The easy answer to these questions is no and yes, respectively. Of course, as with a lot of things in life, it’s not as easy as a “yes” or “no” answer. If we really want to examine these issues, we have to take a closer look.
Does social media privacy exist?
For all intents and purposes, no it doesn’t. Privacy on social media is almost entirely nonexistent for a variety of reasons. The first and foremost of which is that nearly all social media platforms are available to the public. That is, in one sense, the point. It’s called “social” media because it’s meant to be social. Most platforms, however, do offer options to make your presence there less public. Sometimes these privacy settings are vague, cumbersome, or even not as effective as they may lead on. But, still the most prominent issue with social media privacy settings are that the defaults. Those settings are defaulted to favor your profiles being public. And a lot of users never change those settings, especially older generations.
Something that isn’t talk about as often from a social media etiquette perspective but is certainly relevant to social media privacy is the fact that user information is being sold to advertisers. When user agree to a site’s terms of service or EULA, a clause like this is probably buried in there somewhere.
Should social media privacy exist?
Again, the easy answer to this is “yes.” But, ensuring such a thing doesn’t happen on its own, as can been seen with social media’s current state of privacy, or lack there of. At least one state is looking to take ensuring privacy a step further. In the past, the California Senate had proposed laws to make social media’s settings default to private, as well as restricting was user information could be shared. The bill was passed by the Assembly in 2009, but was later vetoed by the Governor. It has been amended more than once, but as lately as 2011. Now California has a new social media privacy bill. This one focuses on restricting an employers right to demand access to social media profiles of both current and potential employees. This bill passed the California Senate unanimously. A Facebook spokesman has even gone as far to say they are not in favor of the employer tactic to demand social media passwords. This is a stark contrast from Facebook’s stance on the previous bill. Perhaps because it’s less likely to affect their own pocket books.
1:07 PM - 9-8-2012
Even though social media privacy does exist, with all of the information that has been provided about how it is only so safe or blocked to an extent, why would someone continue to post things that “they wouldn’t want their grandparents to see”? Why would someone even take that risk? And though you can change the settings so your stuff is private, what about all the stuff that wasn’t blocked before you figured it out? In the age of technology everyone seems to have a fascination with posting their every thought and action on the web- and I don’t think it’s a bad thing that their might be some negative consequences for that.
9:08 AM - 9-10-2012
I think you’re right in that the easy response to whether social media privacy exists is yes. Why else would Facebook and Twitter offer privacy settings? However, I feel there are so many loop holes on social media it’s almost impossible to get everything private. My Facebook is private, as well as my pictures, but I still get notifications sometimes when people I’ve never heard of comment on my pictures. It’s always “Joe Schmo (friends with your friend, Bob Bobby) commented on your photo. If I tag a friend in a picture, all of their friends can then see that tag and photo even if they are not friends with me. It’s a “friend of a friend of a friend” type chain I don’t know how to end! It seems nothing can be completely private, and for this reason, I think we can say there’s no such thing as an entirely private social media. It’s scary, yes. However, it’s something that seems is not going away anytime soon and adjusting to the fact that private is public will be a tough one.
10:12 AM - 9-10-2012
I do believe social media privacy “can” exist if the right measures and precautions are taken. But like you said, many of the default settings on social media sites favor no privacy.
Also, I think their is a certain idea and mindset that you have to get comfortable with if you are going to engage in the online world, especially that of social media.
You have to be comfortable with having almost no privacy in the online world. We live in a day-and-age where almost everything anyone does is public. There’s no such thing as “private accounts” anymore. If someone truly wanted to see what you were hiding in that private account, they would find a way.
8:28 PM - 9-10-2012
I agree that privacy on social media does not exist to a certain extent. Even though there have been claims that every user’s profile is saved in an archive somewhere, most of the public will not know how to reach those archives. I think that if the user takes the right steps and is cautious about their privacy settings and what they post they will be safe. If users only add their friends, watch what profile pictures they choose, and set it so no one outside of their friends can see their profile I feel like it is somewhat private. It is private enough to feel safe being yourself. Facebook users should still obviously watch what they post and be careful but they do not need to worry about small things because there is privacy to most of the public. I also agree on your second point. I think better social media privacy should exist. I think that everyones page should be set up as private and they should not be able to change that. It is protecting them and it should be something that gets looked into more.
10:28 PM - 9-10-2012
I think that social media privacy does exist to an extent, on Facebook you can set your profile to private so others can’t see your information and what you post, and the same goes for Twitter. Does this really mean your information is safe though? I don’t think so, there are ways for people to get information from your profile and see what you post though. In the end, it is an individual’s job to make sure you are not posting things you don’t want other people to see and that may affect your reputation or keep you from getting a job. So the easy answer to social media privacy is yes, but it is hard to ensure your profile and information is completely safe.
3:47 PM - 9-11-2012
I think social media privacy does exist, but only to a certain extent. As you stated, Facebook and twitter do offer privacy settings, so it seems that ones social media site could be private. There a couple faults in the system though. First, Facebook has default privacy settings that enable your entire page to be viewed by the public, and as you said, many people don’t bother to change these settings. Secondly, once they realize that their page is public and change it to private so their information is blocked, what happens to everything that was put on their page before it was private? It is all out on the internet for anyone to see. Third of all, even with the toughest privacy settings applied to your page, there are still ways to get around them. I think anything you put on the internet is out there for people to see whether you have privacy settings or not. This is why people need to be careful and watch what they post.