Last week I read Axels blog about the problems he has with facebook as a social network. Axels main issue was the flattened structure of facebooks social relationships into simple yes/no answers to friend requests. He argues that this flat structure undermines how we organise and distinguish between social ties in real life. At the time I thought he had a fair point but i didn't think too much about it. But now things have gone too far! I logged onto my facebook account today to discover a friend request from my landlord who also happens to be my roommate/best friend's mother. Personally i see it as a gross invasion of my privacy. There are certain things that certain people just shouldn't know about. First of all as my best mates mother I don't want her knowing what i get up too. I don't want her to see all those drunken photos i have been tagged in recently. I don't want her to know who my friends are, where i have been, who and what has been written on my wall. She doesn't need to know! Secondly, as my landlord i most certainly don't want her to know! For her to discover all those drunken photos from house parties is sure to send me packing.
I wonder what my roommate thinks of this. That is her mother! Would you want your mother as a friend on facebook? I would probably initially laugh in her face and suggest helping make her profile look somewhat hip and cool... as hip and cool as a 40yr old mother of 3 can be. But after a week or two when she discovers who all your friends are and the shenanigans they get up to things might not be so hilarious.
I never used to think about the consequences of pressing 'accept friend request'. I just see it as a polite thing to do when someone asks you to be their friend. However, i am now seriously reconsidering my stance on being a friendly person. My boss at work recently added me on facebook. What a mistake that was to accept. I now find it incredibly awkward when I call up on Monday for my shifts and he says "so why is Emma feeling over the moon today?" or "ooh I see you had a big weekend (wink wink)".
I discovered last week that my cousin worked up the courage to clean out her facebook. She was fed up with having so many people on it that she didn't consider, or want, to be apart of her circle of friends. The only people on her facebook now are a small collection of people who she loves and trusts to know about her business. Eliminating all those people out of her network was a pretty brave thing to do! But she should never have had to do it. Facebook needs to get smarter. My cousin has now lost contact with a whole range of people that probably would have been handy acquaintances in years to come.
I'm a firm believer in keeping sections of your social life separate. Certain aspects of my character are portrayed to different sets of friends. I don't like it when my boss knows i like Indie rock music and partying at Rics and I don't like it when my new ultra cool musician friend knows I work at a lame research company. I want to be able to show people who I am when I want and how I want. I don't want facebook to do it for me in a completely impersonal and static way. I know I have the choice to either accept or reject a friend request but I don't think the problem is solved that simply. I would be quite happy for my boss to be my friend on facebook or my mates mother if there was some way for me to decide how much of me I want share with them. We're living in an age of produsers. Give me some control facebook! I want to be able to shape my online communities. Decide who is in them and what I share with them. Is that too much to ask?
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9 comments:
That is such an interesting idea! I've never really given it much thought as I really haven’t had any friend requests that would make me uncomfortable if my personal business was revealed to them. However, the most frustrating part I find about Facebook is the idea that others (who are not your friends) can view to an extent what you do (via your relations with their friends). I find this to be an invasion of your own information and it really shouldn’t be able to be seen by those who you do not choose. You wouldn’t have this problem with Myspace.
It’s an odd concept that as an online community we allegedly have all this ‘control’ over online forums and media, yet we do not yet possess the ability to choose what and when we display different parts of ourselves to online friends. I wonder if this is a deliberate attempt to lessen our control over our online communities, or if it is a simple design flaw?
I liked your comment about the rules of online etiquette – accepting people is a polite nod of recognition in most cases. I too have been accepting people who are not really friends, but not distanced enough for me to decline and all it has done is bombarded me with a whole heap of friends that I don’t need nor want. I think it may be time for a facebook clean-up ala your cousin.
First off, I can completely understand what you’re getting at. I had a friend request from my “ex-best friend” from high school sitting in my inbox for weeks before I finally got up the courage to decline it. We weren’t friends in real life, and I didn’t want to be friends on Facebook.
