The other day, I logged on to my computer and decided to check my facebook. When I got on to my home screen, something caught my attention that I had never seen before. In a large box on the screen, big bold letters wrote, "Welcome Stephanie! Would you like to show these on your profile?" Below it was a list of about ten movies that I had rented from blockbuster in the last month, including the list I had on blockbuster.com that were going to be sent to me in the upcoming weeks. I took a double take when I first saw this. It was exactly like our class discussion the other week on big brother. How could this information possibly be submitted to facebook, and why would I want this posted? I find this incredibly disturbing and invasive. What movies I rent is my personal choice, and I would rather not have it shown to anyone who can access the world wide web. Not that I have anything to hide with the movies I rent, but what satisfaction does it give anyone to know that the last three movies I rented were Harry Potter, Transformers, and The Holiday? Does that really do anything other than feed our already extremely stalker friendly Internet sites? I think it a serious invasion of privacy. If its my movies now, what else could facebook find to post? My online store purchases or what websites I visited that day? The Internet is still fairly new and will continue to grow and advance. If we don't watch or be careful of what is happening, then soon, anyone and everyone can have others personal information and then, no one will have any privacy.
3 comments:
It is scary that something like that can be posted, but I do disagree with you on one part. You say that it is "a serious invasion of privacy," but the thing is, you can choose to put up or not. If you don't feel comfortable, you don't have to. There are worse things that can be posted on your site that stalkers would be more interested in: your cell phone number, your email address, and some people are even ignorant (for lack of a better word) enough to actually put their home address on their sites. If anyone does feel violated, there are a couple options, either make your profile private so only your friends can see it, or just stop using facebook.
Thanks for that info, Carly. I was wondering about whether you could "opt out" of what Stephanie described.
However, what if Stephanie's video rental choices had not been so innocuous (harmless)? What if she had rented several controversial or rated "R" films that she didn't want others to know she had seen, for whatever reason?
Shouldn't a multibillion dollar corporation like Facebook ask her to "opt out" before they post a single video? Shouldn't a multibillion dollar corporation like Blockbuster inform her that her video rental choices might be posted on the internet?
Although that is somewhat scary that Blockbuster did that I'm not that surprised. Advertising has gone to extreme measures to attract us and it was only a matter of time before we are greeted with a personal message online. Also, in response to Mr. Bolos, they should say something about possibly posting the movies you have recently rented online just for a warning or such. I dont think its a violation if they dont but it would be responsible for a company like Blockbuster to warn the buyer.
Post a Comment