The illusion of anonymity which surrounds online activity and social media has been shattered in a recent US court ruling. Facebook has had to comply with a court order and hand over data to assist investigators seeking evidence in a social welfare fraud case. Hundreds of people were claiming disability pensions when in fact their face book accounts revealed that they were perfectly healthy. Fraud has been around for eons, but Facebook hasn’t. The court subpoenaed data which included private messages, pictures and personal details.
The judge defined Facebook as a ‘digital landlord’; a rather clever definition really because the company controls vast amount of personal data from over a billion users world-wide, as well as drawing income from those who use its websites and server facilities. The court defined the social media website as “as a digital landlord, a virtual custodian or storage facility for millions of tenant users and their information… the search warrants authorizes the search and seizure of digital information contained within the Facebook server.” (Miller, 2014)
While the seizure of the data will have ‘free-speech’ and privacy advocates up in arms, the fact is no-one’s personal data on Facebook, or any other social media website is completely private. Facebook trawls its own user database daily for profiteering purposes, which many users could define as the “unreasonable seizure” of their personal data, and so Facebook crying foul under the fourth amendment is somewhat hypocritical.
But, it’s the legal definition which is intriguing and perhaps will wake-up the digital vox populi to the reality of living a life in someone else’s data-base, and within the strict confinement of a digital landlord’s server. Those who choose to live their personal and social lives through any kind of digital medium have very few rights, but clearly a number of legal and ethical responsibilities along with any number of unseen, or unknown legal liabilities. It seems that 21st century living in a cloud holds anything other than a silver lining.
References
Miller, J. (2014, June 27). BBC News Technology. Retrieved June 29, 2014, from BBC News: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28055909
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The LB Chronicles 
Facebook has gone ‘over confident’ i guess 😦
Here’s another report about the FB ’emotional contagion’ (as they call the experiment):
Facebook is facing a storm of protest after admitting manipulating users’ emotions in a ‘disturbing’ experiment.
It modified hundreds of thousands of users’ accounts by adding or deleting ‘positive emotional content’ to see if it could make them happier or sadder – without telling them what it was doing.
Researchers from Cornell University and the University of California filtered information going into the ‘news feeds’ – the constant flow of links, videos, pictures, and comments by friends – of 689,000 users.When ‘positive emotional content’ from friends was reduced, users would post more negative content themselves, essentially becoming unhappier. The opposite happened when ‘negative emotional content’ was reduced.
The process has been dubbed ’emotional contagion’.
But last night politicians, lawyers, and internet activists criticised the experiment because the Facebook users were unaware they were taking part.
(https://lawrenceburke.org/2014/06/29/is-facebook-somewhere-over-the-rainbow/#respond)
the link for the above report is
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2674469/Facebook-users-depressed-secret-research-Site-deleted-positive-comments-friends.html