{"id":28,"date":"2009-08-29T13:58:41","date_gmt":"2009-08-29T17:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/?p=28"},"modified":"2009-08-29T14:36:09","modified_gmt":"2009-08-29T18:36:09","slug":"social-is-not-private","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/?p=28","title":{"rendered":"Social is not private"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social is not private.\u00a0 That sounds so elementary, doesn’t it?\u00a0 Why is it then that so many people seem to forget that single, basic tenet when they post something online?<\/p>\n

I think a great deal of this duality springs from the nature of computers themselves.\u00a0 We think of them as machines and as tools.\u00a0 We think of them as typewriters, and televisions, and DVD players.\u00a0 Our laptops and cell phones are at our beck and call, dutiful servants of our modern age.<\/p>\n

But instead of dutiful servants, what if they were actually agents of our enemies, sent to infiltrate our lives and report back on our most secret dealings?<\/p>\n

Here’s the important safety tip for today.\u00a0 Computers are the agents of our enemies.\u00a0 We have to begin to take the same caution with our relationships on the Internet as we do with the local gossip.\u00a0 Don’t say anything you don’t want everyone to be able to find out.\u00a0 Put in the language of popular culture, Facebook is actually Gladys Kravitz, the nosy neighbor from “Bewitched”.<\/p>\n

Here’s a perfect example:\u00a0 you’re out on your personal Facebook page and let’s say you have the Facebook average of 120 friends (from Lifehacker.com<\/a>).\u00a0 You then post a message to a friend’s wall, and then proceed to converse back and forth for a period of time.\u00a0 You can always go back to the wall and review your conversation, or continue it – but did you know all of your friends, and all of their friends can see it too?\u00a0 And they can comment on it?\u00a0 Suddenly, what you had assumed was a private conversation is no longer private at all.\u00a0 You might as well have been sitting in a coffee shop where everyone could eavesdrop.<\/p>\n

Viewing the Internet as a city is much better than viewing your internet connection as a tool.\u00a0 In a city, you can have movie theaters (YouTube and Hulu), you can have cafes where you can gather with friends (MySpace and Facebook), or you can have broadcast media (Twitter) where anyone who’s listening can join in.\u00a0 We must remember that just like in any city, anything we say when we aren’t completely certain we’re alone, may come back to haunt us.<\/p>\n

What we say isn’t the only thing that can haunt us though.\u00a0 Where we’ve been, and even who we’ve been, never really fade online.\u00a0 I mentioned earlier than the Internet can be a theater, a cafe, or a broadcast center – but it’s first and best function is that of a library.\u00a0 The internet is a labyrinth of corridors and rooms and dusty shelves, where nothing is ever purged.\u00a0 Anyone with a little computer experience can find virtually anything, about anyone, online.\u00a0 Curious as to whether that new friend, classmate, or business associate has any secrets?\u00a0 Go hunt down their MySpace page.\u00a0 Before supplanted by Facebook as “the” landing spot on the web, MySpace was notorious for creating bad impressions.\u00a0 Yes – it was a good way to share information with friends, but there was zero privacy, and it was prevalent at a time when no one really thought about privacy.\u00a0 You would be amazed at what’s still out there.\u00a0 I used to work with someone who was actually denied another job because of some things posted on his MySpace page.<\/p>\n

How do we achieve privacy online?\u00a0 We need to be very careful about what we post and on comment on.\u00a0 We should all carefully craft our online personas to reflect exactly how we would want people to see us.\u00a0 We need to tailor our internet experiences based on who we interact with and how those associations fit with the rest of our lives.<\/p>\n

There’s nothing wrong with being social, so long as there’s a private place to come home to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social is not private.\u00a0 That sounds so elementary, doesn’t it?\u00a0 Why is it then that so many people seem to forget that single, basic tenet when they post something online? I think a great deal of this duality springs from the nature of computers themselves.\u00a0 We think of them as machines and as tools.\u00a0 We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-community","tag-privacy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sociallyacceptablemedia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}