The social network has decided to allow public postings to users aged 13-17.
By Kostas Deligiannis
Facebook's decision to change its privacy settings for users aged 13-17 has sparked backlash. With this change, teenagers will now be able to choose to have their posts "visible" to all members of the network, and not just to their friends or friends of friends, as was the case until now.
Although this specific move was announced a few hours ago, non-governmental organizations such as the Center for Digital Democracy have already expressed their objections, arguing that the social network is sacrificing the security and privacy of teenagers, with the sole aim of increasing its profits.
"Teenagers are often unaware of how much they can be exposed to on social media. It is also known that junk food advertisers, at best, and pedophiles at worst, use Facebook to find potential victims," Jeffrey Chester, director of the NGO, told the Guardian.
The truth is that several other social networking services already offer teenagers the ability to post publicly. However, according to Chester, the peculiarity of Facebook is that its members "upload" a lot of personal information while, at least formally, the network does not allow the use of pseudonyms.
For its part, Facebook argued that most teenagers are better users of social media than older people. After reminding that it is not the first social network to allow public postings to 13-17 year olds, it argued that few teenagers will take advantage of the change in privacy settings by manually changing the status of their posts. Only those who really need to be "heard" in the entire community will do so.
However, as the Guardian notes, Facebook's move shows that the social network wants to become even more attractive to teenagers as, at least on the other side of the Atlantic, younger ages seem to be increasingly turning to services such as SnapChat and WhatsApp.
The network did not change the settings regarding private messages for account holders aged 13-17. So a teenager can still only receive messages from their friends or friends of friends.
Source: portal.kathimerini.gr
