Yes it has been a bad networking site because of its issues with privacy policies and other similar issues. At the end of the day the fact remains true and strong that Facebook does not charge its users money for accessing. Facebook has proved its reliability issues soon enough like many other social networking sites. It is a transmitter of malware, a promoter of data leakage and has poor employee productivity.Facebook needs to analyze its policy and responsibility of creating policies that are transparent and offering fair controls to enforce the policies.
Facebook like any other good and open website has options or policies for explicitly defining who has the permission to join the site, how the site can be used and so on. One of the requirements that Facebook puts forth is on the age limit; that no user must be below 14 years of age. The process seems simple but the children are always curious about what happened behind the curtain and they lie about their age to join the website. Parents of children below 14 find it difficult to monitor their children. This is difficult irrespective of the age. Monitoring the actions of the children on a social networking site when the parents themselves don’t use the site or are unaware that the children are using them is almost impossible.
Children are especially vulnerable to exploitations on the cyberspace as they do not understand the risks that they are thrown into while joining the website. With Facebook is rapidly growing into a virtual dwelling place for exploiters and attackers, the risks are hardly looked at by its users even when they themselves see it growing into a huge cloud.
The question that needs to be asked is: is Face book’s policy enforced? To imagine that Facebook can, by being just a distant figure on the web ensure that the user is not below 14 years is very difficult and impossible. Therefore, it depends on self-attestation. But users who want to get into the web circle need only a lie to pass the test. Facebook has in its policies the option to report any case of policy-violation. This can possibly work only if a user tries to befriend with the person and find out what network he or she belongs to.
The policy framework is very poor and the control mechanism is established with loopholes and the whole thins is just about smoke and mirrors. As far as the kids are concerned, the standard needs to be much higher to help them not get into the hands of exploiters and hooligans on the Internet who might just lure and chase them for money or anything under the sun. The issue that Face book faces is of bad policy enforcement.
Almost all websites have policies that are acceptable and address a variety of issues but the underline point is that they need to be enforced and must be in a structured manner and should provide a lot of protection to the users from violation. This can ensure compliance and sustainability.
