Social networking without a shred of doubt is the biggest phenomenon of
the last several years. Of the many platforms available, twitter, my
space, baddoo et al, are living in the shadows of the Zuckerburgan
invention of FACEBOOK.
Statistics have it that, if the population of Facebook were captured
within the context of a country, it would have passed as the second
populous member of global sovereign jurisdictional fraternity (country,
nation) and for that matter the fastest growing one at that.
So beyond being a populated assemblage of people spanning all four
cardinal bearings of any compass, would it be fair then to as: who is
not on facebook?
Now unto substantive stuff, I have always laughed at names that people
have adopted on facebook, from real life names to the funniest,
craziest, weirdest and sometimes most despicable words, phrases and
clauses, how about this? Inkglob discombobulated fluer.
Jolted I was when the ‘privileged’ guys who run facebook notified me
that I had exhausted the number of times that I could effect a name
change to my profile. But why was that I wondered? Thank ALLAH though
that my name at the time (Alfa Allahguide Shaban) was by every
estimation a good one.
The question then is; how many people are conscious of the fact that
they have limited opportunities to change their facebook names? Better
still, how can a person ascertain how many chances there are left to
effect a change?
As a new user of the social network platform, a person may be
overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and delusions of putting their images and
that of others on the platform for as many friends as they have to
savor, feed their eyes on and comment.
Personally my pictures are off the platform after several
considerations, in any case there are other more interesting and
pulsating pictures that a person can get online and upload as a profile
picture, which by far sits better with me.
Here is the big one, if you did not know, I happened to type my name
into the google image search slot only to find a picture I ever used as a
profile picture, the truth with information fed into the internet is
that, it is stashed away in some system somewhere.
Information fed-in is hardly ever deleted completely once uploaded;
evidence is borne in the book ‘Cybersafe’ authored by Gwenn Schurgin
O’keeffe; “What we put on cyberspace never truly goes away, we have to
consider it permanent because there is likely a copy somewhere, to think
otherwise is foolish.”
The long and shot of it is that on facebook, privacy to say the least
is relative; but really really, the concept if you like is ABSENT,
someone somewhere (known or otherwise) can certainly have access to what
you feed into your profile.
Let us jump into realm of image upload on facebook: the story is told
of how a brother tried without success to delete a dead sister’s account
simply because he did not know her password even though people kept
making lewd and disparaging heart throbbing comments that her numerous
friends kept making on her pictures.
Admitted that after a while, inactive accounts on the network are
deactivated, I guess we should not wait till such a time that little or
nothing can be done before we resort to knee jerk reactions which are
almost always woefully inadequate.
Thousand friends on facebook means presumably that there are as many
and more persons out there are privy to as much information as we are
willing to share in our facebook profile, mind you copying some of these
data is as easy as the word.
At least we ALL should learn to share our facebook passwords with a
trusted confidant. Simply a critical move that could even help such
people update our status when we are unable to and also when death – the
inevitable visitor – calls us, they can deactivate our account in line
with our demise.
I love Islam, Allah Knows, Allahguide!
© Abdur Rahman Shaban Alfa Email: alfarsenal@yahoo.com, newcguide@gmail.com Facebook name: Alfa Allahguide Shaban
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