[Air-l] Facebook protests

'Gail Taylor gdtaylor at uiuc.edu
Thu Sep 7 07:42:34 PDT 2006


I have a Facebook account. The feeds are being sent to others who are designated as being a 'friend', as opposed to everyone who might be a member of a larger user group (i.e., University of Illinois). Individual users control this designation by choosing to accept or decline an invitation to be someone's friend. What's interesting is that the people who seem to be joining the protest groups are those who have a large number of friends (200-plus), and also those who might have accepted invitations to be friends when the other person was an acquaintance of sorts. 

The number of friends one has is a status symbol for some students with Facebook accounts. This information has come out in conversations with undergrad students here on campus who have accounts. I get invitations to be friends with others here at the university who do not know me, but have heard about me from one of their friends, teachers, or other connections here on campus. It also appears this practice is one that is feeding feelings related to Facebook invading a person's privacy, as opposed to reconizing this software has been enabling this process all along through search and hyperlink functions.

/Gail

*****************************
Gail D. Taylor, M.Ed.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student
Educational Psychology Teaching Assistant

"We can't just have mainstream behavior
on television in a free society. We have
to make sure we see the whole panorama 
of human behavior." -- Jerry Springer



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