I had read Axel’s blog that you had linked not too long before I read your post. While it was extremely relevant to your blog, and probably spawned this whole idea, it seemed to highlight your very different writing style. Compared to Axel’s blog, yours had casual overtones, until the end where you starting mentioning academic things like “produsage”. A more consistent writing style would make your blogs flow better.
An easy to way change the style more towards a blog would be to include a few more hyperlinks, especially if the back up your statements. For example, in Axel’s blog about Facebook, he links to Jean Burgess’ blog (http://creativitymachine.net/2008/02/05/why-im-deleting-my-facebook-account/), which would have been very useful for you, especially because it contains the quote “I ended up with kind of too many friends from too many different spheres of my existence”. Having other people opinions validates your statements and gives them credibility.
Facebook certainly has taken over the lives of a number of Gen Yers. I also agree that there is such a thing has having too many friends, especially with the addition of "people you might know" you find yourself reunited with your kindergarten sweetheart. I believe that the creators of Facebook see this as an advantage and they are helping you to reconnect with people in your past because for some reason writing a private message on Facebook seems a whole lot better than writing an email (let alone a letter).
In regards to you wanting some friends to see specific sections of your profile, when you select a friend you are given the option of allowing them to see your full profile or just a limited profile. If you have already accepted them as a friend then decide you don't want your landlord to find out about the giant alpaca you're keeping in her home, go to privacy (in the top right hand corner)and you can change and customise who can see parts of your profile.
So if you are extremely passionate about keeping some things private from others then there is a way... Facebook can help.
I found this blog entry really interesting! I had only skimmed over Axel’s blog entry on Facebook but after I read your entry, I took the effort to read it and the content that he had linked to as well. I do like that you have expanded on the concepts that Axel has discussed and related them to experiences in your own life, though I think we have to make our blog entries in a more academic tone. From my understanding, the main point of this blog assignment is to start of with unit content and expand on points that interest you, something that I feel you have done quite effectively.
It was interesting to read that your boss wanted to add you as a friend on Facebook. I read a newspaper article about a month or so ago (Unfortunately, I can’t find it online) but it was suggesting that the content that you have online (for example Facebook) should be made friends only because more and more future employers are searching for information about you. You could have also gone in the direction of social networking safety in general but there are so many avenues to take on a topic like this.
As for the point on friend lists on Facebook, I agree with both you and Axel about the adding friends. If I wasn’t friends with someone in real life, why the hell would I want to be friends with them on Facebook? I also just noticed on Facebook that they have the option to create your own friend lists so you can group your ‘Acquaintances’ from your ‘Facebook Stalkers’. I’m not sure if this is new or not but it doesn’t seem to do much except help you view your friends in lists rather than giving the option to restrict the accessibility to your profile page. Once again, great blog – I have been inspired to seriously consider jumping off the Facebook bandwagon.
Now for your 5th comment! In response to your blog "Get smarter Facebook! You're driving me mad." I would like to congratulate you for your interpretation of Snurbs blog. You have offered a comprehensive look into problems associated with Facebook and reflectively analysed your own personal experience.
It is unfortunate that we don't have the ability to refuse a 'friend' request because it may be 'rude' or hurt someone’s feelings. Honestly, if you don't have to see the person you've rejected regularly, it's not a problem! With regards to the Landlord issue, just don't add her; I don't think she'll take it personally. Landlords, bosses, xboyfriends etc. have no business asking to be added to your network of 'friends', I personally, have no interest in knowing what they're doing, do you? Everyone knows the old saying, 'Curiosity killed the cat!' Snurb stated that "Facebook is nothing more than a poor caricature of what social networking can be and do." It is clear that there has been no defining line distinguishing between every Tom, Dick and Harry within this Social Networking community.
My experience of Facebook hasn't been all that bad, I have made contact with so many people from my past, school chums, work mates, etc. Like msn and yahoo, Facebook has just added new instant messaging software. The previous comment mentioned that they noticed a recent installment to Facebook, enabling the user to categorise 'friends'. Improvements are beginning to be made, hopefully it continues!
