Privacy of a Like
Where the line should be drawn
While skimming through my Facebook newsfeed recently, I noticed that a friend of mine liked a blog post shared by her friend. The individual sharing the blog wasn’t my friend on Facebook. Within a couple of clicks, I found out that she was a classmate of mine who I hadn’t heard from in 10 years!
I sent her a friend request, we connected and ended up talking for hours about the old days, reminiscing about the past and catching each other up on our lives. It was great. Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm had made another connection. It succeeded. Great job. Thanks, Facebook!
Today, another like by a different friend on Facebook — an ex-coworker — was listed in my newsfeed.
Could’ve lived without knowing this information, Zuck. I’m a muslim. I don’t expect everyone to agree with what I believe in. Nor do I go around preaching what I practice. I do, however, expect people in my circle to ask for clarification and engage me in a productive dialog about differences in our opinions — if there are any. And I expect them to go about that in a respectful manner. The friend in question clearly chose to subscribe to a source who would rather cherry pick pieces of information to further their agenda than spread the virtue of tolerance and respect. And that’s okay.
By liking this post on Facebook, my friend intended to express agreement, appreciation, encouragement or some other form of positive emotion towards the posting entity. It wasn’t an explicit permission to allow Facebook to share this emotion to the network that they were connected to. I believe that my friend’s privacy was violated in this scenario. It definitely has had an impact on our relationship. I now know something that my friend would probably rather I didn’t. Not because they shared something they weren’t supposed to but because the product they trusted to protect their privacy failed them.
Friend’s likes on content posted by parties that aren’t mutual friends or liked pages is a shady area. In the last week, I’ve greatly benefitted from it and lost a friend. On one hand, I would like to know more about the world than I know now and on the other, I’d rather my friends have the ability to privately express themselves without being outed to the rest of the world.
I’m sure there’s a better way to handle this. I just wanted to share my experience to invite others to share their thoughts and start a dialog that would possibly bring us closer to a better solution than the one that exists today.
