Social Network Issues

Social Networks
ESSAY *1

The article is about the unknown importance from whatever you like on Facebook have in relation with the ads that appear on our wall right side, and how do their system qualifies you related to political, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and religion aspects.

Social and ethical issues:

Privacy is the most important and remarkable issue on this case because almost every Facebook users, don´t know anything about this reports or classifications applied on what they like. This means that every kind of information from your qualities could be published on social statistics or general information from Facebook users and this is a violation to privacy.

Security could be also included, but in this case the probabilities from bad consequences on this term are minimal.

Areas of Impact:

It is related to the Legal area because there could be some point in which people demand explicit changes in what can or cannot be inferred algorithmically from their behavior on the network. Facebook must have certain control from the information they manage about users, some of their sign up privacy politics could be contradicted with these types of classifications that their systems administrate.

If there is the case in which someone don´t agree with these reports about people´s information and make the demand, Facebook could be very affected in how people recognize the site and construe the security from being subscripted or registered.

Moral area of impact could be established as the second with more magnitude on the case. This is because it is not acceptable for some people to be classified in a way they aren´t and just supporting on what they “like” on Facebook. Based on the ads that appear on their profile, determine their orientations and friend´s ideas about them. It is true that they are using advanced technologies and could have an approximate data about their user’s orientations but it is not morally correct.

IT System:

Inputs: “Likes” from Facebook users on different pages, famous people sites and general topics.

Process: Facebook system is organized in a specific way and codified to give the necessary reports from user´s likes. After the users like something the operative system works algorithmically. For example, it’s possible they have these specific algorithmic specifications.  

·        Heterosexual men “likes” classification (x, y, z) pages. Homosexual men “likes” classification. (A, b, c) pages, including TV show Desperate Housewives or the musical Wicked.

·        On politics, Republicans “likes” classification (x, y, z) pages. Democrats “likes” classification (a, b, c) pages. Examples could be the Facebook pages from the presidential candidates or political party magazines and sites.

·        Christian people “likes” classification could be everything related to the bible, the pope and distinct catholic or protestant churches pages. Atheists “likes” classification could be related with no religious sites, importance to just humanity, no god for them. Islam “likes” classification could relate to the Coram, Mahomet, etc.

After analyzing these selections the server decides what perspective the qualified users have and for example in this case if they are heterosexual or homosexual, Christian, Islamic or atheist and republicans or democrats. So then, the results are translate to different databases and published for Facebook administrators, having a complete report and perspective about the users.

Storage: The information from the users: politic inclination, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. The characteristics from the pages used by Facebook, approximate results from the analyzed people aspects, graphics and data tables automatically compared with other sites on the network and regional qualities according to their location users and their selections. In general the databases form the users with their specific qualified aspects.

Outputs: The reports transmitted by the algorithmic system from Facebook. Some approximate results.

And basically how people behaves on Facebook and very probable how their personality is.

Stakeholders:

The primary stakeholders are Facebook users because are the directly involved on the case, their privacy, orientations and inclinations, security, and perspective are some of the aspects that relate them with these Facebook social-technology methods.

The secondary stakeholders include:

Publicity agencies that are related to the ads that appears on the user’s profile. They probably have established contracts with Facebook and this method give them some benefits as more recognition and business major involvement.

Facebook that is the responsible from these user´s analysis don´t have anything to loose and to the contrary they might have economic benefits.

Cambridge Team that is related to the case because they are informing about how Facebook work with people selections.  

Solution to the issue:

Realize different surveys on Facebook, specifying what are they doing with what people like, and how are they classifying the information. Then analyze the results classifying them by interested people keeping with this analysis, non interest people and people that disagree with the system. Finally keep the methods or avoid them depending on the results to prevent an abuse to privacy.

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml