If you saw “The Social Network” this weekend, you are probably inclined to agree with The State Press’ Preston Carter Melbourne-Weaver that, “As a finished package, everything about this film is superb.”
The film captures the creation of Facebook and the lives it directly impacted — most significantly, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO. However, what the film neglects is anything substantial about Facebook as a cultural or political entity.
As Melbourne-Weaver correctly puts it, the film “is not a movie about Facebook. It’s a movie about love, betrayal, paranoia and the truth.”
Facebook itself is glorified during the film with only vague references to how “cool” and “addictive” the website is. But all substance regarding the company’s controversial privacy policies, cultural dangers and implications are wholly disregarded. The movie is strictly entertainment — and probably for good reason.
It’s doubtful that viewers would get the same pleasurable experience watching a two-hour movie documenting the negative sides of their most frequented website.
Still, it would be a mistake to forget that Facebook is not an infallible concept. Sure, it has been culturally accepted to the point of irreversibility, but that does not excuse it from criticism.
Facebook has become, for better or for worse, the best source of personal and public information — lots of it. Businesses approve because it has become an invaluable resource of demographic and statistical information that inhibits more effective and efficient advertising.
But others speculate that the ease at which outsiders can access personal and individual information is dangerous and potentially damaging to individual users. Employers use it to probe potential employees, college admissions offices use it to research their applicants, and even police officers are using it in their investigations.
The teenagers and young adults most likely to be using Facebook are also the least likely to use this powerful tool in a responsible and prudent way.
And perhaps most significantly, the consequences of social networking have become nearly impossible to reverse.
In a 2008 article for The New York Times, Maria Aspan wrote about the difficulties of trying to erase a personal profile from Facebook’s archives. “The network is still trying to find a way to monetize its popularity, mostly by allowing marketers access to its wealth of demographic and behavioral information,” she said. “The retention of old accounts on Facebook’s servers seems like another effort to hold onto — and provide its ad partners with — as much demographic information as possible.”
Potential employers and schools are not supposed to have access to that information, but the information is still out there. Ultimately the future of these archives is uncomfortably insecure.
Much like a spontaneous tattoo, what is written on your Facebook “wall” becomes a permanent reflection of who you are and is archived into Facebook’s databases forever. The only difference is that it’s much cheaper, faster and painless to log into your account than to take a trip to the tattoo parlor.
As Zuckerberg’s ex-girlfriend fumes at him during the movie: “The Internet isn’t written in pencil — it’s written in ink.”
Network the writer at djoconn1@asu.edu
