Are you sure you want to post that on Facebook?

I know what many people’s living rooms look like.

I’ve also had a good view of a lot of people’s bathrooms, bedrooms and (thanks to the Ice Bucket challenge) even their back yards and pool decks.

I know who they are related to, who they’re married to or who they used to be married to. Who they are having a relationship with now, who their kids are, and whether they have a second set of kids. I pretty much know where they all live and work, what they like to do in their spare time and where they go for their vacation.  

No, it’s not because I am a snoop or because everyone is inviting me over and giving me all this info…but they might as well have. On any given day I inadvertently learn what people are going through in their lives because, people really but really like to share everything.  

Eight years ago when Facebook first came on the scene, there was a lot of tentative poking, a bit of ‘food throwing’, growing crops on FarmVille and several hesitant “hello, thanks for adding me” comments. Many did not even use their real photo for their profile because they were too shy. But as people become more bold and social media took Malta by storm (as it has done all over the world), any shyness and inhibitions were shed as quickly as we shed our winter clothes when summer strikes.

All of the information I mentioned above is voluntarily shared and published on people’s walls, or what is now known as a timeline. It is no secret that the first thing newsrooms do when a tragedy occurs is to track down someone’s profile and gather as many details which are publicly available as possible. It is for this reason that we know that the poor woman who was brutally murdered last week had spent her last night having dinner with her boyfriend (she and her husband were going through a separation but still lived under the same roof), a detail which was freely published by the media.

Should such information be in the public domain? Is it really my business to know so many intimate details about this young woman who died such a tragic death? Well, unfortunately, once you put it “out there” yourself, you have completely lost control over how it is used. Cyber space is an intangible thing; yet every drop of information which is shared is like leaving a set of indelible digital footprints everywhere you go which can be traced and mapped until a full picture of your life can be pieced together.

Sometimes it is merely used by news organizations for reporting purposes to give a more rounded picture of the victim, and this, on the face of it, seems quite harmless. And yet, think about it: while in the past such info used to be obtained from the relatives who would have control over what was made public and would be the ones to decide which photo should be used, these days all such control is out of the family’s hands. The victim’s privacy has been lost, especially if he/she shared a lot of personal information on FB.  

There is also the fact that because of such readily available personal information, speculation and conjecture are given free rein to run wild even while the police investigation, as in this case, is still ongoing. I am of the opinion that the comment function on news portals for such stories should be switched off for this reason. 

Of course, handing over the controls to complete strangers when it comes to our privacy is not only a concern when someone dies. It is an equally very real, worrying aspect of today’s culture to note that it has become common practice to head over to FB to “check out” who people are the minute we hear about them or after we first meet them.

Worrying, because it can led to vicious gossiping and even the possibility of harassment and stalking when certain details fall into the wrong hands. Try as we might to tighten privacy settings, it is the easiest thing in the world to lift a photo or a FB status and any comments and pass them on to third parties. A simple copy and paste or a screen shot and what you thought you were only sharing with 100 of your closest friends and acquaintances is suddenly made available to those you’ve never met.  

Recently some news organizations have made it a habit of taking a comment or FB status and turning it into a story, or using quotes from FB as part of a story. My timeline is public and I’m a journalist so it’s no big deal when this has happened to me (although it would be nice to be asked first), however, I have seen it being done time and again to private individuals. Here, the news organization is definitely over-stepping and should ask permission first.

Then there is the flip side of the issue. Some use their timeline in what I can only describe as a passive aggressive way of sending a message to someone. Whether it’s blaring to the world that they have a new love in their life (which is actually meant to rub it in the face of a former spouse or partner) or whether it is an oblique reference to something which happened (“I’ve had enough of two-faced people!!” – leaving every bewildered friend on that person’s list wondering if that was directed at THEM) there are all sorts of ways in which people use FB to drive a message home which is both unnecessarily public and simultaneously sneaky.

Why not just send the person who has upset you a private message, or better still tell them in person?  I often see this compulsion to make dramatic public announcements about some confrontation or imagined insult in real life, and wonder what exactly the motive is. Perhaps it is easier to seek the solace and comfort from those behind their keyboards out there in cyberspace rather than try and work on relationships in the good old-fashioned way, face-to-face.  

Facebook is ultimately a public forum, no matter what people tell you. Your politics, your beliefs, your opinion on any subject under the sun are there on display even through a simple click of a ‘like’ or an article you’ve shared.  Your personal profile is like a snapshot of everything there is to know about you condensed into one simple source – now this may not bother you one bit because you stand by what you believe in, but when it comes to providing very, very personal information it may be wise to mull over what is compelling you to share it. 

Before pressing ‘post’ just stop and think: does everyone really need to know?