Facebook: The All Seeing Eye

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The social media super connector Facebook has grown to become the worlds most accessed social media site, with over one billion users. It provides people with a means to connect to others, receive updates on news and entertainment, post thoughts, share images, and more.

‘Place is security, but space is freedom.’ (Tuan, Y. 1979) Facebook is somehow able to give its users both, the concept that will be explored through out the following blog posts. Facebook is able to give its users a sense of power and freedom of speech while still applying the security of a place with its familiarity and its own power over us in regards to censorship.

For some, Facebook can ‘foster fantasies about a new kind of social power’ (Turkle, S. 1995) that goes hand in hand with the idea that ‘one can say anything to anyone' (Turkle, S. 1995) online, describing a users experience of Facebook and the Internet in general as ‘dizzyingly free’ (Turkle, S. 1995).

This is what makes Facebook so popular. Power is a ‘relational effect that is an outcome of social interaction’ (Allen, J. 2003) and so people are using Facebook as a means to gain popularity through likes and comments, creating a new hunger in many users for this ‘social power’.

I aim to explore the power Facebook leads us to believe we have, while it truly powers over us. Accessing our information and history for data collection, censoring whatever they wish when they wish, and using advertisements and suggested posts based on our preferences to lure us into buying products, all of which we gave them permission to do so through signing up.  This article on the Washington Post is an excellent example relating to Facebook’s abuse of power.

Reference List:

Allen, J. (2003). Lost geographies of power. Malden, MA: Blackwell

Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster

Tuan, Y. (1979). Space and Place: Perspective of Experience. Arnold, A. London.

Persily, N. (2016, August 10) Facebook may soon have more power over elections than the FEC. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/08/10/facebook-may-soon-have-more-power-over-elections-than-the-fec-are-we-ready/?utm_term=.62e1094e345d

Lafrance, A. (2014, June 12) Facebook is expanding the way it tracks you and your data. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/facebook-is-expanding-the-way-it-tracks-you-and-your-data/372641/