Monday, 6th July 2009

Is Facebook another Big Brother?

Karl Consiglio, Paceville

There are certain violations of human rights that Facebook does not seem to take into account, whether you use Facebook or not.

You might get tagged in a photo you don't like, or would not like certain people to see. Untagging yourself will only have the photo removed from your profile page, but not from that of the person who uploaded it, so you know well enough that that photo is still out there.

This is all the more unfair for those people who don't even use Facebook. Most of these individuals won't even know about certain pictures of themselves online, which maybe don't necessarily do them any favour, maybe quite the opposite. If you are not on Facebook you will not even receive anything, via e-mail, to let you know about any uploaded pictures with yourself in them, not even if you have been tagged.

Facebook, one can say, is pretty much the feared Big Brother always watching, like some kind of totalitarian world state in the making, only more subtly. Via all the fun on Facebook's surface, this Big Brother totalitarian state manages to complete itself without imposing itself, but by the people's own making.

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Article © Allied Newspapers Ltd., printed on Sunday, November 22, 2009. This article is for personal use only, and should not be distributed.

Comments

Steven Grech (on 6/7/09)

Facebook is not another big brother - it's a social network prone to social "errors".

An example of this is the recent Facebook Farce concerning one of Britain's top spies:
http://mashable.com/2009/07/05/facebook-british-spy/

R. Zammit (on 6/7/09)

Similar irregular behaviour, with or without original or digitally edited photos, can be carried out over the internet anyway, that is with or without Facebook. So why blame it on Facebook, It’s the lack of responsibility on some users’ part, that is the culprit.

steve busuttil (on 6/7/09)

The positives far outweight the negatives on Facebook!

M. Bugeja (on 6/7/09)

Facebook isn't the party that's uploading pictures with photos of you - its the facebook user that uploads the picture that is doing all the work. While there are certain arguments that say that facebook infringes an individual's privacy, on the other hand, its really the facebook user that is uploading media to the site, with, or without the consent of those who are in the picture/video.

But I wouldn't go as far to say that facebook violates human rights. Data protection, yes, to a limited degree. But basic human rights are those such as the right to life, the right for freedom of speech, the freedom to practice your religious beliefs, etc. There is that difference.

Joseph Sciberras (on 6/7/09)

I don't think the issue is Facebook at all, but rather the lack of consideration of some people who take photos and then display them publicly without any thought. People abuse all kinds of things but that does not make the thing itself intinsically bad. After all we did not ban knives simply because they are used to commit murders.
Comparing Facebook to Big Brother is a rather huge exaggaration. In the novel "1984" no one could turn off Big Brother, you can however choose not to have Facebook.