RT @hellobrendan: Rodchenko 120 poster exhibition, now on at Melbourne Museum as part of @agIdeas - http://t.co/iKw1z1ZI
If you use Facebook as much as we do, you have probably seen over the past week or two loads of your friends installing apps claiming that they will be able to see who has been visiting their profile. Perhaps you yourself have installed the app, only to find that the app ain’t exactly what it says on the tin. ‘Why?’ I hear you ask. That would be because these apps do not actually work and are simply a front, resulting in the spread of rogue and potentially dangerous software.
In a statement, Facebook said: “Don’t believe any applications that claim they can show you who’s viewing your profile or photo. They can’t.”
“Applications try to attract users in and try to get people to install them,” says Facebook’s Head of European Policy, Richard Allan. “Once a large number of users have installed that application, they can try to offer services like advertising that will make money.”
And while sometimes it would be nice and handy to be able to see who is visiting your profile and how often, sometimes things are best kept unknown.
+: Why wouldn’t you want to know who’s been viewing your profile? Remember, fb DOES know (impersonated for simplicity, not for paranoia). And you bet your behaviour will be taken notice of (e.g. who spends how much time just viewing, what does s/he view preferrably, where does s/he post, and to what purpose etc.) All that is potentially interesting information.
+: Think of a house having windows that are transparent from the outside, yet blind from the inside.
Wouldn’t the one on the inside have the right to break the glass to see who’s watching him/er?
+: Think of viewing a profile as of person «A» taking a look at the place person «B», a FRIEND of person A, happens to spend much of his/er time; Both A and B have known the barkeeper C for years. C is not exactly what you’d call a FRIEND to A and B, yet over the time, A and B have confided personal information (phone numbers, email addresses, family relations, personal stories etc etc) to C.
Wouldn’t it be natural that C tell B whether or not A has been there today, and vice-versa with A asking C to tell whether or not B etc?