“Privacy is dead, and social media holds the smoking gun.” - Pete Cashmore, Mashable

Hi again to all!

I'm hoping my subject line caught your attention. To everyone who had read my previous blog, my choice on the above quote is no surprise to anyone!

I find this quote clever as it refers to privacy as something that can be shot with a gun. The metaphor behind this, as well as the meaning, is what attracted me to this particular quote. When you read it through, you discover that this person, Pete Cashmore, believes that social media is the reason that we are unable to keep our individual lives private. I don’t believe he means that there is no way to keep a private life but now more than ever, with internet and all kinds of different social media outlets on the rise, you can have your entire life laid out for anyone and everyone to see.

I know that most of you social media buffs would argue that you can choose who gets to see your life but you also forget that anyone with a computer and enough knowledge can obtain any type of information they want that has been posted on the internet.

That being said, I agree but also disagree with Pete Cashmore’s observation.

On the agreeable side…the world seems to forget a simple phone call or face to face meeting goes a long way versus receiving personal information about someone through a social media outlet. Privacy doesn’t necessarily mean keeping everything from everyone but choosing who gets to see what and when. On a social network, you post something and everyone sees all at the same time. Of course, I’m sure there are benefits to it, but also a down side. I know that I would be personally insulted if I found out something such as… my brother getting a new job and he decides to post it on Facebook before telling me! I am not on Facebook but let’s say I was, I would read this and think, “geez, my brother sure doesn’t consider me more important than his friend from elementary school that he’s spoken to once since”…

To agree further with this quote… Think of celebrities and how their lives have been impacted that much more since social media outbreak. Yes, it is very true that celebrities were never meant to have any privacy. That is part of being famous. Although, now-a-days, it’s a lot more than just paparazzi and news paper articles. You have everyone in the world that is able to reach out to any celebrity via social media and discover all kinds of things about their lives, whether true or false. The “demand” behind being a celebrity has increased significantly due to being in the public eye. They are expected to be a part of every social media network and keep all their fans up to date on their lives.

Maybe if Justin Bieber were to be a celebrity 50 years ago, he wouldn’t have felt so harassed and acted out the way he did in this video I have featured below.

http://www.tmz.com/2013/03/08/justin-bieber-fight-photog-bouncers-london-video/

To disagree with the quote, I will say that you do have control over what you post and what you display for the world to see. If you choose to have your life on there, then that’s a choice you’ve made and you’ve accepted any consequences that follow that. With respect to disagreeing, I believe that social media is not the one to hold the smoking gun but you yourself hold the gun.

Anything posted on the internet becomes accessible to anyone, despite blocks or security features, there’s always a way around it. Also, it never actually disappears even if deleted; it floats around somewhere in cyberspace.  

For example, I used to have a Facebook account in 2006. I really enjoyed connecting with everyone. I posted pictures of myself and my boyfriend at the time. A couple of years later, Facebook really started to take off and I couldn’t keep up with all the people and the posts. I found I was wasting a lot of my time on there. My boyfriend and I (that was in all those pictures) split up. I choose that to be the perfect opportunity to leave Facebook and wipe the slate clean. Over Christmas break this year (4 years later), I received a message from my sister saying “Welcome to the world of Facebook! I didn’t know you were back together with your ex?”

 I panicked when I saw that my own Facebook account was re-activated! It had all my old pictures and everything I had ever posted. Turns out someone in India re-activated my account. This just heightened my fear of social media access that much more.  Please be warned about posting on the internet!!

 

All in all, you can control your privacy but social media makes it that much harder. The smoking gun can point in all kinds of different direction, if you want it away from your privacy then keep your private information away from it!