When I read R22: "Twitter gets you fired in 140 characters or less," I started to think about the implications of our social postings on the Internet.
Most of us started using Facebook at the end of high school or the beginning of college—it was new then, we were the first wave of users posting pictures of our freshman year escapades and writing who-knows-what on our friends' walls. Maybe we were early adopters of technology and even rocked a MySpace page with the same kind of content before we had a driver's license.
Who cares? Well, after reading R22 and the passing mention of searching for cached web pages in the case of Cisco Fatty, I realized these cached pages might come into play in a major way in at least a few of our futures.
I started thinking about how much fun we (the press or the public) would have diving into the cached social networking web page postings of presidential candidates and presidents. Can you imagine getting into George W. Bush or Barack Obama's high school MySpace pages?
Fastforward a few decades when all of us are coming into our own— becoming CEOs or running for public office— and we have an army of curious internet-savvy investigators vetting us and digging up those dubious Facebook postings we made as youngsters.
Will the visibility of our youthful folly hurt us in the future? Or will there be more information across the board so that it won't matter whether or not we had an 'Oops' posting or two when we were young?
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After reading the article similar questions crossed my mind. Its still freaks me out that everything put on facebook/myspace is on their forever, something I am sure none of us thought about when we were young and first started using these social networks. I think in our future there will be something with less privacy then facebook or myspace so hopefully the visibility of ours will be masked.
ReplyDeleteThe question that I started to think about after reading it and learning more about social postings were my personal privacy settings. On facebook I have made my page so private then when you search me I don't actually exist. I have to friend all my friends, no one can friend me. With this privacy setting I feel "safe" with having pictures, information on the network but is it really safe? What is the point of all these privacy settings if in the big picture they don't really protect you?
With the popularity of social networking rising, I too see the various complications of past posts or pictures placed on facebook, myspace and now twitter. However, I have to question the enormous implications we think posting something at 14 that embarrasses us at 30.
ReplyDeleteI believe that while using facebook, kids can only show so much maturity and censorship to what they say. I hope in the future 20 years, individuals can understand that at age 50, one should not be punished for what one said 30 years ago. While at age 17, I think you should be aware of the implications of what you say, I do not think you should be held responsible for past words. People change and move on, and I hope individuals can recognize that.
Frankly, I would be surprised if we did not someday see a presidential candidate's campaign marred by images or information posted on a social networking site or something similar. I agree that it is not necessarily fair to judge a person based on something that far past, and I don't really see it being a problem in most situations, but political campaigns are so highly charged that any scrap of the past can be a turning point. It will happen.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above post as well. Even if you take something as recent as Bristol Palin's unplanned pregnancy during the past election, the media will scrutinize a public figure as much as possible, including one's past Internet history. The media has recently focused on public figures' Twitter posts and considering it to be "real" news. Critics will probably not be lenient and understanding towards public figures in regards to activities done during one's younger days, even though the critics would most likely have had online "inappropriate" moments themselves. I almost question the future integrity and focus of the media if they do decide to use future candidates' history with social networking sites as targets for attack.
ReplyDeleteThis is tricky since on the one side, people relish in airing others' dirty laundry too much to stop themselves, but on the other, they probably have the exact same past on social networking sites. If someone has enough interest to find our inappropriate moments in cached pages, then what is stopping them from making that public? We are betting on people wanting their pasts hidden to keep them honest in what information they use, which is risky.
ReplyDeleteI agree with w ashley. I think information from the Internet, specifically from social networking sites, will derail a handful of political careers in the future. Social networking sites give opponents unprecedented access to the personal lives of their competitors. Coupled with the perceived increase in "mudslinigng" during political elections, I think future campaigns will use sites like My Space and Facebook against their competition.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, if this occurs, what problems do you think it will pose for the political system? I think general confidence in public officials has been receding for some time. The exposure of the scandals, affairs and illegal activities of a few has tainted the image of many. I think social networking sites will ultimately lead to a further reduction in voter confidence as more issues are brought forward.
I have no doubt that the cached pages of social networks will be used as dirt against high-profile presidential candidates. I do not, however, feel like any of the details dug up from old website content will change the outcome of a presidential election. As has already been mentioned, mudslinging is a reality during political elections and likely always will be. This doesn't mean, however, that Obama won the election because of the dirt on Palin's family that the media flaunted. No one changed who they were going to vote for based on that information; it was just something for America to gossip about. The cached social network pages may facilitate the digging up of this gossip, but unless the material that is uncovered is truly negative (in which case uncovering it is good for the American people), I don't think drunk college photos are going to lose anyone a presidential election.
ReplyDeleteI imagine that the amount of data that exists out there is infinite, but is it useful? These pages may be cached but the ability to surf through that much information may become impossible as we bombard servers with terabytes by the second. And even if these super computers find dirt I don't believe it will be as big of an issue in the future because we as a generation are less strict in a social atmosphere. I think as it did in this election, policy will be the most important issue.
ReplyDeleteI've been concerned about facebook since I began using it because of jobs I want immediately out of college. However, in twenty years, I doubt that cached pages will play as large of a roll as we think it might. At that point most people will have created their own pages, went through the poor decisions of posting, and will understand that others did too.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, we have elected numerous politicians with past issues with alcoholism and drugs such as cocaine. They are the prime example of being under media and professional scrutiny and they've managed, so I don't see why we won't.
