Students exposed: The future of Facebook

Staff Editorial



Software giant Microsoft entered another aspect of students’ lives yesterday with the announcement that it would invest $240 million in the wildly popular social-networking website Facebook.com. As the site grows by rapid proportions and expands beyond its humble beginnings at Harvard University, students need to watch what lands up online.

The wheeling and dealing of big corporations -- a title which can now be applied to Facebook -- can have real implications on students’ lives. Though Facebook pledges that it takes privacy of its users seriously, as it expands and aggressively seeks advertisers, it’s easy to anticipate its privacy policy will soon loosen.

The site already made a dramatic change in September 2006, when it opened its profiles, groups and news feeds to the non-college age population and unleashed a flood of curious employers checking up on applicants, sex offenders looking for more than a date, parents checking on their children and the just plain curious.

Here at the University of Rhode Island, administrators said they signed up for accounts to ensure that a rogue student did not create a profile in their name. But in reality, administrators like the former dean of pharmacy use the profiles to essentially check up on students, which can result in judicial action against them.

The lesson is clear. Be careful what you post. Facebook and other social Web sites no longer cater solely to a younger crowd. As people of all ages become increasingly computer savvy the posts on Facebook become global in every sense.

Companies find ways to harvest personal -- but what they claim is non-identifiable -- information to serve more relevant ads. Just look at Gmail, which uses a computer program to scan e-mails to place ads that correspond to the e-mails. So next time you write about liking Bud Light in your profile, remember an ad bot might be watching and serve up a pitch for the beer.

Also watching are parents, administrators and future employers, none whom will be too pleased to learn about a student’s heavy alcohol use every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Nor will parents be pleased to find they are paying upwards of $20,000 or more to send their son to college where he is majoring in drinking. And employers might think twice about a candidate who joins a group titled “Justin Timberlake can whip me if I misbehave.”

It is a common complaint among students that the administration is not treating them like adults. However, posting certain pictures or offensive messages on Facebook may leave figures of authority no choice but to take that view. The fact is, Facebook is a publicly accessible website, and you never know who’s watching.