Week 6 Social Graph

Week 6 question

Personal comment about the advantages and risks involved in social graph technologies

What are the implications for you and your privacy, with respect your own personal data and the integration of it by Social Graph technology in Facebook and other sites ?

As a post to your blog, labeled 'Week 6 Social Graph', discuss these issues. Using readings from this week and other items you may have researched for yourself about 'Social Graphs', Discuss the pros and cons of this kind of personal data interlinking.

Minimum 125 words - Maximum 500 words

The Facebook Graph API is Social Graph technology that represents people and their connections to everything. Axon (2010, n.p.) explains that the Social Graph allows sites and other applications to share information about users in order to tailor their experience to each users interests. This means that whenever you connect to a site via your Facebook feed, any personal information that you have made publicly accessible on Facebook can be accessed by the third party site. 

The major pro to technology such as the Social Graph is of course increase connectivity and the ease of which users can traverse the links or relationships between users and sites. 

In terms of my personal data and the integration of it by Social Graph technology, previously I would not have thought that I could be very susceptible to the interlinking of personal data. My Facebook profile is set to the highest privacy setting and therefore I had thought that I had limited the access to my personal information. However after researching the Social Graph, I think that most people would be unwittingly revealing a lot about themselves. Every linked clicked on can provide connections and personal data through the Social Graph. Through 'liking' various posts that pop up on your feed or being tagged at a location or in a post, users are revealing facts about themselves without even realizing the data can be manipulated. I have been surprise to learn just how easily data can be accessed and I think the design of the Social Graph makes it difficult to keep track of the information you are publishing to it. This is to me the biggest con of the technology, the limited control afforded to users over the tracking and publishing of their personal data. As Fox-Brewster (2016, n.p.) points out the Social Graph limits ability to extract oneself from the hugely searchable network, even after an account is deleted, Facebook still keeps personal information for 90 days, or even control your role within it. 

References:

Axon, S 2010, Facebook's Open Graph personalizes the Web, http://mashable.com/2010/04/21/facebook-open-graph/#LuS28XCJR5qW, viewed Monday 29th August 2016. 

Fox-Brewster, T 2016, Facebook is playing games with your privacy and there is nothing you can do about it, 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/06/29/facebook-location-tracking-friend-games/#3566f7d63348, viewed Monday 29th August 2016.