Privacy in Social Media

The use of social media has change a lot of the things on how people go on their daily lives. It certainly has changed the meaning of words, including: “Privacy.” People hesitate to tell people they just know information about themselves, yet they are not afraid to posting as much information as necessary online to show others who they are. I can think of three reasons why people do this. First people are lying about who they are online. Second they think they are not posting anything relevant about themselves or lives. Third, (the one that I think applies the most) is people think they are protected because of the privacy settings and terms social networks offer when signing up.

In the book “Code 2.0” Lawrence Lessing talk about how Google stores all of our information. Searches, documents, emails and about anything you post or did while logon to a Google account.  Lawrence says is just how Google’s architecture works: they do what they to keep as much data as they can for an endless of purposes. He writes, “If you ever get involved in a lawsuit, the first question of the lawyer from the other side should be-do you have a Gmail account? Because, if you do, your life sits open for review.” This quote sort of applies to social media as well. Anyone that goes into court will more than likely to be subject of getting their accounts on social networks examine in every single detail and it may be even use in against you. As ironic as it sounds, the film “The Social Network” shows how something Mark Zuckerberg wrote on a blog of his, even before he launched Facebook, could have been used against of him, if he had decided to go to trial and not settle in one of lawsuits filed against him. When I was an intern at channel 7 back in El Paso, I remember there was a big story involving a teenager in an accident. Since she was underage it was becoming really hard for the reports to get details about this girl’s life. The first thing my supervisor said to me was to login into my Facebook, MySpace or whatever I had and search for the girl on the networking sites. For so many stories now, reporters rely on Social Media, whether other sources fail or not to provide information about their subjects.

Most users of Facebook, twitter, or anything similar to it, believe that by changing the account setting into private and only allowing users you approve to have access to what you post actually gives you “privacy.” The truth it doesn’t. Once you post something in any of these profiles, private or not, anyone that really wants to retrieve this information would do it with or without your permission. Not everyone has allowed the Library of Congress to follow them on twitter. Yet they are now archiving all of our tweets. Is irrelevant how private and secure you think you have your account, it does not matter if you delete your account. The Library of Congress would forever hold what you tweet it once upon a time. If this does not change what most people think of “privacy” I do not know what does.  

“Code 2.0” talks about the how there is no way for you to know if companies on the internet are cooperating with each other to collect data about users behavior/interests online. Lawrence explains not because you deny your information to a specific website does not mean that website cannot acquire it from the website you trusted. Companies do not necessarly share this information to hurt users, but is vital information that can help them regenerate profit. Lawrence explains that one of the reasons Google stores all of its users data has to do with advertising. Google can see what you do when you are logon onto your account, hence they can decide what advertisement to show on your page. At the end of the day, it almost seems that part of our privacy has been removed in exchange of money. Whatever the reason is, does it justifies it?

I understand that the internet only gives us so much privacy. We all have heard the sayings about “once its online is there forever” or the jokes about “you want to know what happen, go on Facebook.” Everyone is aware that even if social networking sites gave you all the privacy in the world, you never know the intentions of other people and they might just hack into accounts for the fun of it or to actually use that information against you. It was just a couple weeks back that I received emails from my banks that there had been a system breach at one of the companies that does marketing for them and that if they obtained information about me it was only going to be my name and email. No direct account numbers should have been released. There was no harm done, but some stranger can have my email and name and you never know what they can do with that much information. Especially in cyberspace you do not need much detail about anyone to find tons of information about them. Either societies understanding of “privacy” changes or the way the internet works get restructured or the government makes better laws instead of preserving all the twitter accounts. Meanwhile, like Lawrence wrote, just remember: “Everywhere you go on the Internet, the fact that IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx went there is recorded.”

