Could we consider Facebook hitting a new low by announcing it will now be “listening in” on your private time? Whether you’re listening to a song, or watching a movie, if the new audio identifier on your gadget’s microphone can match up the media, it will share it. How ironic that during the same week, Facebook also announced new efforts that will secure your posts so they will only be visible to friends. Sound like something that we all assumed was a straightforward policy already put in place? Think again. This new, “private” approach to who can see your posts will only be applied to users that sign up now. Yep, only newcomers will be provided their god given right of “privacy”. The 1.28 billion current Facebook users can still expect their privacy to be thrown out the window as long as they are users.

Continuing on this bit of news, because I don’t know which one is worse, anything and everything we post can be seen by most of everyone in the world. If this is news to you, then maybe you shouldn’t be on Facebook to begin with. When your photos, live updates, tags, and check-ins are on the Internet, they stay on the Internet. In order to make any bit of difference on this front, you must valiantly dig into the confusing mess that is “Facebook Settings”, and explicitly change who sees what. One question though, why wouldn’t it have instantly applied this new, “less-open” approach to all the Facebook users?

Lets get back to the topic of Facebook’s new audio-recognition feature. The new tool acts similar to your Shazam app on your smartphone, by instantly listening then tagging the media. In this case, your entertainment is not only tagged, but automatically adds that into your status update. Apparently, you can choose who you want to see this. On the other hand, if you do share something like a song, your friends can even listen to a 30 second clip of it. If it’s a television show, it will simply state the name and episode. Here is where a gentle reminder to not post on your phone or tablet when listening or watching anything you want to keep private comes in. So far, the feature is unnamed, but the company expects it to become available to U.S. users of iOS and Android devices soon.