From personal experience I know that prospective employers are requesting that their prospective employees submit their own myspace page. Or in fact, if you email them your resume, it is likely that they will attempt to add you as a friend on social networking sites. Just like the phonebook, you can hide your identity through search engines such as google, but it isn't very hard to simply "Search by Email" on these sties, exposing you to anyone with your email.
Emma, I think you have raised, as an extension of Axel's blog, a very interesting and relevant point as many of us don't realize the exposure such sites as Myspace and Facebook can broadcast your personal lives to people that don't really or shouldn't need to know.
I find this blog to be rather interesting, as it makes me think of all the issues you raised and whether they concern to me and my profile, of which I have one on both Facebook and MySpace. I don’t think people really consider the issues of privacy when accepting or rejecting a friend until something like your situation arises. I do agree that with today’s technology more options with one’s privacy of their online profiles should be given to users. Users should be able to decide what sections of their profile, other users/accepted friends can view. I know some of my friends do think twice about who they are adding or rejecting as friends to their online profiles and often if someone they don’t know is sending a friend request they reject the request as they don’t what this random person seeing their personal information. However, as the use of technology is now a major part of everyday life, especially in communicating with other, it makes sense that sites like Facebook and MySpace can be used for meeting new people. But due to the lack of control over user profiles and what is shown often people don’t want to add new people because they don’t want them seeing certain parts of their profile. If there was some way of only showing them the part you wanted them to see when you first meet them, I think meeting people online would become easier and safer. If the friendship develops then later on down the track the user should be able to change/adjust what sections the friend can see accordingly.
I could not agree more with your request for greater control of Facebook profiles. In the second half of last year, after weeks of irritating ‘your friend wants you to join Facebook’ emails, I created myself an account to see what all the fuss was about. It did not take long for friendships to be made and for embarrassing photos to appear. Like many others, I use this account to keep in contact with overseas relatives and friends. However it becomes awkward when you try and portray yourself in a positive light despite photos of you, in frankly a less than healthy state, following your post. Consequently I completely agree that a little more control on facebook could go a long way!
Interestingly, I read recently in Time magazine that Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook.com, agreed to allow users to adjust his original settings of the site (Kirkpatrick, 2007, online), through individual programming (Grossman, 2008, online). In previous times, when users have attempted to alter a site and still use the trademark name, court cases have ensued. This is demonstrated through Yahoo’s 1996 case against a group of French teens who attempted to better its literature search engine (Yahoo!, 2008, online). Consequently, someone endeavouring to become the next Bill Gates might create a tool which allows Facebook users to control their own ‘online communities’ more successfully. Either way, your blog has brought about some interesting ideas!
References
Gorssman, L. 2008. Facebook: the future. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,00.html (accessed May 1, 2008).
Kirkpatrick, D. 2007. Facebook’s new face. http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24 /fastforward_facebook.fortune/ (accessed April 31, 2008).
Yahoo! Developer Network. 2008. http://developer.yahoo.com/security/history (accessed April 31, 2008).
When I first got hooked on Facebook, back at the end of 2006, I was addicted to the fact that YES I was getting back in touch with people who I had not seen for years. Over the last few months though I too am getting friend requests from people who I'm sure don't even know me, they know of me. A friend through a friend type scenario.
Facebook has definetly broken down the barriers so much so that you can virtually HUNT and yes I mean HUNT anyone down and add them as a friend. It has gotten to the point where I am rejecting people left, right and centre because I do not need anymore friend facebook and like you do not wish for alot of those people knowing what I am doing.
I feel that the friendships I have acquired through the presence of Facebook have been forced upon me by the software itself, rather than me having control over who can see and access my profile. Sure their are privacy settings to restrict what people can see, but if my memory serves me correct - the ability to do so was implemented after the conception of Facebook, when the creator decided to give some of the creative control over to the users (Kirkpatrick, 2007).
Hopefully, as users continually push the evolution of technology we will push Facebook into enabling us to decide our online communities.
References
Kirkpatrick, D. 2007. Facebook’s new face. (accessed May 13, 2008).http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24 /fastforward_facebook.fortune/
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