Recently I came upon the fascinating blog of Trent Abraham. His writings offer very unique commentary on various topics regarding economics and business. One of such topics that piqued my interest was the entry on the issue of Facebook privacy. As many are aware, the notion that Facebook may be too intrusive on personal information is something that has been around since its inception.

This article referred to in the blog post highlights the extent of Facebook’s privacy violations as well as tips to prevent their visibility online. Trent writes that “Facebook ha[d] done nothing wrong” and that any information that is found on Facebook is information that is voluntarily surrendered by the user and so therefore is fair game if it is used for marketing or other revenue purposes.

Personally, this is a sentiment which I very much agree with. Facebook information and Facebook itself is an entirely voluntary service as people are not forced to create social media profiles. I agree that Facebook should exercise some degree of discretion when handling the information of customers, but aside from customized advertisements, there hasn’t really been any use for an individuals personal information. In my opinion, the recent attitudes regarding privacy seem to be mostly paranoia, and Facebook just happens to be the most obvious target of these attitudes.