With over one billion Facebook users, including 500 million female users, a recent discovery of the subreddit /r/FacebookCleavage has really got me thinking about privacy, trust, and friendship. Before I go on, let me elaborate on what this subreddit entails.
It’s very simple: /r/FacebookCleavage is a subreddit on the popular link-dropping site reddit that has created a forum for sharing “sexy pictures” of your Facebook friends.
The five rules are simple.
1) Post pictures of your sexy friends (implied female).
2) They don’t have to be just of cleavage – any sexy picture will do.
3) It must be from Facebook, no exceptions.
4) They must be of legal age – noncompliance will result in being banned from the subreddit.
5) Absolutely no names.
There are a number of things that are not OK about this subreddit.
This subreddit requires the abuse of the Facebook friendships in which individuals have decided to trust their “friends” to observe, like, and comment on their Facebook persona and life.
These supposed friends violate a privacy setting that is stipulated by the subject of each and every photograph when they share that photo on /r/FacebookCleavage.
This cannot and should not be rationalized. Deciding that you want your 500 Facebook friends looking at your photos is very different than someone else making your photos available for the larger reddit community, which receives approximately two million visitors daily. This is especially true when it falls under the context of objectification of women’s bodies, which /r/FacebookCleavage clearly does.
Unfortunately, privacy on the Internet does not really exist. It would almost seem excusable if it were a large corporation using our pictures for their monetary gain – but our friends?
This subreddit is a blatant example of the falsity of the idea that Facebook friends are similar to actual, trustworthy friends – or that quantity is better than quality.
I think this is a reality that people need to be more aware of. We supposedly make discerning decisions about who our Facebook friends will be, but maybe no one can be trusted with the power of anonymity. Looking at something such as /r/FacebookCleavage, we realize that they probably can’t.
This is also a clear example of the shelter and enabler that anonymity can be. To those objectifying others, I say stop, contemplate, and take responsibility. Think about what you are doing and then decide whether it is something you would want done to yourself. Though the Internet is full of anonymity, be accountable – if not to others, then to yourself. If this isn’t something you would feel good about doing if people knew, is it worth doing it just because they don’t?