Research On Facebook Privacy Matters Reveals Surprising Result

By: Zain Nabi  |   March 11th, 2013   |   News, Social Media

Facebook has changed its privacy policy a number of times. The changes have mostly occurred owing to the increasing number of its users, but one hardly keeps a track of the changes that are introduced frequently. However, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have devoted a considerable time to study the behaviour patterns of the Facebook users to ascertain the role of environment in shaping the users’ choices with respect to their privacy settings.

 

The researchers observed data obtained from 5,076 Facebook users to understand how their privacy and disclosure behaviour changed between the year 2005 to 2011. The results of the research were surprising as they were contrasting. The researchers mentioned in the abstract:

 

“Our analysis highlights three contrasting trends. First, over time Facebook users in our dataset exhibited increasingly privacy-seeking behavior, progressively decreasing the amount of personal data shared publicly with unconnected profiles in the same network. However, and second, changes implemented by Facebook near the end of the period of time under our observation arrested or in some cases inverted that trend. Third, the amount and scope of personal information that Facebook users revealed privately to other connected profiles actually increased over time—and because of that, so did disclosures to “silent listeners” on the network: Facebook itself, third-party apps, and (indirectly) advertisers.”

 

The users who were observed during the entire study were not selected from the sample of current users of the social network as most of them did not have any account back in 2005 when Facebook was still new.

 

According to the research, between 2005 and 2009, Facebook users were more cautious towards their privacy settings and rather refrained from exhibiting their entire profile to strangers. However, a surprisingly contrasting trend was observed between 2009 and 2010 when the users started sharing their personal details on the networks even to the people unknown to them. According to the research, the trend shifted because Facebook updated its privacy controls in 2009 and launched Community Pages and Connected Profiles in 2010.

 

The researchers are of the view that the change in environment from Facebook made the users share their information and hence the relation between environment and users’ behaviour was established. According to the researchers:

 

“Such findings highlight the challenges users of social network sites face when trying to manage online privacy, and the power of providers of social media services to affect individuals’ disclosure and privacy behavior through interfaces and default settings.”