!.” She claims you are your own front line of defense in maintaining your privacy. She backs it up with several warrants noting that we shouldn’t share what we wore today, how we feel, or what time we need to be at the dentist so that all of our friends can sift through the information for what’s relevant and their friends can do the same to them. She also notes that we should have enough sense not to add a “friend,” somebody we haven’t seen in twenty years and we didn’t really know that well in the first place. All this evidence answers the question, what business do we have getting all huffy over Facebook’s terms of service when we chose to put all of our personal information out on the web for everyone to see? This addiction to a temporary rush of joy that we all experience when we talk about ourselves publicly is making our ability to distinguish between our public and our private selves less and less likely. She also asks the question, how can we expect somebody we don’t know to safe guard our privacy if we think so little of it ourselves?  She concludes with the statement “Facebook has obligations to its users but long before that, users have obligations to themselves.” I think this article is very well written and provides a good argument with warrants and evidence that back up her claim. Her audience includes millions of people ranging from young to the old and from one race to the other. Having solid evidence like the ones presented in this article helps us agree with the argument that we have loss sense of what information should remain private and what should be seen publicly.