I think Lucia makes a really interesting point. It is scary that our “mistakes” are forever saved on servers somewhere, just waiting for us to run for office or get on American Idol. It seems like we jumped into the game at the wrong time before Facebook, MySpace and Twitter became so pervasive that we understood the potential consequences. The Cisco Fatty case is really scary, but at the same time, he definitely should have known better. It’s easy to get caught up in the anonymity that you think you have on the Internet. At my internship this summer, I was required to blog about my experiences and update my blog every day about what I was doing in the office. I thought I had my privacy settings set appropriately, but one of my agency’s clients found my blog and, unhappy that anyone at the agency was even blogging about their company, emailed my boss. I had to take it down the next day even though it was a school assignment. Google alerts tell all and people at employers will definitely find you.
ReplyDeleteFor the sake of not repeating what everyone else has said, I'll just say this: it's scary that these companies have so much information about us. Facebook (and other social networking sites) should have given us the option to have cached pages deleted when they changed their "fine print." If I had known 5 years ago that my pictures would be kept on Facebook servers forever, I would have done things a little differently. Even detagging seems pretty useless now.
ReplyDeleteThe unfortunate thing about the internet is that whatever you say or post stays on there forever. Like many of the people that responded, I had no idea the drunken photos of me taken at bars could end up being on the internet forever. Well, I guess I had some idea, but for a few years I definitely thought I could just delete the photos and that would be the end of it. Now after reading that article and replaying my actions in my mind, I definitely would not have posted half of the things that I did. In fact, I may not even of had a facebook account. While I've changed my settings so only me and a select few friends can see my pictures, I still don't feel safe about it. Plenty of people could have saved pictures of me on their computers and they could come back to haunt me in 10 years time. But at the end of the day, I have hope that the stupid comments I made about a friend's photo, a silly photo of myself, or even wall postings I made won't affect my life in the long run. Everyone makes mistakes and you can't change the past. The best you can do is make better choices in the future and learn from your mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI too am concerned about this issue - we've all said dumb things and posted inappropriate pictures on Facebook, but we tend to think that if we go back and untag pictures or delete them we have protected ourselves. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I hope that at some point people come to a conclusion about how we can be protected from information that has been saved about us online from our past, because this could potentially have a serious impact on some people's lives.
ReplyDeleteFacebook could cause a potential problem to some of us in the future if people do decide to recover past pictures that were deleted 30 years ago, but only to a certain extent. I would have to say about 95% of the current college and high school population have a Facebook account, and about 99% of those people have put up pictures or said some things they would regret in a few years. If we have all made the same mistakes, it shouldn’t be able to haunt us. Certain measures should be taken so that random people cannot just go back in Facebook history and learn anything they wanted about that person. A 2050’s presidential candidate’s name should not be ruined because of something stupid they said as a teenager. It just doesn’t make sense and completely crosses the line.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion on this matter kind of reaches both sides of the argument. I do believe that cached websites will have an effect on an individual with a high status in society. However, I think that after a few people are affected by this practice, society will begin to realize that everyone has regrettable mistakes on websites such as facebook. Eventually, this will devalue the importance of cached websites.
ReplyDeleteFacebook and Myspace technologies all seem so relevant to our generations; however, I have to think that 30 years from now such technological advances will be made to the extent that people simply do not care about cached web content. Certainly a reporter or media outlet may discover some type of embarrassing information about a future celebrity or societal figure, but I have more confidence in society as a whole than to think that such discoveries will significantly affect anyone's reputation. As many of the previous posts mention, 30 years from now the majority of society will be users of social internet or networking outlets. Most likely the majority of society will also realize everyone makes mistakes and judgments based on these previous posts are misleading. This being said, I think it is important to further investigate privacy features and the 'black hole' or lack there of concerning deleted material. At some point it may become necessary to truly delete a piece of information and when a user chooses to do so they should be guaranteed this information truly is erased.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that these websites will have an effect on an individual in the near future. I know a guy that wants to be a city manager, and he makes sure that everything on facebook is in line, because he knows that he has to present himself in a certain image. Also, another friend went through and deleted many many photos because she was applying to med school. Even though you can change your preferences on who can view your profile, she said that she did it "just in case".
ReplyDeleteI agree with cdavis. I believe that in a few decades, the content of cached web pages will be obsolete. Of course there may be those few devious reporters or slandering politicians that dig deep into the past of celebrities or opposing politicians, but I feel that society won't care about the information dragged up from those sources. If the US is okay with their current President doing cocaine in his youth, then I think that they have become aware that everyone has things in their past, but it is more about the present person. I do believe though that at the moment, we all might want to use Facebook or other sites with discretion. Like others have said, future employers do look at potential employees' web content. If you do delete something on Facebook, it should be deleted for good though.
ReplyDeleteI think that a facebook page from the past could be brought up and scrutinized in the press. In presidential elections, candidates are always looking for dirt on the opposing part whether they are willing to admit it or not. However, people were able to move past the fact that our current and past presidents had both experimented with drugs. It was mentioned in class and during one group's presentation about when you delete something off of facebook; it does not permanently delete the content. This is a risk people must take with posting information on social networking cites. Like others have mentioned, the article did make me worry about what our generation risks in terms of the information future employers can find out about us over the internet. Not getting hired over a Twitter post is ridiculous in my opinion. Something else that people should be aware of is that if you google yourself, your facebook information comes up. Therefore, social networking profiles are not disclosed even with privacy options.
ReplyDelete