Honestly, it does feel a little bit hyped up in it's current context, in many ways nothing has really changed in the past few months. Yes, Facebook has slowly been changing and updating it's terms of use (up to almost 6,000 words I believe!), making it more elaborate and, most definitely, mind boggingly confusing. No one seems to understand it - but what is important is how Facebook is handling your data. I presume anyone who reads this blog will have seen this diagram (as linked from allfacebook.com):
All the sections in blue, are sections that Facebook has made public. By default. How ridiculous is that?!?!? But anyway, if you want more information on this whole issue, there's a lot more places online that will give a better and more professional opinion on it's current status. Suffice to say, it seems that we'll all be getting some new privacy settings this week after Facebook slowly tries to mop up the publicity mess it seems to have caused.
The thing is though, with all this discussion, it's roaming around all the concepts of privacy and how to behave online. Most people will probably have heard of someone (either local or through a newspaper article) who has been fired, quit, their job from a comment they made on a social networking site. As I said to @timbuckteeth on Twitter recently:
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There's still a detachment between many people's perception of their online world and the 'real' world. Firstly, the 'real' world is now everything - i.e. your online persona is part of life. Look at how many Facebook accounts there are currently - over 400 MILLION. That's a serious number of people, and I could be wrong, but I think it's something like over 60% of those users who sign on every day.
Basically at present, we're slowly evolving to include these new facilities in our mindset. What we write online will come back to haunt us in the future, we just haven't realized it yet. I know I always make a point of when I comment on a forum/blog to use my real name and contact info - basically, some of it is to keep me honest. In doing so, I am always conscious of the fact that these comments could be said back to me in the future. Don't get me wrong, I've said some things over the years that I laugh at now, but they were just opinions - things I'd have said in person, it's just my perspective has changed. Having said, that the other side of the coin is that I just don't trust comments that are made annonymously - I feel that by not providing a name dilutes the status of such responses as I have to consider that the person is just uncomfortable with this opinion and thus it might not be completely valid.
Of course, the other side of the coin is those who just aren't involved online. Is this because they're smart enough to recognize the potential dangers, or just because they don't see the relationship/benefits of this new communication medium? I'd love to know!
And then in relation to teaching and the younger generation, I wonder is there a different perception with younger people because they have always had these mediums around them, it's not like they're having to learn them after years of familiarity to just the telephone and text message to communicate. Are they just more aware of the potentials, or are they more naive (and just haven't thought about it)? I know I ask pupils nowadays whether they've used the Internet, and the traditional response is, "Sir, that's one of your dumb questions!" :)
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