Volume 88 | Issue 6 | obiter-dicta.ca
The Definitive Source for Osgoode News since 1928
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
FACEBOOK PRIVACY?
Who needs that?
ê Warning: Recent changes to Facebook privacy settings may have made your old posts public. Photo credit: PC World.com
simmy sahdra › news editor
S
ocial media can be a powerful tool, but it
also can be like that ex you keep going back to
but you know you shouldn’t. For example, on
those days when you have an essay to write,
exams to study for, a laundry list of things to do,
and you have spent hours on Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter, Snapchat, etc.
In our generation, social media is impossible to
avoid. It is that power that many different businesses
and organizations would like to tap into; it is a readily
used resource that is filled with information. It may
not be transparent, but social media outlets, like
Facebook, not only expose us to advertisements, but
also can be a tool to gauge public interest and opinion,
and to further understand how people are reacting
to many different things going on in our world. We
now have people turning to social media to see how
the public is reacting to breaking news, with the most
attractive aspect being the real-time information
you’re able to receive.
It is these interests which have prompted
Facebook to become less private. Last week Facebook
introduced an update to its search feature that
includes every public post ever made. In the past,
social media outlets, such as Twitter, have been
much better than Facebook at gathering information
around breaking news. This type of competition led
to the change Facebook made to ensure real time
discoverability, the ability to find out what people
are talking about. The change in privacy means now
anyone can search your old Facebook posts unless at
the time you had labelled them private, which in the
past many people did not do because we were under
the assumption these posts were accessible to only
our Facebook friends.
» see facebook, page 14
In this Issue ...
editorial
Circumventing Geo-blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
news
Liberal Campaign Promises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
opinion
Environmental Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
arts & culture
Concert Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
sports
Blue Jays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12