By John Hanlon
I sat in on a Facebook “class” today at our local library. I didn’t learn much, mostly because the lady made most of it up.
There is an abundance of misinformation about Facebook, but one would think that if you’re teaching a class, you might double check what you’re teaching. Here are a few outrageous statements she told us:
- If you have “Facebook Checkins” turned on, Facebook knows where you are all the time.
WRONG: Facebook only knows where you are when you tell it where you are. No matter what settings you have turned on. You must “Checkin” via a mobile phone in order for Facebook to know where you are.
- Facebook was originally created by Mark Zucker to rape girls.
WRONG: The movie “The Social Network” is wrong about almost everything it portrays. Facebook (before it was called Facebook) was created as a study tool at Harvard University. At the time, it was used by Mark Zuckerburg and a few friends. You can read more info about that here Facebook History
- If you don’t have it turned off, anyone can see your Facebook Messages.
WRONG: No matter what your privacy settings are no one can see your private Messages. I don’t know where she pulled this fact from, but it’s completely false.
- Facebook is evil and makes money when you set all your information to “Public”
WRONG: Facebook makes money from ads. Facebook analyzes you the same no matter what your privacy settings are. Privacy settings change how other people see you, not how Facebook sees you.
Bottom line: Facebook only knows what you tell it. Facebook does not know anything about you that you don’t give it permission to know.
Yes, Facebook knows where you live (if you gave it that info)
Yes, Facebook has your phone number (if you gave it that info)
Yes, Facebook knows who your friends are (if you gave it that info)
Yes, Facebook knows where you work (if you gave it that info)
If you don’t want anyone knowing what you’re doing or seeing what you post, why are you on Facebook?
Thanks for reading! If you don’t mind Facebook knowing, please push “Like” Below. ;)
I agree with most of what you said, the speaker was clearly clueless. However it is certainly true that if you want to limit sharing, it's a royal pain to tell whether you've succeeded. Also, I could do without the "If you don’t want anyone knowing what you’re doing or seeing what you post, why are you on Facebook?" line. There's a difference between "anyone" and "my direct friends". And my primary reason for being on Facebook is to keep in touch with friends, not to broadcast my information to the world (not that, for the most part, I care, but many do). Also, Facebook provides no good way to segregate information—I remember the time I was running one of those "who would you rather date" programs and it offered me a comparison between someone I might have wanted to date…and my daughter's 14yr old friend. Nor can I easily separate my profile into work/family/friends; Zuckerburg doesn't believe in multiple personas, but then, he's never had to work for someone else. So yes. Your speaker was just confusing the issues, but that doesn't mean there aren't serious issues.
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