Question 2- Blog
Coming from L.A., I think there was definitely a demand to be on top of the newest and greatest technology. This is why I created my Twitter account, just to see what all the fuss was about! I never really use it to post about myself, as I much prefer to see how other people are using it. I am more a user of Facebook, and I think that’s where the privacy issues are more problematic for most people.
Personally, I am pretty mindful of observing how other people will perceive my profile based on my photos, “about me”, statuses, etc. I have definitely gone through my photos thinking, “I wonder if these represent me in the way that I want”.
I think I’ve always been pretty mindful in that aspect of “privacy” and my profile is set to as many privacy settings as I can think of. In fact, my last name isn’t even on Facebook because when I first made it I was still hearing my mom’s voice repeating, “don’t give out too much personal information”, and therefore I just stuck with the letter “A” as my last name (haha).
Though the last name thing was from the beginning, it was actually a more recent thing that I adjusted the privacy settings on my Facebook. Last year (freshman year of college), I posted an album on my Facebook. My mom called me and said “did you know your album pops up when I google search you?” I was shocked, not that there was anything inappropriate about the album (most likely a comforting concept for my mom haha), but I couldn’t believe that even with my account set to private that I STILL had to manually adjust the setting separately for a photo album and that it didn’t just automatically put two and two together that my profile is private so obviously I want my photos private!
I think that “loss of privacy” is an accurate and inaccurate term. In a sense we have control of what is private and public; for example, if you join Facebook, you know whatever you put up there could be fair game. But in the other sense, there is a loss of privacy which was proved by my photo album story; even when we put in the effort to control how much is available to people, there are loopholes that we can not avoid. This is clearly a drawback to these social networking sites. But I believe there is always a good side and a bad side to every situation, and I am still an active Facebook user so for me the good outweighs the bad.
Even so, I do worry about my privacy, and that’s why I have those days where I filter through my Facebook and think “Is this how I want to be represented”; I know that by participating in these social networking sites, I am taking on responsibility to monitor what I do and do not want shared, and I think this concept is something that helps prevent me from “over sharing” something to other social network users.
I think you summarized both the accuracy and inaccuracy of the phrase "loss of privacy" very well! It's one of those things where there are definite benefits and definite detriments, and you just have to choose whether or not the benefits will outweigh the detriments. Then again, you know that you can minimize the loopholes by being more responsible about the type of information you disclose. People get very upset about facebook "privacy" issues, but it doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. I mean, you can legally videotape people in public and then show the video to however many audiences you want, because you filmed them in "public." Isn't Facebook just another type of PUBLIC display?
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with what you say how you couldn't believe that even though you set your whole profile to be private that you manually had to set your privacy settings for a single photo album as well. I manually have set every privacy setting on my profile just to avoid those little mishaps that may happen. I also agree with you when you talk about how you choose the way you want to be represented on social networking sites. I think that although you should be somewhat comfortable enough to post certain things hoping only the appropriate people will be looking at it, it is still our job to post only what we want others to see, not just to keep our fingers crossed that your mom or little brother doesn't look at it. Good job Grace!!
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