PressEthic

In 2004, college students across the country quickly became addicted to a new social networking site, eagerly anticipating the addition of their college to the exclusive network of Facebook.com. With the advent of sites like MySpace and Friendster, privacy has become a thing of the past, and most users seem to like it that way. However, Facebook has privacy settings to limit how much of your information is displayed and to whom. Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of the site, recently posted an “open letter” to all users of Facebook that stayed up on the homepage of the site for several days in reaction to new tools that the site recently made available: “Mini Feed” and “News Feed.” These two new features update users constantly on other users Facebook activity. The main problem people had with these feeds was that they felt it was too “stalker-esque”—in short, a phrase we thought was long gone—Too Much Information! Zuckerberg apologized, explaining,

"When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with.”

He also addresses the strong negative user reaction to the overflow of information from Mini Feed and News Feed:

“Somehow we missed this point with News Feed and Mini-Feed and we didn’t build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it. But apologizing isn’t enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends’ News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.”

The principles behind Zuckerberg’s explanation and apology, as well as his effort to remedy user dissatisfaction, boil down to his closing remarks:

"About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that’s what I believe in – helping people share information with the people they want to share it with.”

So the point, you might ask? The exclusivity of Facebook still remains, in theory, because users have the opportunity to restrict people from viewing their photos, wall, comments, profile, and so on, and have the choice of whether to allow only friends to see this information or only people in certain networks. As I said—in theory.

However, more and more I have been hearing that employers, when faced with a potential new hire, will investigate their background, not only through conventional means of Google and even MySpace, but will enlist a member in their office with the appropriate alumni email address to log on to Facebook so that the employer can assess that new hire’s profile. Many students open their profile up to all students in their college, especially when they are looking to connect with new friends with similar interests in their class at a big university.

With an email address from the same college, that employer can view the new hire’s relationship status, interests, groups, tagged photos, photo albums, wall posts, and lots more. Students, thinking they are safe from the evil eye of “Big Brother,” commonly post harmless photos of themselves holding a beer, or join a group in good fun who’s name celebrates the popularity of the local college bar. As an 18-22 year old, it is not abnormal to assume that one’s wall post might contain reference to a hook-up, an embarrassing incident, or simply an immature joke.

What right do these employers have to infringe on our privacy? It is completely unethical for those employers to “hack in” to Facebook in order to gain information about our personal and private lives. Employers do not interview our friends, family members, and classmates in order to gauge our potential performance in a position—why, then, should Facebook be fair game? Students join assuming, perhaps overly optimistically, that since their network is only for their college or their friends, those are the only people who will enjoy access to their private information, because they CHOOSE to reveal it to them. That is exactly what Zuckerberg focused on—giving people the choice to reveal personal and private information “with the people they want to share it with.”

NYU’s Jules Martin, Vice President for Public Safety and Marc Wais, Vice President for Student Affairs, wrote in a memo to NYU students,

“The Wasserman Center for Career Development has reports from students that that some employers have examined personal profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and similar social networking sites. In some cases, the information they obtained has diminished students’ prospects of securing jobs they were pursuing.”

The NYU Wasserman Center for Career Development also warns students on it's website,

“We are aware that many of you are using on-line directories and social networks. While we understand the value of these types of virtual communities, we would like to remind you that just as your friends are able to search for your profiles, so are employers, and others who might be in a position to influence your job search. We recommend that you do not put anything in your profile that you would not want these people to read or see. We further recommend that you use 'blockers' to prevent unwanted comments to be posted to your site. Check frequently and remove any inappropriate comments or photos on your site.”

Should students feel obligated to censor themselves from being themselves on their profiles and having fun interacting with their fellow college students, just because some employers might be unethical enough to sneak into the system and use students’ profiles against them? Is a picture of a 22-year-old guy with a beer in his hand reason enough to turn down that guy for a job? It’s foreseeable that if an employer had two Facebook profiles side-by-side, one girl with a few partying pictures or references, and the other without, the employer might be inclined to go with the “without”, despite the fact that the potential “party girl” might have more experience, a more impressive resume, and in the long run, may perform better at her job. How is this an accurate and fair assessment of our capabilities as potential employees? How is it not a blatant crossing of the line into our personal lives, when the information we post is so carefully guarded by privacy settings to ensure that if everyone plays by the rules, only our friends will get to see our information?

Granted, those who choose to open up their Facebook profile to all in the Boston, MA network to see, must expect that co-workers, potential employers, potential dates—really, anyone--may or may not justifiably look at and judge them based on their personal information made available online. However, it is distressing that such a fun site as Facebook, which has provided countless hours of distraction in my recent college years, would be reduced to a Stalkernet for computer-savvy employees.

As a junior transfer to college, I relied on Facebook to remember faces and names and find out a little bit about my classmates. Reconnecting with friends post-college, I often write on people’s walls to say hi or post a funny joke or story. Now, when I check the profiles of my fellow recent graduates, all too frequently I now find their profile reduced to a name and email address, all their pictures that I loved to look at untagged, their wall removed, and any groups we formed or joined together long since declined membership. Shouldn’t this practice of employers sneaking around on Facebook be deemed highly unethical?