Commentary
by Georgina Tyler
Have you ever noticed how Facebook is constantly changing? How Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, is slowly taking over the internet and possibly the world?
As someone who’s been using the site for over four years, I have. Hey, not bad for a twenty-seven year old Harvard dropout! Zuckerberg has come a long way since his Harvard days.
At present day, he is one of the most influential and most powerful people in the world. In 2008, he became the youngest billionaire in the world. He had created a social network like no other, something so powerful, not to mention addictive, which spread like wildfire.
Why is the creator of Facebook one of the most powerful people in the world? It’s because he did what the CIA couldn’t do in 65 years of existing, and he did it in 8 years. The social network he created collects your data, finds out who you are, what you “like”, who you know, and everything else you decide to put up.
The funny thing is that we all do it free-willingly. Not only is Facebook being used in the United States, but millions of people are using it world-wide. People don’t realize how much information they actually give Facebook.
It keeps this information, so what we put on Facebook stays on Facebook. The “timeline” is proof of that.
It shows everything about you and what you’ve been up to since the day you joined the site. There is a bar above the “online friends” list which I know some people like to call the “stalker” bar.
It shows a live feed of what your friends are up to, whose posts they’ve commented on and who or what they’ve “liked.” If that’s not creepy enough, how about people on your phone who you’ve talked to in the past or have kept in contact with, show up on the “who you might know” list, even if you have no friends in common.
I heard a story from two of my colleagues about a Facebook “app” that they’ve tried. If you click accept, it will show you a guy that goes on your page, scrolls down your wall, goes through everything on your page like pictures and videos and uses Map Quest to find out where your location is.
It really makes you think, “Is my information safe?” Who else can be looking at my page right now and what will they do with all this information?
Do companies secretly negotiate with Facebook to “dig” up information on their employees? Who could possibly be checking me out? All these questions but no definite answer. We just can’t be fully certain who could be looking.
Despite these uncertainties, most of us still use it anyway because our friends and family are on it and we want to know what’s going on with everybody.