Online Social Networks and E-Commerce - MIT Computer Science ...

Clarence Lee and Shirley Fung
The News Feeds section aggregates information from users in all of your networks. Any updates within
your network would be broadcasted as part of the news feed. These updates include new profile pictures,
status updates, or other activities. When this was first introduced, it created a stir among the Facebook
members because individuals were concerned that the newsfeed allows others to stalk their friends by the
minute. In an article on
TIME.com, Tracy
Samantha Schmidt
wrote, that the “level of
intimacy may be too
intense for even today's
college students”
(Schmidt, 2006).
Photos
Users on Facebook are also allowed to upload photo albums. Levels of privacy protection can be set for
these photo albums. Users can label who is in the picture using “tags”. What users may not know is that by
uploading a picture, users are also providing embedded metadata on these pictures such as the timestamp
and camera make/model used.
"Every action I take on Facebook is now time stamped," says Erik Ornitz,
18, a Brown student who formed his own anti-News Feed group. "It's a
little strange because everyone will now know that at 10 o'clock I updated
my Facebook profile and that I wasn't in class." – Erik Ornitz, 18, a Brown
student who formed his own anti-News Feed group (Schmidt, 2006)
Figure 3 – Example of photos section on Facebook
The alarming thing about the photos feature is that users can only dissociate themselves by removing tags
from a photo. However, no current system allows the user to opt out of having their photos posted. If
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