Social Media and Privacy

Reading this article was a huge wake up call to the implications of social media. Yes, I realize that in come cases, the pictures and videos of sexual assaults shared on the Internet created more witnesses to implicate the attacker. However, it also created more witnesses to the victim's pain, embarrassment, grief, etc. How is it right that the world can know what happened to an unconscious girl at a party before she even knows what happened to her herself? 

Social media is great for keeping in touch with people, but it is a shame that it is being used to publicly humiliate the victims of sexual assault, and to egg on their attackers. While these videos and photos create awareness for issues such as rape and bullying, there are better ways to raise awareness than using the humiliating evidence of an unwilling advocate's assault for the cause. A person might not have been physically involved in the attack, but by sharing the evidence, I think they are almost as bad as the physical attacker. No matter what their reasoning is for sharing the post, they are only worsening the victim's situation. When social media becomes involved in these situations, I think they become so much worse. They often end in suicide of the victim. It is bad enough having people you know comment on your life, but when strangers start to attack you through comments, a line is crossed. 

I Have Nothing to Hide...

I think whether or not a person thinks they have nothing to hide or not, they should be concerned about online privacy. Nowadays, people don't even realize how much information they post about themselves online. On Facebook, for example, lots of people provide their full name, birthday, and the town they live in. They also post pictures of themselves and others. Saying "I have nothing to hide" may be true in some ways. For instance, a person who has committed a crime might think that they have something to hide. People who have done no such thing feel safe to post whatever they want because they don't fear getting in trouble for anything. But everyone has something to hide. No one wants everyone in the world to know every little detail about their lives. Sometimes providing just those few bits of information I mentioned above is enough for someone to get their hands on more of you personal information, stalk you, or to give your information to more third parties. We should all be concerned that by posting every little detail about our lives that it could fall into the hands of the wrong people. Not all of your 1,000 friends on Facebook are truly your close friends. You have no idea what some people are capable of.

As for myself, I am concerned about online privacy to a certain extent. I'm not really worried about posting my birthday, where I attend school, or pictures on Facebook. However, it does sometimes cross my mind that information I post could fall into the hands of people I don't trust. When Instagram added to their Terms and Conditions that they could use your photos and give them to third parties, concern did cross my mind. I don't want to look up one day and see a picture of myself that I took to share with my friends and family on a billboard or online somewhere where I did not give permission for it to be used. We are young; we like to think that everyone in the world is good and no one is out to get us. My mom always says that our generation is naive when it comes to the Internet, and I am learning that she might be right.

Excited To Learn...

I am really hoping to take away some useful information from this class. I hope to learn more about the internet, social networking specifically. Social networking interests me because nowadays, everyone seems to place such a high importance on it. I hope to discuss the ethics of how people act on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.