Digital Deception

A5: Facebook lets you lie like a rug

The anatomy of a facebook profile is not very complicated but can be quite detailed. Only some of these components generally become targets for deceptive activity, although, it is possible to lie about anything on facebook: even the (startup) email address or your name/nickname.
You can lie about the number of friends you have in real life by friend-ing people you either don’t know or aren’t really friends with. Your picture can be easily falsified, and very often is in many ways: for example, the person I analyzed used an image that was edited in Photoshop to create odd effects. You could also use a picture of someone/something else to lie (you can even crop photos, though ths brings up other issues). Most groups can be faked because they are open, making them easy to join for lying about your interests and activities. Even closed groups can be faked into letting you join by using other types of fraud mentioned above.
In terms of the profile responses, everything is based on your input, so it’s possible to practice deception and lie in every one. The one exception is relationships status, which has to be verified by the other person. Yet, this still can faked to some extent: you can be in a relationship with another profile that you/anyone can easily fake, or you can pretend to be in a relationship with someone. In fact, the latter is practiced regularly.
At Cornell, the directory can act as a verification for anyone. Phone numbers, addresses, school (and perhaps major), name and other things (like websites) can be easily verified through the directory. This makes them less likely fields to be used for deception, and indeed, I have found that people rarely lie about these things, choosing either to include them truthfully or not include them at all. Mini-feed has made it possible to track your friends, so perhaps the practice of deception in certain profile information will lessen.
So, the person I analyzed was somewhat disappointing in that he/she almost never lied about anything despite having almost one hundred different instances of profile information. The person rated fives for just about everything from “looking for” to favorite books. I was able to independently identify nearly al of it through others and my own powers of observation. One place he/she did lie, to an extent, was in the status. It said he/she was doing one thing, which clearly wasn’t true anymore, but it was dated from when he/she did participate in that activity. Does this make it a lie still? Perhaps, although the other cues available would suggest that no.
The only thing he/she rated less than a five was one of his/her favorite books, which was rated a four. WHY? He/she just felt that the book wasn’t quite up to par with his/her original thoughts of it, especially compared to other books on the list.
So in theory, facebook is certainly deceptive. In practice? I guess it all just depends.

posted by Josh P @ 11:54 AM