Special Report on Social Networking - Privacy 2.0
The article talks about the controversial subject of “privacy” in the social-networking business model. To attract users, sites need to offer ways for members to restrict the information about themselves that gets shared with a wider public. Different sites are putting effective controls to handle the personal information in order to have less traffic of data that can be turned into profit through advertising.The dilemma: networking sites are based on the idea that people will share information about themselves, if people stop swapping content then the sites will fade away. However, there is not why to be worried about, some evidence says that people are becoming more sophisticated about the way to manage their data. Adults, teenagers and young adults are restricting access to online information about them. The sites are developing better service extensive sets of privacy controls and different levels of reliability to respond to the users’ needs of privacy. It is said that users follow certain social norms willing to share information about themselves. This is what we called: a “new social reality”. However, the activists think that sites like Facebook are trying to drive change on privacy rather than react to it. “Social networks are ( set of companies) trying to track individuals’ behaviour online to gather data that can be used by markers for targeted advertising” (Privacy 2.0, The Economist, 2010)