Facebook Code of Honor

As a follow-up to my last post, I discovered a post about Facebook Ethics on Urban Dictionary. It reads:

Facebook Ethics is a major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life over the electronic medium Facebook. The guiding principle of Facebook ethics is that of exercising sound judgement and morality when establishing relationships, networking, or simply keeping in touch with old friends.

Examples of breaching Facebook ethics include:

• Posting inappropriate pictures of either yourself or friends engaged in raucous behavior, binge drinking, or doing illegal drugs.
• Posting nasty comments about ex boyfriends new girlfriends at an attempt to invoke jealousy, cause pain, insult the other party
• Incessantly posting on people's walls thereby shielding other people's comments and creating a monopoly on said person's wall
• Discussing insensitive topics that could be read by other people- examples include religion, politics, and racism/sexism
• Tagging friends in pictures that are less than flattering.

This is in fact a layman's reiteration of Facebook's code of conduct:

While we believe users should be able to express themselves and their point of view, certain kinds of speech simply do not belong in a community like Facebook. Therefore, you may not post or share Content that:

• is obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit
• depicts graphic or gratuitous violence
• makes threats of any kind or that intimidates, harasses, or bullies anyone
• is derogatory, demeaning, malicious, defamatory, abusive, offensive or hateful

Although most teens don't seem to be abiding by these common sensical rules, it makes this old fart feel better to know that a code of conduct does in fact exist. I'm concerned about how it's being enforced though. I'm sure there are a lot more pictures of underage drinking than Facebook employees are able to police.

And while I don't necessarily have a problem with underage drinking, I do have a problem with a lack of discretion. Growing up watching nothing but reality television has encouraged a generation of exhibitionists. Part of the fun of behaving badly is the that it's secretive and private. By exposing this behavior, you're in a sense opening yourself up to scrutiny that could have repercussions into adulthood (i.e. college admissions, job placement, etc.). This is especially true if Facebook has its way under its proposed Terms of Service and is able to own your content even after you close your account. A word of advice to all the kids out there- Keep your shit private!