How Friends Influence Social Media Privacy
People should be concerned about how their friends use social media. Especially, if the users are interested in social privacy because the fact of the matter is that a friend can influence another person's social media privacy as much as the user themselves. This is a massive problem that everyone interested in social privacy should be aware of because the problem will become worse before it gets better.
The truth is that the social media systems will always do what benefits them before the users. They have to do this because they have to make money. A business that is interested in making money will never have their users' interests at heart first no matter what they might say.
Therefore, it is up to the user to defend their interests online. They must defend their privacy against the social media system and well meaning friends who use the social media systems. This is because the friends of the user can directly influence how much privacy a person has on the social media systems.
A well meaning friend is always trying to share their shared experience with another user. This makes them feel connected to the other user and helps the other user (most of the time) feel connected to them. However, this one action can be extremely dangerous.
The social media system is always engaged in collecting information about a user that they can use to sell to companies that want to sell that information to advertisers. Therefore, the information that a friend releases about a user will be gathered and categorized.
This means that a social media system will use that information to categorize the user and they will sell the space to advertise to that user. This means that the ads will be specifically targeted towards the interests of that person. All with no prior consent of the user or knowledge (on some of the social networks).
Therefore, a person who is careful about what information they post about his or herself can be dragged into advertising by their friends. They do not even have to say anything, if a person "tags" them in a post then the social media system is aware that the person might be interested in whatever subject that person was "tagged in".
This might mean that a person has a standing agreement with other people to not tag them in posts or updates. This is the best thing to do in most cases. This standing agreement will make it clear that the social media user does not like the social system collecting information about them and should limit the amount of information that the social system has about them.
In the end, it is on the user to make sure that their friends do not misuse the privilege of having them in their social network. A person who tells their friends that they do not want to be tagged in posts or updates gives his or herself the power to choose what information the social system has about them now and in the future.
Scott Buendia consults for Bizbuilt.com. All the views and tactics in this article are tactics and ideas of the author; they do not necessarily represent the ideals, beliefs, or trademarks of Bizbuilt.com. Visit his card on Bizbuilt here, https://www.bizbuilt.com/socialmediaprivacy.
