Most people would immediately take up a defensive stance against this, and why would they not, their private information is being sold to companies they know nothing about. There is honestly not a a real upside to selling except for increased profit for Facebook and better social statistics.
So if people are going to be mad about it, why do it. Answer: Profit. These companies that want to buy the information are willing to shell out more money than we could even imagine to get this information.
Facebook as a company makes a profit through advertising which has worked incredibly well for them but now with over 800 million users, they want to milk the cash cow a little faster. So we as users of this FREE site may suffer. I capitalized free because that's all this comes down to. Facebook is a free site, no one forces anyone to join, there is no cost associated with it. We are all just using this free site to our advantage and now the company is taking charge. As a free site, we do not own anything that we put on Facebook, they do. They can do with it what they feel is right and all of its users have to accept that we are just being used by a huge corporation. People can complain all they want and is it morally right to sell data, No, but does Facebook care about morals, No. So people need to suck it up and realize that they are the ones using the free site, any information they put on can be seen by the world anyway so if the company becomes power hungry, and chooses to sell information, there is nothing we can do to stop it. People have to much trust in mankind, everyone should do the right thing, but in this day and age, what is defined as right? Right for who? I'm sure Facebook thinks its right to sell their information that the people of the world have so generously put on its site.
You make some good points Aly. I'm curious as to what side you are on. I like how you mentioned that Facebook is a free site. However, does this give them the right to use our personal information. Would this be different if Facebook wasn't free? If people paid to use Facebook, then they wouldn't need to sell our information...or would they? Even if Facebook does have the right to sell our information, we should know about it. They should say when you sign up that the company can use that information.
ReplyDeleteI agree with many of the arguments you have here. If you are willing going to put information on a free site then you don't really have a say in what the owners of the site do with it. I believe that you should know who they are selling it to, but you can't prevent them from selling it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Its good to see that others realize that they post it so its not exactly private, but get mad that their information is being sold. I was kind of expecting to see a whole bunch of people be mad, but I'm glad they are not.
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