Straddles a precarious line

Question

Hi friends.I cant understand the following sentence :"Facebook straddles a  precarious line when it comes to information security and data privacy"

Avangi · Accepted Answer

developer I cant understand the following sentence :
Facebook straddles a precarious line when it comes to information security and data privacy"I don't blame you. It seems to me like a mixed metaphor.
When you "straddle a line," you're "trying to have it both ways." (one idiom for another)

The whole idea of the line is to clearly separate two opposing things. If the line is "precarious," it's not doing a very good job of separating.

Perhaps what the author really means is described by another idiom: "They're playing with fire."

In my opinion, it's not the line that's precarious, but their position in attempting to straddle it.

Of course the opposites are not "information security" and "data privacy." Those are both the same thing.

I think your author's intention is to say that Facebook is working very close to the line, where "the line" is the limit to how far they should go in encouraging members to "let it all hang out."
What they're doing may be dangerous for their members.

I don't think the "straddling the line" image works very well in this case.

Avangi · Answer

As an aside, developer, you probably noticed the paragraph of Microsoft code in your post.

You can avoid that by typing in your "salutation" AFTER you cut and paste your text.
(You can still place it at the top of the page.)

There's a special dialogue box which clears the code, but it's disabled if you type even a dot before pasting.

You'll have to use the Ctrl-V combination twice: once to bring up the dialogue box and once to paste.

Regards, - A.

Developer · Answer

I am reallt sorry for that, I forgot to use that option to paste my text.

Avangi · Answer

developerI am reallt sorry for that, I forgot to use that option to paste my text.

No worries. It's not exactly an intuitive operation! It took me months to get used to it!

Straddles a precarious line

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