Privacy and Confidentiality are extremely important when looking at New Media because everything you do on the internet is essentially out there for the world to see and find. Therefore, when you signup for a new social networking platform you have to fill out a decent amount of personal information which can be vulnerable to cyber attacks. Maintaining privacy and confidentiality for all that sensitive information is getting increasingly hard and this is exemplified by all the news stories regarding loss of information because of a cyber attack. I think the biggest issue is that it is hard to erase something that is on the internet. I actually recently met and spoke with the CEO of Brand Yourself which helps everyday people bury something negative on the internet. It's an interesting process and in reality not too hard. The biggest problem with privacy and confidentiality is that although companies like Brand Yourself help bury negative things. It does not make them impossible to find or completely erased. With these concerns a lot of individuals, myself included are weary about putting too much information on new media platforms.
Great point about how information can be suppressed, but not completely erased. I read an article today about a similar issue. A person who was appointed to the CTO of Jeb Bush's campaign only lasted 3 days because of comments that he made on Twitter years ago. He is now launching an app uses an algorithm to find and delete any offensive Tweets. While I firmly believe that people should be held accountable for what they post on the Internet, some embarrassing messages that are posted would be better off deleted.
ReplyDelete-Tobin Kandathil
Hi, great points. I agree with your point on erasing things on the internet. I find that it's very interesting there are companies out there now that can help you search, find, and remove things pertaining to you that you might not want online. These "reputation management" services extend not only to just individuals, but to companies as well.
ReplyDeleteThere are also many cases of people being not so smart online (Twitter etc) with inflammatory/derogatory comments that promptly get them fired from their job.
Kin, great insight on how Brand Yourself can erase negative digital footprints on the internet. I highly support this type of action because sometimes people make the mistake of putting personal information over the internet. A loophole that needs to be fixed is that whatever content you choose to post over the internet is no longer yours. Users can easily make copies of your content without your consent.
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