Facebook and the Commercialisation of Personal Information: Some Questions of Provider-to-User Privacy

Most of the debate about online social networking sites, such as Facebook, has thus far revolved around questions of privacy and access to personal information. Users of such services, should they choose to exercise them, have a myriad of privacy options that allow them to restrict access to their own personal information posted online, and the privacy policies of such sites are abundantly clear that the making of such choices is the responsibility of the Users themselves. However, due to the focus resting upon these peer-to-peer privacy questions, those relating to the service provider-to-User relationship have been overlooked. This paper seeks to highlight some of the more subtle privacy issues of (what we will call) the ‘Facebook debate’ in terms of two main considerations: the access to and the control of personal information posted online.