Anyone who has accessed the Internet has an idea of what Facebook is and how it works, and probably have an active profile too.
I wanted to point out some of the thoughts I had about how the community evolves as far as my little friend list concerns, assuming that the way my friends use Facebook it's representative of the way most of users act.
I believe that the basic idea behind this social network is really interesting, and that it is potentially a very useful instrument in order to improve our way of relating and spreading news and informations.
But are people aware of this? Tough question.
That's a problem which can be easily spotted talking about any instrument. An instrument is useful if you know how to use it, otherwise it's just an object without any purpose, or even dangerous.
The first controversial thing that comes to my mind it's the number of friends in our friend lists. Do we really need to share what we think with every person we had known (or not, in many cases) in our life?
The answer to a person who hasn't got a Facebook profile looks clear enough: no. Yet we find looking to some statistics that the average user has 130 friends, and (this according to my personal experience) barely keeps in touch with one third of them.
The reason behind this fact can be found in what the professionals call "hidden technology influence". The way users interact with digital applications it is strongly influenced by the interface, meaning with interface all the actions that a platform lets the user do.
What I mean by saying this is that accepting a friend request, or sending one is so easy and appears fundamental in order to use the site that we forget completely that accepting a friend request means to expose all our thoughts, photos and private stuff. Besides everyone believes that having a large number of friends is good, also looking to his friends' lists, and in certain cases does not even care if he knows the person he is giving access to his profile in order to increase his friend number.
What makes this more dangerous is the lack of knowledge about privacy settings. Imagine someone who has a lot of friends: if he doesn't put some limitations on the people who can access his profile anyone can see his private things, and in particular his friends' friends, for example through a friend's photo where he is tagged.
It is easy to change privacy settings, just give a look into your account settings. That would be a great beginning to improve your Facebook experience and to protect your privacy! And we all should consider "cleaning" a bit our friends lists, because we are aware of the dangers in revealing private informations.
I would like to say more but this article is getting a bit too long, so stay tuned for more on this blog!
Andrea
I believe that the basic idea behind this social network is really interesting, and that it is potentially a very useful instrument in order to improve our way of relating and spreading news and informations.
But are people aware of this? Tough question.
That's a problem which can be easily spotted talking about any instrument. An instrument is useful if you know how to use it, otherwise it's just an object without any purpose, or even dangerous.
The first controversial thing that comes to my mind it's the number of friends in our friend lists. Do we really need to share what we think with every person we had known (or not, in many cases) in our life?
The answer to a person who hasn't got a Facebook profile looks clear enough: no. Yet we find looking to some statistics that the average user has 130 friends, and (this according to my personal experience) barely keeps in touch with one third of them.
The reason behind this fact can be found in what the professionals call "hidden technology influence". The way users interact with digital applications it is strongly influenced by the interface, meaning with interface all the actions that a platform lets the user do.
What I mean by saying this is that accepting a friend request, or sending one is so easy and appears fundamental in order to use the site that we forget completely that accepting a friend request means to expose all our thoughts, photos and private stuff. Besides everyone believes that having a large number of friends is good, also looking to his friends' lists, and in certain cases does not even care if he knows the person he is giving access to his profile in order to increase his friend number.
What makes this more dangerous is the lack of knowledge about privacy settings. Imagine someone who has a lot of friends: if he doesn't put some limitations on the people who can access his profile anyone can see his private things, and in particular his friends' friends, for example through a friend's photo where he is tagged.
It is easy to change privacy settings, just give a look into your account settings. That would be a great beginning to improve your Facebook experience and to protect your privacy! And we all should consider "cleaning" a bit our friends lists, because we are aware of the dangers in revealing private informations.
I would like to say more but this article is getting a bit too long, so stay tuned for more on this blog!
Andrea
I'm glad to be the first!
ReplyDeleteThe big one i can say after reading is.. I heard this before LIVE! LOL
After all, nice job, i always appreciate everything that concerns self-expression.
I will stay tuned!
The african bomber
Thank you very much! I appreciate any kind of (constructive) comment!
ReplyDeleteI have many topics I want to cover, so just wait for more :)