My understanding of facebook as a social networking site is that when one signs up with facebook, one has to provide his/her name, email address, gender and birth date. After successful registration, one can connect with friends and friends of friends. However, to connect, one would have to add them as friends by sending requests for confirmation. If the the person acknowledges the friend request, then he/she may confirm if he/she chooses to do so. And if the people you send them friend requests and they decline your request oftenly, then facebook will notify the sender to stop sending people requests for a number of days because they believe the sender might be harrassing other people.
This policy I beleive is silly. Facebook has to let people interact freely without interferring with what they do as adults. For example, if you send someone a friend requestn and he/she declines, facebook should not assume that one might have engaged in some form of harrassment.
Another meaningless privacy policy is when you restrict access to friends only. Friends of friends can still have access to your facebook profile information. They can view your pictures, status, and even watch videos if there is any. It is in this context that I perceive this policy as meaningless because it is not consistent with what facebook private policy states.
Thirdly, Facebook has a privacy policy of giving other people one's email address so that they can connect more easily. This is good and bad at the same time. The positive aspect is that people can easily find and connect with old mates and family without having to worry where to find them if they are on facebook. On the otherhand, it is not appropriate to give other people someone's email so that they can add and connect, The question is; what about if one does not feel comfortable to connect with other people they have had terrible life experience with? Facebook has got to find a better policy instead of giving peoples contacts without their consent.
Overall, I would say that facebook is a great social networking site that connects people with friends and family across the globe. It is free and probably one of the best way one can connect and find out about their friends in other countries. However, facebook has got to restrict small children under 13 years of age from joing the site. Their current policy does not have a mechanism to regulate children from joing facebook.
They also need to make sure they stop giving other people other people's information without their consent.
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