Privacy and Social Media

After reading our lecture 8 items and watching The Curly Fry Conundrum, discuss the term "self regulation".

-       Self-regulation is the ability to express yourself and your emotions in response to something that you read or experience. However, talking about self-regulation in relation to social media I would say that it is more about being mindful. You need to consider your content and how you express yourself. Since the non-verbal communication is not a part of the social media communication process it is important to be mindful about the message that you send. As soon as you make a post that post will be there for your audience (followers) to read it, but it can also reach broader audience. You might not have intended to reach that audience, but that is something you cannot control in the online world. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the power of the online world, and take full responsibility for everything you put out there. Ones you make your post it will be a part of your digital footprint.

To protect our privacy we need to regulate ourselves and not give away information that should be kept offline. Jennifer Golbeck is mentioning in her talk that Facebook is the biggest place where 1.2 billion users each month interact with each other. Facebook and other social medias allow us to create an online identity and it gives us the opportunity to put a large amount of information about ourselves on these sites. Since we do not know enough about how these site works or how they protect our privacy it is important to regulate yourself when using social media.

2) Currently, there is a huge battle between 1st amendment privacy, information sharing, and data mining online. In your opinion, should we do away with online privacy and self-regulating? Or should the government step in and start regulating online content?

-       As mentioned in this weeks reading “safety regulations will never keep up with technology” I have a hard time believing that it is something we can change. The first problem is that we do not have enough knowledge. Jennifer Golbeck claims the problem to be that “users don't really understand these techniques and how they work, and even if they did, they don't have a lot of control over it.” The second problem is the issue of security or freedom. People want to be protected but at the same time they want to have the freedom to say whatever they want. I personally think that there is no such thing as privacy when talking about social media. I want to be able to think that there is something the government could do to regulate online content, but I do not think it would work. I think that it is up to us to keep our lives private and regulate our online behavior.

Below is what my online presence look likes. Most of the results are my social media sites that I’m using. The two last links are not related to me, but it looks like everything else is.