Unless you’ve been living under a rock or in a cave, you’ve already heard of FaceBook, and there’s a good possibility you have an account there. It’s free, and everyone who wants to share snippets of their lives with others has the opportunity to have their web space to do it. Evidently, a large number of people feel this is an important aspect of their lives. A Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg started FaceBook, and he launched the site on February 4, 2004. Its first offering was only to students of the university, but it soon spread to other colleges. Two years after its start, high schools and some large businesses were added to the membership base. In September of 2006, it was decreed that anyone over 13 could have an account. In June of 2010, FaceBook claimed that over 400 million members had returned to their site in the past 30 days. Many of those spend hours online each day, making comments and uploading pictures of themselves and their friends. Thus begins part of the controversy with the use of this medium.
With so many people sharing information, videos, mailing bags and pictures, there becomes a basic concept that no one is responsible for what is posted on FaceBook. People have the tendency to say and present any type of material they want with no censorship or fear that they might be doing something wrong. As with any uncontrolled service, FaceBook is a wealth of misinformation because any fabricated story can be retold and spread so quickly that it sounds like the truth. As Russell Crowe became painfully aware of recently, a lie can spread quickly and become news. A slight mishap had the story released that he was dead, and many of the popular celebrity websites carried the erroneous statement until it began to circulate it was untrue.
How can a service so large be controlled? The truth is, it can’t be under the current setup, and censorship isn’t an option. People in general, and especially Americans, believe that they should be able to say what they want at anytime they choose. There is some credibility to a broad statement like that, but responsibility should be the first thought of anyone who posts to the web. Other issues of pictures placed that contain people who may have not given permission come into play, along with the exposure a person gives of himself or herself for saying things that can’t be retracted. As FaceBook continues to gain steam, it’s unknown how a bridle can be placed on its participants. For the same reason many flock to join FaceBook, many others shy away and close their accounts after a brief experience. Some people are just more or less private than others are.