The Facebook tattoo

Photos on Facebook are no different to tattoos. Like a tattoo, a Facebook photo is there to be shown off forever to all and sundry.

The irony is, however, that while most people would be very cautious about having a tattoo indelibly painted on their body, very few would feel threatened by having photos of themselves displayed on Facebook.

It has in fact become increasingly common practice for Facebook users to upload photos of their friends on Facebook without their friends’ permission. This means that, worse than tattoos, very often, we do not choose our Facebook photos because they are uploaded by people other than those shown in the photos, and consequently we do not even have the faculty to remove them.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Facebook user or not. One day you could log on to this giant social networking site and find at least a dozen photos of yourself, some of which you may not be particularly fond of, floating in the worldwide web. Unrestricted, these photos have a viewership potential of more than 500 million users; with some settings such as “friends of friends”, viewership still runs in the tens of thousands.

European regulators have already contacted Facebook to warn them they are not abiding by European privacy law. The way the service is organised at the moment, Facebook simply allows anyone who wants to use this service to say they have the consent of their friends or acquaintances. In an issue in The Economic Times last March, the Swiss data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thuer was quoted as saying that in the future, “Facebook could be required to contact people whose information has been posted online and ask them whether they agree to its being stored there”.

Given that Facebook has not yet created options whereby people can control what pictures of themselves are put up, we should all start properly educating ourselves and the public at large on the ethics of using Facebook. The fact is that whatever is uploaded on Facebook is there potentially and permanently for anyone to see, with the consequence that an individual’s privacy and right to privacy are put in jeopardy – this should always be borne in mind by Facebook users. Before uploading their friends’ private life on Facebook, users should always seek their friends’ consent.

Without having any chance of removing them, Facebook photos can become an everlasting indelible mark on your privacy and on your life history. One sound piece of advice would be to consider any photos uploaded on Facebook as public and as appropriate to be seen whatever the circumstances in one’s life could be.

In an age when data protection is becoming increasingly important, when an individual has a claim over what information about himself is stored, and a right to know how, where and for how long it is being stored, Facebook culture is paradoxically eroding this right to data protection and in addition, the right to privacy.

Since the end of Facebook is nowhere in sight, we ought to learn how to properly use Facebook and other social networking sites in a responsible way, keeping in mind that Facebook photos are like tattoos: once uploaded, they are there to stay and for everyone to see.