In order to design an app that would both complement our blog and spread to a wide audience,
the rest of the Privacy Troupe and I had to examine our original mission: to use our content
to educate others on how much privacy social media programs actually offer when it comes to
user-generated content. In our exploration of this topic, we have discovered that realistically,
privacy policies only protect content to a small degree. We set out to design an app that would
allow users to have this realization, and thus pay more attention to the content they do post
online.
As Facebook is currently the biggest existing social media outlet, most of our work up to this
point has focused exclusively on the corporate giant. We decided to further this theme by making
our app specific to Facebook users. By targeting a more specific audience, we were hoping that
our app would become more successful, and even perhaps be marketed by Facebook itself
We named the app Photo Tracker. The main goal of the program is to track pictures that
users post online. To use Photo Tracker, a Facebook user must link it to their account.
After doing this, they are able to view all of their Facebook photos on Photo Tracker on
their mobile phone. However, unlike Facebook, Photo Tracker allows a user to view the “stats”
of each photo by clicking on it. This includes the number of views, a list of users who have
viewed this photo, how long the photo has been posted online, and who has access to this picture,
according to set privacy policies.
The idea of setting an “alert” came about as we were exploring all the different ways third party
websites are able to gain access to user’s pictures after the recent change in Facebook’s privacy
policies. If using Photo Tracker, a Facebook user would receive an alert directly to their mobile
phone if any of their pictures had been reposted to outside web pages. They would then be able to
view the website, and potentially contact them and ask for it to be taken down.
The target audience for this app is very broad, as Facebook has billions of users. However, the
Privacy Troupe anticipates that this app will be most appealing to college students between the
ages of 18 and 22, who are both frequent users of social media and seem to be more concerned with
hiding incriminating photos than other Facebook populations. In making this app an easy way to track
photos, it is the hope of the Privacy Troupe that it will heighten awareness of the lack of protection
that the Facebook privacy policies do offer, and encourage Facebook users to consider what kinds of
pictures they post. If users do not want their photos being accessed by the general public, the most
logical decision is not to post them to a social media website at all. We anticipate that this app
will help encourage this train of thought.
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