Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellagirl) and I were interviewed by our schools newspaper on this issue today. Basically, we agreed there is nothing new being displayed and every facebook user has already chose to show this information. I think the biggest issue is the the information is now being shown in a more prominent place. This is a reaction though, all of the information could have been found easily before. Their privacy is an illusion. M On 9/6/06, Ledbetter, Andrew Michael <aledbett@ku.edu> wrote:
Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the recent changes at facebook and subsequent user response:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71739-0.html?tw=rss.technology
Briefly, facebook recently enabled "news feeds" which allow anyone's friends to immediately see changes to profiles, friendship networks, etc., a feature which cannot be deactivated. In response, many users have formed protest groups, one of which has approximately half a million members (and there are thousands of other protest groups)---the users claim the changes are "stalker-ish". Media is framing as a tension between the transparency of social networking sites and desire for privacy.
Andrew M. Ledbetter Doctoral Candidate Department of Communication Studies University of Kansas
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