De-tag me! (Facebook etiquette)
Now that the wedding and honeymoon are over, I can leap back into the work world and its companion—procrastination from work, i.e. Facebook. I had coffee with a friend the other day and she mentioned, as friends and family members will, that she had a great book idea for me: a guide to Facebook etiquette. While Facebook might be too fleeting (who knows if it’ll be around in 2010 when the book comes out?) to anchor a volume, it’s certainly worthy of a blog post or two, or seven. Of course, there are some great resources for Facebookian conundrums already— this excellent article in Slate covers the all-important friending issues, for example. But my coffee-date (who is my friend on Facebook and in real life), had an issue with a separate sticky scenario: the ethics of tagging photos.
Consider this:
Q: You’re posting photos from your holiday party, and there’s a less-than-flattering shot of your friend, Patty. Post it? And if you do post it, tag her?
A: I absolutely think photos should only be tagged if the people being tagged a) look their best or at least not their worst; and b) are not doing anything illegal or anything they wouldn’t want one of their Facebook friends to see. Nowadays, moms and great-aunts are signing on, so Patty doing a kegstand might be a somewhat controversial sight when it pops up on her profile page. Of course, people have the option of de-tagging themselves, but by the time they get to it, the damage may have been done. If it’s not a great picture of the person, should you post it at all? If it memorializes a particularly wonderful moment or if it’s the only group-photo of a group that rarely gets together ….. if there’s something overarchingly redeeming about the picture, post it. If it’s one of three similar shots, don’t even think about posting it.
Bottom line: Post and tag with tact and with caution. If there’s any question, wait half a day and see how you feel when you come back to it. And as always, with any etiquette question, ask yourself: If the tables were turned, what would you want them to do?