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Facebook Applications and Minor Users: The New Danger of Facebook?

-- By HeatherStevenson - 11 Nov 2009

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The Perceived Problem

According to Facebook's own statistics, the social network has more than 300 Million "active users." Users upload over 2 billion photos and 14 million videos each month. Given the enormous amounts of data published on Facebook, the stories of careers ruined, relationship destroyed, and other public humiliations that have occurred when information was intentionally shared but inadvertently made accessible to the wrong person, are hardly surprising. Running a Google search for the term "Facebook privacy" links to articles such as "10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy,"which provides suggestions on how to prevent your pictures from appearing in advertisements and ensure that only the friends whom you designate use Facebook to view your photos. Still, it seems that these suggestion, as well as the aforementioned Facebook-related disasters, are only a small piece of a much more complex issue. "Privacy" in the sense of preventing a boss, parent, or other superior from seeing a photo of a Facebook-user engaged in activities that he believes only the people present will ever see, can be easily protected by refraining from posting embarrassing photos and information, and by becoming "friends" with only people with whom the user is willing to share personal information. The public conversation about Facebook and privacy has focused on the wrong problem.

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Facebook Applications and Minor Users

A significant but less obvious danger is that by partnering with various other companies, Facebook will learn so much about its users that "privacy" becomes a thing of the past. This problem is magnified by the fact that children may join Facebook, potentially creating records of their behavior and preferences over many years before they are adequately equipped to make the decision to share such information. Because users voluntarily share so much information with Facebook, and because there are some apparently convenient reasons for allowing other sites to link to Facebook, Facebook has great potential to destroy what’s left of our private lives. The most dangerous aspect of Facebook as it relates to privacy may not be Facebook per se, but the multiple information gathering applications that run on Facebook. Given that the identity of people about whom anonymous data is gathered can often be uncovered, it seems clear that a great deal more can be learned about individuals who willingly share bits and pieces of their personal lives.

Facebook could know where and when a user goes out for a run, which high school seniors schools in the NCAA are recruiting, every action that a user makes while on Amazon and where users plan to travel on spring break. As the data analysis technology behind each of the companies that links to Facebook becomes more sophisticated, the information that the companies' applications share will reveal increasingly personal information. Consider Amazon - currently the site creates recommendations by filtering and matching "each of the user's purchased and rated items into a recommendation" list (see: www.cs.umd.edu/~samir/498/Amazon-Recommendations.pdf), rather than by comparing users to other users(78). Eventually, however, it seems likely that a program will be developed that can combine the current item-to-item matching with other factors such as timing of various purchases, location of purchaser, and many other factors. In the case of Amazon, this would mean that both Amazon, Facebook and any third parties with whom either of the first two companies decided to share (or sell) information could eventually make near perfect predictions about what a user would and would not like to purchase. This is a useful marketing tool, but is also information that could potentially be used to determine a user's political affiliations, lifestyle choices, hobbies, career path, etc. As the information available from these applications increases, Facebook will own information providing an increasingly complete picture not just of what a person looks like or does (as can be found from Facebook without applications) but also of formerly "private" aspects of a person, such what a person dreamed of doing with his life when he was young, and what he actually did with his life. Currently, Facebook is allowed to access to an extensive database of information because many individual Facebook users grant it permission to access their data. This means that young users, deemed "minors," and prohibited from making many important choices for themselves, may give away their privacy before they realize what sharing certain information may ultimately mean.

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One Potential Solution

The easiest answer to the problem of the people at Facebook having access to every aspect of our private lives is the same as the easiest solution to the problem of embarrassing photos falling into the wrong hands - get off of Facebook (or at least restrict younger users). However, given that millions of users continue to post personal information on Facebook, and to allow additional applications access to their information, another solution is necessary. I would propose a legislative solution whereby Facebook is prohibited from directly providing information to or receiving information from other websites about its minor users. Users under 18 should not be able to waive this right by allowing Facebook and other companies to share their information directly (though nothing is to stop users from posting similar information directly into their profiles). By preventing the sharing of user-generated personal information between Facebook and other companies, this legislation could protect users from giving away more than they mean to - which happens when small pieces of information combine over the course of years to create a bigger, clearer picture that is greater than the sum of its parts. Of course such legislation would face challenges: Facebook might start buying some of the smaller websites with which it currently shares information, users might find build applications that circumvent Facebook controls, or the legislation might not be popular because it's seen as impeding free speech or business development. However, such legislation would at least slow the speed at which Facebook youngest users' privacy is completely eroded.

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Heather,

This is a really interesting topic. We've talked a lot in class about the privacy implications of Facebook on adults, but I never really stopped to think about the ramifications for minors--a group which is obviously much less informed and/or concerned about their privacy.

I think your legislation solution has a lot of merit, although I think that if such legislation did come about, it would be motivated not by strictly by privacy concerns (i.e. not by concern for Facebook selling information), but by child safety concerns from online predators, etc. In any case, the result would be a very good one I think.

-- EdwardBontkowski - 23 Nov 2009

Heather,

Thank you for your comments on my essay.

After reading your essay one issue that comes to mind is how you would verify age. Simply relying on the user to correctly identify his age would probably not be effective. If users were required to verify age through presentation of a government issued ID or credit card that would add an element of inconvenience for all users. That verification process itself would also require the disclosure of additional personal information by all users. I like your proposal and unfortunately I don’t have a lot to add; however, that is one question that occurred to me.

-- BrettJohnson - 24 Nov 2009