Sharing Copyrights and Patents in the age of Social Networking

The internet gave people easy and cheap (even free) access to unlimited amounts of content that otherwise it will cost a fortune or it would be through piracy. Social media has brought a different view to its users related to copyright and patents. In the book “Information Feudalism” Peter Drahos writes, “Individual everywhere increasingly find that every time they use information in some way they trigger an obligation to pay a fee to an intellectual property owner.” Well with the internet we all have access to all this information without paying fees (most of the time at least), but the problem arises when it comes time users began to share such information.

Example one: YouTube. When you search any given song you get hundreds of results that are not the official video nor uploaded by the artist or anyone working for the artist/company record. Is just videos uploaded by users showing some video they edited with images, text, or montage of movies/shows. None of these people own the rights of the song, (and sometimes not even the image in the video) yet they are able to upload the videos and receive any quantity of views. Yet the other day when I uploaded a video on YouTube for class, the website removes the audio. The image was my own recording, but since I did not pay any royalties or anything to the song they opted to remove the audio, unless I prove them wrong. It is true I didn’t, I just used a song I had on my iTunes. Ironically, another video I uploaded about a month ago, which included more than one song, for which I had paid no royalties or had permission from their copyright owners to use, yet they didn’t remove the audio. So why did they opted to remove the audio from one and not the other? After much thinking I came up with two possible answers. One: is based on luck. Second: the songs I used for the video from which YouTube did not remove the audio, were downloaded from YouTube. Still, I don’t understand why is it that if I downloaded from YouTube I get permission to broadcasted? I did not pay anything to download, so the owner of the copyrights of the video did not receive any profit out of it or at least granted me permission to do it.  Given that YouTube did not allow me to upload my video with audio, I decided to upload it through Twitter and there was no trouble at all.

Basically social networks allow you to post whatever you want. Sure they all disclose on the fine print that they have the right to remove any post they feel is inappropriate/offensive/ or in violation of copyright. My doubt has always been the same, how would they know if you have permission to use the material?

Most users in social networks do not have the intention to take credit for someone else’s work. Usually the purpose of the posts that require use of someonelse’s work is just for leisure purposes, not with the intention of making a profit. Is simply users showing what they do for fun or as a hobby. Most amateur videos on YouTube, for example, in the description the user specifies they just did a video for fun or school or to show someone they care or just making their own home videos look better. Sharing in social networks is nothing close to piracy, although to the eyes of people in the copyright business might be lost of profit. I am sure some some users do have wrong intentions, but not everyone else can be blamed for the misused of a few. Copyright and patent rules need to change and work with the purpose of what social networks intend: sharing. They also need to change to help those users that depend on posting their works online to success in their professions. Many of these people cannot afford to have their work copyrighted or patented, but that does not mean they do not deserve protection just because they posted on the web.

I’ll finish the blog with these quote from the book which I feels simplify the main reason why the way the copyright/patent business should work. Social networks or not, this business need to change to open the doors to people trying to show the world their inventions/innovation/ creations:

 “Because intellectual property relates to information and knowledge, and because information and knowledge is built up over time by many people, it is hard to work out just what any given individual is truly responsible for. Ideas are triggered by related ones.” 

Social Media in a Time of War

In the book, “Here Come’s Everybody” Clay Shirky writes, “These tools allow citizens to report the news when they see it, without having to go through (or face delay and censorship by) official news channels.”

Social Media has opened the door to new ways for people to create groups making it easier and simple to accomplish their purposes. Social media has provided instant communication and the means to reach as many people as one wishes too.

