Facebook Privacy, Employment, and Online Identity Risks
This paper examines the privacy challenges posed by Facebook for individual users, particularly in professional and employment contexts. Unlike platforms such as Twitter or Instagram, Facebook requires verified personal information, making it uniquely valuable to employers, advertisers, and others seeking to identify users. The paper discusses the legal landscape surrounding employer access to applicant profiles, the risks of inadequate privacy controls, and the potential consequences of public posts and tags. It concludes that joining Facebook carries ongoing responsibilities, including vigilant monitoring of privacy settings and awareness of how shared content may appear to prospective employers or other third parties.
- Introduction: Social Media and the Privacy Dilemma: Who is affected and why opting out is difficult
- Why Facebook Poses Unique Privacy Risks: Facebook's identity verification model and advertiser value
- Unreliable Privacy Controls and User Responsibility: Limits of Facebook privacy tools and user vigilance
- Legal Considerations for Job Seekers and Employers: Employer profile access and anti-discrimination law
- Ongoing Vigilance: Facebook as a Long-Term Commitment: Active monitoring of posts, tags, and settings
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What makes this paper effective
- Uses specific, well-sourced journalistic examples to ground abstract privacy concerns in concrete, relatable scenarios — such as the reporter who was forced to recreate a Facebook account for professional reasons.
- Balances multiple stakeholder perspectives, addressing individual users, employers, advertisers, and platform policies without reducing the argument to a single viewpoint.
- Moves logically from platform-specific characteristics to legal implications to practical user advice, giving the paper a coherent and progressive structure.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses direct quotation integrated with analytical commentary. Rather than merely dropping quotes, the writer contextualizes each one within a broader argument — for example, the Fox-Brewster quote about disappearing privacy settings is immediately followed by analysis of what this means for user trust and platform reliability.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by establishing who is affected by Facebook privacy concerns and why opting out is not always possible. It then narrows to Facebook's distinctive identity-verification model and its implications for advertisers and employers. A middle section critiques the reliability of Facebook's privacy tools. The paper then addresses the legal framework around employer access to profiles, before concluding with practical guidance on treating Facebook as an ongoing commitment requiring active management.
Introduction: Social Media and the Privacy Dilemma
As concerns about online privacy grow, more and more people are contemplating opting out of social media altogether. For some occupations — particularly those in which sensitive material could be unintentionally shared online — this has become increasingly preferred. The fact that certain top-secret occupations and even some private enterprises forbid employees from using social media may provide an additional incentive to avoid online platforms (Giang, 2012). However, for many individuals, opting out is simply not feasible. Social media is an important source of personal and professional communication for some people, and for others it is a direct requirement of their jobs.
Although there are concerns that employers can and will check the Facebook pages of prospective and current employees, for certain roles — particularly in the media — establishing an online presence is a condition of employment. As journalist Hern (2016) noted, even though he deleted his personal Facebook account and said he "didn't miss the site at all," he later discovered that as a reporter he "needed an account for work — to manage the Guardian's technology page, amongst other things. So I made a new one, with accurate, but minimal info. In the end, I had to enter my real name, real email address, and real phone number, to get on the site" (par. 8).
References
Fox-Brewster, T. (2016). Facebook is playing games with your privacy and there is nothing you can do about it. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/06/29/facebook-location-tracking-friend-games/#3eb4d26c35f9
Giang, V. (2012). Is it legal for employers to check Facebook? Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/is-it-legal-for-employers-to-check-facebook-2012-3
Hern, A. (2016). Facebook is chipping away at privacy and my profile has been exposed. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/29/facebook-privacy-secret-profile-exposed
McDonnell, A. (2016). 60% of employers are peeking into candidates' social media profiles. Career Builder. Retrieved from https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/60-of-employers-are-peeking-into-candidates-social-media-profiles
Titcomb, J. (2016). Five ways you can change your Facebook profile to take your privacy back. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/18/five-tricks-to-take-back-your-privacy-on-facebook/
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