In the spirit of privacy rights (having just done the reading from the handouts for tomorrow's class), I would like to talk briefly about Friendster's follies last week. As reported in Gawker, friend-making, networking website Friendster made the odd move to add a feature that would greatly effect its users without any warning: the made it possible for everyone to see who has been looking at them.
When I heard about this, I honestly didn't care about who had looked at my profile, nor do I really remember if I was peeping around anywhere weird in the last month--I remember using it to do some research for a story I was writing, but have no idea where my cyber-travels brought me. But I was so angry that they would add the feature, and make it retroactive. I mean, don't they realize how many people are looking at secret crushes and their exes and probably alot of other people that they might be ambarrassed about? When your privacy is taken away in such a basic (though perhaps not life-altering) way, it kind of puts in perspective how easily technology can sell you out, whatever the motive.
Ryan McConnell @ October 5, 2005 - 10:09pm
I saw that too -- it seems like a huge invasion of privacy, especially from b/c they didn't even inform their users that it would go into effect. Maybe they were intending on rejuvenating their membership with the new feature, but it certainly had the opposite effect for me -- I don't think I'll feel as free to look around the site if I know that others could track my every move. At the very least, they should have informed everyone about the changes in advance and let them opt-out without any consequences. I'll be surprised if a few articles aren't written about this and Friendster doesn't make a public apology.
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