How public is Facebook?
Mark Reckons writes about The Sun’s disgusting coverage of the family of Professor Nutt yesterday. The Sun published comments and photos from the family’s Facebook pages. Some might say: ‘well, if you put stuff on Facebook, it’s fair game’.
Well, hold on a minute. When you put photos and comments on Facebook, you are not necessarily publishing them, as far as I can make out. If you close down all your privacy settings so that only a few friends can see any of your profile, comments or photos (and indeed you can even make your presence on Facebook invisible to all but friends, by closing down the search options) then I can’t see how those items can be described as having been “published”. They are simply being shared with a few friends in a closed community.
It’s an important point. I don’t know what settings the Nutt family had on their Facebook pages. But if they had set everything set as private, as I do, then they would have a good case against The Sun with the Press Complaints Commission on the grounds of invasion of privacy. (In fact, I think they have a good case anyway).
Mark writes: “the fact that it was so easy for The Sun to find apparent evidence”. However, it was not necessarily “easy” for The Sun to find such evidence. For all we know, Steve Nutt (the main Nutt family member implicated in The Sun piece) may have had all his privacy settings clamped right down and it may well be that The Sun had to pretend to be a “friend”, or inveigle a “friend” into helping them, in order to get such evidence.
Having said all that, if the Nutt ‘children’ were like most other youngsters in the UK, they probably didn’t even realise they could change their Facebook settings from the default. Hopefully, more and more people will become aware of this, and how important it is.
The Sun printed a photo of Prof. Nutt’s daughter inferring she was drinking “under age” at the age of 16 years old. It is worth pointing out that it is legal to drink alcohol over the age of 5 in a home under the supervision of an adult. It is also legal for people aged 15,16 and 17 to drink wine, beer or cider on licensed premises with a table meal. In England and Wales an adult must order the alcohol. I don’t know what the circumstances were behind the photo of the daughter of Prof. Nutt (and perhaps The Sun don’t know either) but she was not necessarily “under age” at 16 consuming achohol, dependent on the circumstances.
5 Responses to “How public is Facebook?”
Leave a Reply
 |
| 31 / 416 Pages |
Are you still reading Harper Lee?
You are even slower than me…I’ve been reading madame bovary for a year now…:D
All very good points!
It would be interesting to know just how public those photos were and indeed whether his daughter was in fact drinking quite legally.
Indeed, Mark.
Yes Jo! I am a very slow reader – about 2 pages a day – unless I suddenly get interested in a book. I am finding ‘Mocking bird’ rather dry but I am determined to finish it. That said, I actually started it and then went on and read two other books and came back to it.
I found the film more inspiring – it was challenging as a 15 year old but I’d recommend A Passage to India if you are interested in a novel about racism – it’s wonderful
I know “A Passage to India” very well. It was one of my set texts for A level English. Indeed, it is a wonderful, wonderful book with masses of lovely, subtle touches!