Chris M Johnson

Facebook is getting a lot of media attention surrounding their recent privacy policy changes. I may be one of the few, but I think these changes are great news. Maybe not the best decision for Facebook, but great news for society.

As a society, we’ve started to grow lax in how we value privacy and anonymity. Facebook (and other sites like it) have gotten us to open up like generations past could never imagine. The upcoming generation have grown up on Facebook. Every life lesson we all learned the hard way, they now have a record of somewhere on the internet. Granted, for a social network to succeed this information can prove vital, but I find it amazing how little people pay attention to what they are releasing. After all, regardless of a specific site’s privacy policy, you are putting information out on the internet. A system with a memory like no other. A definitive sense of permanence that gets lost in the day-to-day fluidity of the internet.

I think it is about time people snapped out of their constant need to publish details of their lives online. Take a step back and think first if you really want the whole world to know that. Sites may change their policies, they might have security bugs or break-ins or any number of things in and out of their control. But at the end of the day, information on the internet is public and permanent.

Hopefully, Facebook’s changes can provide just that wake up call. More likely though is that Facebook will make some concessions to appease the masses and everyone will go back to living life on the internet.