When social networking website Facebook changed on September 5 to make it easier for users to keep track of their online friends, the company received a wave of unanticipated protest. Facebook, the web's second most popular social networking site with over 9 million users, added a "news feed" feature that automatically alerted users when their friends made changes to their online profiles. But many users called the new feature an invasion of privacy, saying it promoted stalking.
The controversy highlighted the emerging debate over what sort of privacy people should expect from social networking sites, where users willingly post personal information and photos. "When people belong to social networking sites, they really are putting up news for the world to see," says the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Rebecca Jeschke. "It a little odd on one level to complain that people can see the changes that you made when you changed them so that the world could see them." Nonetheless, Jeschke calls Faceboook's News Feed "a functional change to privacy" because of how it made information so easily accessible. As social networking scholar and blogger Danah Boyd notes, "privacy is an experience that people have, not a state of data....When people feel exposed or invaded, there's a privacy issue."
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The controversy highlighted the emerging debate over what sort of privacy people should expect from social networking sites, where users willingly post personal information and photos. "When people belong to social networking sites, they really are putting up news for the world to see," says the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Rebecca Jeschke. "It a little odd on one level to complain that people can see the changes that you made when you changed them so that the world could see them." Nonetheless, Jeschke calls Faceboook's News Feed "a functional change to privacy" because of how it made information so easily accessible. As social networking scholar and blogger Danah Boyd notes, "privacy is an experience that people have, not a state of data....When people feel exposed or invaded, there's a privacy issue."">
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