Class Today

[forewarning: overcaffeinated and underslept]

We talked about social networks and privacy today in class. I left feeling like people in general have animosity to electronics.  Many people talked about how they selectively choose what to put on their Facebook, how they destroy information about them and are genuinely afraid of companies knowing about them.  I have wondered and thought about this since then and come to a few thoughts related to the matter.

First off, why is it alarming that companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook store information about you.  Think about it.  If you visit a Chinese restaurant often, they might start to get to know you and know what you order.  The next time you visit, they might try to recommend something to you.  If this happens to me, I am usually grateful that they took the time to try and suggest something, leading me to a greater marginal utility for my money.  I was not compelled to buy anything and I could have ignored the request, but I couldn't help it that the worker at the store started getting a sense of his/her customer.  It is good business to know your customer.  How is this any different than Google?  Sure they might know I am a male, living in West Lafayette, around 22 years old and into electronics.... but why is that bad to have them know.  They use it to target ads towards me... things that might actually be relevant to my interests.  Would I rather see other ads?  I fail to see what harm there is in Google knowing some general information about you.  Even if you take the most extreme example of privacy concern, Facebook, I don't see what there is to fear in allowing Mark Zuckerberg to know I love eating the general tso's tofu at rice cafe.  Even if I could tell every person in world, ever possible enemy I have information like that... how could they possibly use that against me?  The only thing I can put together is that people have a fear of big and complicated machines, like Facebook.  Maybe we all have seen too many sci-fi horror style movies, like Terminator.  We have to remember that in the end, we are talking to people.  Is there really anyone in the world that could hurt you if you put [insert something] on Facebook.  Even if they could, is there any reason somebody would want to, out of everyone else on Facebook?  I think with Facebook being the 3rd largest country in the world, there would be more crime if a threat actually existed... people would have exploited it by now.  Even if this becomes a problem, it would be in Facebook's best interests to fix it or face possible losses of customers.  I think the threat of being struck by lightning is a greater threat to you than being exploited because of a privacy concern on Facebook.