The first reason why Facebook Inc. doesn’t promise to keep privacy is a registration on the company’s website. Thus, the video was designed to show how you voluntarily agree to disclose personal information.​

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In this video you could see that when you sign an agreement, you should understand that the word “public” is a key. This word legally opens a door to your private information. This is legal not only because you sign the agreement, but also because of the law which protects the contract and Facebook Inc. Therefore, further we will also consider the law in order to understand why disclosure of personal information can be legal.  

The Third Party Doctrine allows social networking websites such as Facebook or any other websites to use personal information until it is disclosed voluntarily. For example, Monu Bedi, an author of “Facebook and Interpersonal Privacy: Why the Third Party Doctrine Should Not Apply”, says that according to the Third Party Doctrine voluntarily disclosed information in any communication to a person or entity cannot be meant private (Bedi, 2013). In other words, when you upload some personal information on Facebook, it is not private anymore because you disclose this information voluntarily to the public. Therefore, we can say that the Third Party Doctrine gives a key to the business to use your private information. Consequently, I designed a video which provides a guide on Facebook’s privacy policy. The video explains how Facebook legally gains information about you. Watch the video and think of your activities on Facebook.

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Moreover, the Third Party Doctrine gives the key to our personal information online not only to business, but also to the government. The Third Party Doctrine states that if voluntarily disclosed information is stored on the third party servers, it can be used by the government without any permission from its owners (Bedi, 2013). Why is it done? The American government on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation aims to protect its citizens. This is understandable because cyber stalking, bullying, background checks, crime revealing, and other types of undesirable or illegal actions occur online nowadays. As a result, they cause many social problems.​

For example, the article “College Students’ Facebook Stalking of Ex-Partners” describes research results about the usage of Facebook for “Facebook stalking” or cyber stalking and stalking. The research examined 411 valid participants. The participants were asked questions of how and how often they use Facebook. The research shows that 99% of students used Facebook to contact their ex-partners at least one time in their lifetime. Additionally, 86.1% of participants said that they disclosed “a little information” which means that they didn’t reveal their cell phones numbers or current addresses. 67.3% participants said that they contacted their ex-partners after their breakup. Consequently, this article offers three hypothesizes: people will use Facebook to monitor or harass their ex-partners; participants who use Facebook to harass their ex-partners will also engage in cyber obsessional pursuit (COP); those who are engaged in COP are more likely to engage in obsessive rational intrusion (ORI). Therefore, the article points out that there is a new frontier to understand how to control and monitor harassment on Facebook and social media in general (Lyndon, Bonds-Raacke, Cratty, 2011). Thus, this research shows that crime online can happen, and it should be monitored and prevented.

Additionally, the results of the research show us that online relationships intersect with  offline relationships. Therefore, we see that online relationships are very similar to ordinary ones. However, because physical privacy is much more protected nowadays than informational privacy, the negative effect of undesirable or illegal actions online is reinforced by the social networking websites such as Facebook. Consequently, this may make the FBI more conscious and careful about monitoring social networking websites.

Another example shows how the FBI uses an assistance of Facebook to reveal crimes. For instance, Jack Phillips in the article “Botnet Broken: FBI and Facebook Bust $850-Million Crime Ring” says about a cybercrime which was investigated by the FBI and with the aid of Facebook. The article reports that the FBI could break up a cybercrime which affected 10 million computers and caused $850 million losses. Swindlers got an access to bank accounts and credit cards of people whose computers were attacked by the virus attack. The author says that with the aid of local law agencies of different countries 10 people were arrested. They are from Macedonia, Peru, Bosnia and Herzegovina, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This group of people attacked computers by virus attacks using Facebook, Skype, MySpace, Yahoo messenger, and other social media websites. The crime was going on from 2010 till 2012. Therefore, it caused so many problems and money losses (Phillips, 2012).

The example shows that the FBI interferes into our personal information online. Moreover, this is legal because the Third Party Doctrine permits that because of security concerns of the society. However, are you sure that the FBI monitors and controls Facebook users’ profiles only when it wants to reveal an online crime? I am not sure because the FBI theoretically can get an access to any Facebook account and see in what purposes a user can use it. Moreover, the organization doesn’t have reports which show why, when, and to what extent a Facebook user’s account is monitored and controlled. Additionally, Protalinski in his article “FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace.” sums up possible ways of the control of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other social media by the FBI. The author says that the FBI's report was issued in January 19, 2012. The article also says that the FBI asks for an app which will allow it to monitor social media in case of threats, crime, and other emergencies. Moreover, the FBI asks to create a template which will provide feedback from people about incidents or any threats. People also will be able to report about it using social media. This app also will allow registering all alerts and checking archives. The author says that the reason could be new applications of Facebook which allow getting and storing more private information. However, the author also reports that many advocates say that even though the FBI asks a permission to monitor public data, they hesitate that it will be this way. Monitoring might go further than public information. Finally, because Facebook is going to see only public information, the FBI will see it, too (Protalinski, 2012). Protalinski clearly shows that the FBI will try to develop its tools to monitor Facebook or any other social networking websites more in the future because of security and other concerns that could be questionable. Therefore, Facebook cannot provide privacy because it has to reveal its users’ personal information to the FBI. One more time, this is absolutely legal in accordance with the Third Party Doctrine. Consequently, using social networking websites we shouldn’t be naïve anymore because the information we disclose on Facebook can be used against us some time. To understand why we cannot expect privacy on Facebook even though the company reveals new security features, I would like also to consider Facebook Inc. from business perspective.

We should understand that Facebook cannot guarantee privacy and it won’t do that until certain laws are issued because this is business. The main goal of a business is to earn money. For example, San Francisco Business Times reports that Facebook in 2012 had revenue $5.1 billion vs. $3.7 billion in 2011 (Brown, 2013). This is an example of how Facebook earns money selling our information to advertising and marketing companies and advertising and selling products online. Therefore, users’ activities on Facebook are a great source of information and, at the same time, big market. This is a business cycle. Facebook Inc. offers its users a service and the users pay for that disclosing personal information making it public. Therefore, it would be naïve to think that Facebook Inc. wants to keep informational privacy.