Facebook as a Platform for Self-Censorship
Facebook is an example of self-censorship social platform where individuals interact in a private and hidden manner from the others as the paper describes. The website has been essential to campaigns for internet fundraising and advertising. The paper examines how the development of the internet has led to the emergence of numerous online social networks, but Facebook has maintained its leadership position by providing distinctive services and easy-to-use tools that make it simple to create groups and fan pages for organizations or initiatives with either public or private goals. Therefore, the research paper can formulate the research question on whether Facebook can serve as the best social network mode of self-censorship for political and various social reasons.
Privacy Settings and Self-Censorship
A person can post something on Facebook but limit the people that will have access to it in his or her account or group in which the individual is a member. This concept prevents any uproar from the Facebook followers that may be erupted by the post. The Facebook Corporation also has Copy Rights that regulates its users on the retrieval of information and how the endeavor is conducted. There are settings that provide necessary options to the preferences of individuals who may wish to alter or change information about their lives and the new trends in the society and lifestyles. The safety concept in Facebook is also discussed in the paper. The Facebook administrators and the server facilitators usually scrutinize and filter new posts and information made on Facebook to ensure that it gets to the viewer as safe and without any aspects of provocation.
The Role of Cookies in Censorship
Cookies are another form of censorship facilitated by Facebook. Cookies are unnecessary files contained in various online websites that retrieve information of the visitors as well as informing them about different services and tools that the website may be offering as secondary to its main purpose. Though the concept is debatable about the effectiveness its censorship, it provides a better way to the website facilitators since they receive new queries and suggestions as the visitors conducts their searches on the relevant products and services. The concept also helps to advertise or popularize a related result to what the user is searching. The cookies concept has been criticized because of its commercial and ideological interests of individuals in other websites they appear apart from Facebook. The Facebook cookies save presented queries and give results in line with earlier searches. For instance, a search of American Deaths on Facebook and other websites give various results of people and events pertaining to the topic in question.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Facebook can serve as an ideal model of a self-censorship where political and social interest is shared. However, it is prone to interference such as intrusion by hackers and members who do not comply with the set governing rules and regulations. The concept of popularizing ideological cycle without privacy also undermines the self-censorship of Facebook. However, this idea can be combated by preventing harvesting of personal ideologies since it undermines commercial and private purposes of Facebook. All the arguments and concepts presented in the paper provide for further research into various censorship network models at the present and in future with increase in globalization of the society in the world.
