In the article “The Beast with a Billion Eyes," Fletcher discussed that how Facebook has changed the way in which the world operates because of social media presence. He further mentioned that the people are not able to comprehend the outcomes of knowing personal information, and there is a constant debate over privacy rights. Fletcher claims that it is the fault of people that they are sharing their personal information. Moreover, with excessive complaints, the Facebook is still breaking out new privacy settings for the users. In his article, the Fletcher makes use of statistical figures from all over regarding the negative impact of Facebook and the associated issues just because of lack of privacy. It is evident that the Privacy is an important aspect of social media, and people need to draw boundaries and certain limitations before privacy is no longer available.
Moreover, in the article “Friends without borders” Fletcher stated that “Facebook has altered the way in which society interacts by destroying boundaries and also by generating an atmosphere of openness.” This exhibits how any person can easily see your user profile on Facebook, and just how it creates a wide-open setting where anybody is able to see daily life activities (Fletcher 10). Fletcher also explained, “ The modifications are beginning just because of numerous complaints filled with the "Federal Trade Commission" on 5th of May by the electronic privacy information centre, that takes issues with Facebook’s repeated policy modifications and trend to develop privacy settings that are, otherwise deceptive, non- instinctive (Fletcher 2). This displays how Facebook, and its changing privacy policies are deceiving the people.
On the other hand, the James Poniewozik’s article “The Beast with a Billion Eyes” is surely an informative piece regarding the web phenomenon YouTube and talks about the facets of it, mainly bad. He mentioned that it was simply the staple of the Internet, and as a result a lot of people are having digital cameras and phones. Moreover, he mentioned that about the Rodney King beating and just how lucky it was that the bystander was at that place having a camera. Then he proceeds and mentioned that in case you “perform a YouTube search” with a query "police brutality," you would see almost 780 videos right from Hungaray, Houstan and Egypt and even from beyond. This is the sign that the YouTube and other related video-sharing sites are providing the tremendous amount of information to the people. He also mentioned that because of YouTube, the world is now having freedom of speech, and the YouTube is not allowing to upload or to show the copyrighted material, but only the one that is sold to Google.
In my point of view, the Facebook and YouTube are the good source for socializing and to connect with people, but the security and privacy issues on both of these channels are really having negative consequences on the lives of people. I believe that YouTube is surely an exciting site, but it is turning the world into a voyeuristic society. I'm not a big user of Facebook and YouTube, but the real fact is that the things such as suggested or related videos that come on YouTube and Facebook are somewhat related to my previous searches, and this is another breach of privacy, because the Facebook and YouTube are somewhat saving the user's information in their algorithms. I also believe that these sites should be checked for nudity and violence, because most of the times children are using the Internet.
Conclusively, I can say that the main advantage of using Facebook, and YouTube is that the filmmakers and the brand owners are getting maximum visibility of their products, and they are utilizing these channels for their marketing. However, I believe that most of the time the content and the videos shared on YouTube, and Facebook are unnecessary and don't have any actual purpose. For this reason, there is something that must be done to have strong privacy policies for these social networking sites, or else privacy will be the thing of the past.
Work Cited
"The Beast with a Billion Eyes," by James Poniewozik and Karen Tumulty, Time, December 25, 2006.
“Friends Without Borders,” by Dan Fletcher and Andrea Ford, Time, May 31, 2010.
