Silicon Roundabout

EU Set to Impose Common Sense Standards on Facebook

Chuck Ansbacher | Friday 18 March, 2011 15:26

The laundry list of complaints regarding Facebook never ends. You’re hard pressed to find anyone who loves the social networking site, and yet you’re hard pressed to find anyone without an account. It is the double edged sword of modern life. But most of that swords sharpness is derived from hypotheticals. If you’re savvy enough to be in a rage about Facebook, chances are you’re also savvy enough to have your privacy locked down, and you’re well aware that the things you do share have the potential to be shared with God knows who.

However, there is one niggling aspect of Facebook privacy that is completely out of your control, that we have all probably experienced at least once in our Facelives — the embarrassing photo tag. But hey, looks like the EU is rushing to the rescue on this one, sticking it to Facebook once and for all.

The EU wants to force social networking sites – even those based in the US – to give users control over their own data, meaning that anyone who wishes can opt out of having their information shared.

Matthew Newman, a spokesman for the EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding, said: “Maybe you’ve been to a party, up till four in the morning and you or someone you know posts photos of you. Well, it’s a harmless bit of fun, but being unable to erase this can threaten your job or access to future employment.”

You know, the time you licked whipped-cream off your best friend’s nipple with a heroin syringe dangling out of your left arm, and then the next day your boss saw the picture in her newsfeed and called you into her office to ask if you knew where she could score some smack in a pinch? Embarrassing.

But also, Facebook’s fault? Or even Facebook’s responsibility?

We live in a time where every dumb, regrettable thing you do has the ability to be recorded without you knowing it. Whether you view this as a positive, negative, or sometimes both, it is a fact. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, the world would still be a far more transparent place than it was even five years ago.

This new reality requires a new mindset, and new sense of personal responsibility on the part of everyone participating in it. The “don’t put pictures of your friends on the internet doing really embarrassing shit without their permission” lesson is one that most of us learned long ago. And how did we learn it?

“Hey man, take that photo of me with the jello and the dildo down?”

“Done.”

Does Facebook have a responsibility to police the community they provide? Maybe. But I’ll take the argument that Bit-Torrent sites like the Pirate Bay employ and apply it to Facebook: we can’t control what people share on here, we just provide the framework. Especially when they’re doing it for free, do they owe us anything else?

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