Another Facebook feature challenging the concept of privacy!
This feature has been available in the United States since December, allows users to upload photos to their accounts and have the site make suggestions for whom among a user’s friends this photo belongs (tags). And as always this new feature is automatically turned on in every ones users’ privacy settings and requires users to manually turn it off, if desired!
A debate among privacy advocates arguing that this new features should not be turned on without the user consent:
“Our concern, as usual, is that Facebook is making changes to its privacy and creating new features without giving people sufficient notice and giving them a choice as to whether they want to participate,” said Chris Conley, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
“If this new feature is as useful as Facebook claims, it should be able to stand on its own, without an automatic sign-up that changes users’ privacy settings without their permission.”Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) agreed
Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg has always defended such practices arguing that requiring users to turn on each new feature would diminish their Facebook experience. Yet in a statement released today on their blog, the company admitted they should have been more clear explaining the feature to users to avoid confusion and that they are working on “satisfy concerns” brought forward by lawmakers and privacy advocates.
Instructions for disabling the facial recognition feature:
I think users should never ever trust any social network site and always think of ways to maintain their privacy, because in my opinion the main purpose of social network sites like Facebook is to break every rule of privacy and broadcast everyone’s secrets all over the internet, Just to like what they did in college. And that is only my opinion.
