There is a lot of debate regarding online privacy. Should everything online be private? Should it all be wide open, with everyone's information everywhere? Well, I would say there is a medium to those two extremes.
People need to choose what they want others to see online, and implement their own privacy plan accordingly. If we make everything private, across the board for everyone, then all internet users will be anonymous. Many people don't want to be anonymous, and the ones who are tend to be a nuisance in comment fields.
What we do to solve this problem is let everyone control their own privacy. Something along the lines of what Facebook did with their privacy policy. Whether or not those privacy settings are being properly implemented by the folks at Facebook is one thing, but the concept is what I'm interested in. And you don't need buttons to click that say "make this private," you can just do it on your own by deciding what to put online. For example, I deleted my Facebook. When I do a general name search for myself on Google, the results are not me. That's mainly because I don't have a Facebook page. Same goes for image searches. I untagged all of the photos I was in on Facebook and dragged them into a folder on my computer. That's privacy. I can look at them at my leisure, and people I don't know aren't gazing at them.
The example I just gave basically sums up my Privacy Manifesto. Take your life into your own hands, and consider who's reading your information and clicking through your photos before you click "post." Maybe you just don't care who knows everything about you, and if you're that care-free then more power to ya.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Social Media and the Japan Quake
My group looked at a lot of Twitter posts under the tag "#Japan" and found some interesting things.
Many people are using Twitter to get the word out about fundraising efforts. Promoting the Red Cross fundraising efforts via text message is a very common occurrence. Along the same lines, there are a lot of people offering prayers and thoughts for the victims. On the opposite end of that spectrum, there are (of course) some rude and negative comments. Some people apparently feel the need to make jokes or out-of-line comments. The worst part about these is that they are put in the same bin under the Japan hash tag.
Twitter is also being used to get out information to various groups of people in Japan. One interesting thing I found was the use of the US Army's Twitter account in the hours after the quake and tsunami and earthquake. They used their Twitter account to reach soldiers stationed in Japan regarding evacuation procedures.
There are a lot of links to news reports on Twitter as well. In that regard, looking through the tweets is a very useful tool to simply find out what is happening in Japan. However, some people have posted some inaccurate information about the situation. Our group discussed the thought that a person may misunderstand something they see on the news, and then take to Twitter with inaccurate statistics. That can be troublesome for people using Twitter to consume news.
Many people are using Twitter to get the word out about fundraising efforts. Promoting the Red Cross fundraising efforts via text message is a very common occurrence. Along the same lines, there are a lot of people offering prayers and thoughts for the victims. On the opposite end of that spectrum, there are (of course) some rude and negative comments. Some people apparently feel the need to make jokes or out-of-line comments. The worst part about these is that they are put in the same bin under the Japan hash tag.
Twitter is also being used to get out information to various groups of people in Japan. One interesting thing I found was the use of the US Army's Twitter account in the hours after the quake and tsunami and earthquake. They used their Twitter account to reach soldiers stationed in Japan regarding evacuation procedures.
There are a lot of links to news reports on Twitter as well. In that regard, looking through the tweets is a very useful tool to simply find out what is happening in Japan. However, some people have posted some inaccurate information about the situation. Our group discussed the thought that a person may misunderstand something they see on the news, and then take to Twitter with inaccurate statistics. That can be troublesome for people using Twitter to consume news.
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