Thursday, February 9, 2012

Over 3 Years Later, "deleted" Facebook Pictures are Still Online


Zach Mason                                                                                                                                                 2/9/12

Digital Applications

ITM-123-03

Over 3 Years Later, “Deleted” Facebook Pictures are Still Online

By: Jacqui Cheng, ARS Technica

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

                Over the past few years, many people have experienced the problem of posting pictures onto Facebook and not being able to permanently delete them. Each year the Facebook executives vow to fix the problem or at least work on it, but it would appear as though they have made no progress. Their lack of execution makes it difficult for us readers to believe them. To the naked eye the pictures would appear to be deleted, but the supposedly deleted photos can still be found on the internet. By now it should be known that as soon as anything is posted on the internet, it will remain there forever. This is why people must be cautious when posting anything from a written message to a picture on the web. Employers have access to these posts and can use them against you when trying to decide whether or not they should hire you for a job. Most people do not realize this and do not take the time to think before they post something on Facebook, and if they do have second thoughts they are never worried because they think that the posts can just be deleted. No one can blame them for expecting that these posts will actually be deleted when they click the delete button, but this is simply not the case. As long as the .jpg file exists, the picture will continue to exist. Some people have reported being harassed online by these pictures that they thought were gone forever. After about three years of “work” in efforts to resolve this problem and appease its billions of users, Facebook has yet to make any progress in efforts to permanently erase posts from the web. I find it very hard to believe that such an advanced and intelligent company such as Facebook simply cannot fix these problems and make its faithful users feel comfortable posting pictures and messages on its social network website. To me it seems as though it is just not a priority of theirs and they are not taking it anywhere near as seriously as they should be.

Over 3 Years Later, "deleted" Facebook Pictures are Still Online

2 comments:

  1. I agree that you are definatly responsible for what you put on the internet, and that facebook is not responsible for pictures that you or your friends post. Once a picture is posted or even taken anything can happen. You need to be carefull who you take pictures with and what you are doing in them. Once a picture goes on the internet even if deleted someone else could have easily taken it and done something with it. I believe that you are responsible for any picture that you take and that facebook is not at fault as long as they continue to have the feature ware you can delete a photo, which they do. I do not think they need to take more measures to make sure that your picture is not floating around on the internet, but they do need to make sure if you want that you can delete the photo. Also you shouldn't complain because if you are taking a picture and putting it on the internet dont be doing something stupid or regretful that may get you in trouble. That is your own fault and not facebook. It's very simple dont take dumb pictures that can get you in trouble, be concious of what is goin on around you and dont put yourself in that position if you are that worried about a silly picture of yourself going on the web.

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  2. I think it super important that people pay close attention to what they post on the internet and what others post about them. There's not much you can do about what others post about you, but if it's inappropriate then you should delete it immediately or report it to the website. I think after three years Facebook should be closer to fixing the problem. Some people don't care about what they put up now, but down the line when they want to get a job they might not be chosen because of pictures that were found online from their teenage years. I do not think that Facebook should be responsible for worrying about pictures floating around in cyberspace. It is up to the user to control what goes up. People should be made aware that once something is posted then it can't be taken back. That is something that Facebook could do to try and help fix the problem.

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