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social media

Identifying the Error

May 26, 2010 14:46:40.000

It's easy to blame Facebook for a lack of sufficient privacy controls, as Bruce Nussbaum's students apparently do - but seriously - if you post lurid details about yourself on a website you don't control, you shouldn't be shocked when other people find out:

Then Gen Y grew up and their culture and needs changed. My senior students started looking for jobs and watched, horrified, as corporations went on their Facebook pages to check them out. What was once a private, gated community of trusted friends became an increasingly open, public commons of curious strangers. The few, original, loose tools of network control on Facebook no longer proved sufficient. The Gen Yers wanted better, more precise privacy controls that allowed them to secure their existing private social lives and separate them from their new public working lives.

To some extent, that's like keeping a highly personal diary, and then storing it on your front porch. Sure, the porch is your property - but it's not exactly private. I sure don't have any illusions about how private something I put on Facebook (or any site I don't control) is - I run with a default assumption that "anyone can see it".

Acting otherwise is simply naive. Nussbaum's students have been smacked by reality. They may not like it, but they need to get used to it.

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posted by James Robertson

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