For example twitter hash tags are the new way of identifying what people talk about. It is a way people identify topics, hence being able to find the information they might be looking for. Groups on Twitter are also using hash tags to identify their topic and lead them to accomplish their goals. An example of this is happening on Mexico. Since the drug war started it has caused increasing violence all around cities, at all times of the day. It had escalated from something between people involve in cartels to affecting the way citizens go on their daily life’s. Citizens want to be aware of shootings or any other events that can affect their area where they live and not find themselves on a threatening situation. Social media, such as twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs have become the tool citizens use to inform each other of violent breakouts, as they realize they couldn’t rely just on what the media said. As more and more people did this, citizens using twitter agreed on a standard hash tag to use. This way it will be easier for people to find out about any violent event by simply searching under the agreed hash tag. For example, cities like Monterrey and Reynosa have created their standard hash tags. Every twitter user living on those cities know that they can simply search “#mtyfollows” or  “#reynosafollows” to find out about any shootings or any risky situations they should avoid for their own safety. This works because of what Shirky says, ““When people care enough, they can come together and accomplish things of a scope and longevity that were previously impossible; they can do big things for love.” One of the consequences of the Drug War is the increase of crime as well as the lack of getting justice out of it. Citizens also use social media to get help if they become victims of crime, for example stolen car, or to talk about the lack of help they got from authorities.

In a situation like these social media has given citizens the opportunities to take a “journalistic” behavior in an attempt to do their part in helping people being affected by crime and to stand for justice in a country when no one is getting it. The Media has been extremely affected by the drug war as many news outlets cannot inform the actual facts for different reasons. Some either have been bought by wither the government or cartel, others have been threatened, and other have actually lost members of their news team for reporting against the cartels. Some newspapers have taken different measures to inform as much as they can. For example, “El Diario” from Ciudad Juarez and “El Siglo de Torreon,” from Torreon do not longer have a ‘by line’ on articles related to the Drug War in an effort to protect their journalists. Two young citizens created “El Blog del Narco” (The Cartel Blog) to inform every event related to the Drug War. They have created a safe outlet for citizens to inform anything they witness or they have victims off. They use Facebook and twitter to reach as many people as possible. They also use YouTube to post videos, although several times their videos have been censored. Just like Shirky said about the Lott story, “The weblog kept they story alive.” This blog keeps the information alive not letting citizens forget what the authorities try to hide on a daily basis. Other citizens have also created twitter accounts dedicated only to inform about drug war events on their region. For example some of them are: @BadNewsLaguna and @SinViolenciaMexico and many others. Any of this given accounts have thousands of followers because citizens have realized is the only medium they have to either get the news instantly or even getting them at all. It is something like Shirky wrote on the book, “information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user’s identity to the identity group.”

As sad as it sounds, when it comes to news related to the Drug War traditional news outlets, like broadcasting and print, have lost the trust of citizens. Everyone believes more the information they obtain through social media outlets, even when it was created by citizens just trying to help and not actual journalists. Without Social media citizens would have still stand up for justice, but social media provides them the tool they needed it to both protect themselves and reach thousands of citizens, hence actually being able to make a difference.  Is not the journalists have stop doing their job, but their profession has found itself trapped in the chain of corruption created long ago in a country that now is fighting an internal war. Social Media is what citizens have left to inform each other and together try to do something about the Drug War that is slowly destroying the country. Shirky writes, “We are seeing these tools progress from coordination into governance, as groups gain enough power and support to be able to demand that they be deferred to.”

Ethical guidelines on Social Netwroks

Social networks have brought another way of interaction between humans. At this point I think is very clear for anyone that has engaged in social networking that different rules apply of interacting within the network in comparison to face-to-face interaction. The question is what are the rules? In the book “The Exploit” Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker write, “What sort of ethics is possible when the other has no “face” and yet is construed as other (as friend or foe)?”

It is true that many of the people with we whom we interact in social networks are people to whom we have a strong relationship based of face-to-face interaction. Still networks allows to have interaction that although we are able to put a face on there is not enough of a relationship to be able to classified them as friend or foe, but they are classified as an acquaintance. Finally, the network allows us to have relationships with people that we cannot put a face but we still might consider them our friends. Technically the same ethics should apply to any of the different interactions we might encounter in social networks, but it’s not like that. It does not has much to do with being able to put a “face” to the other person, but how much we actually know about who that person is. Of course the obvious assumption is that if we had had face-to-face interaction with a person, we know the person better than if we only know them through the network.

Social networks give us a lot of information about any particular person. Most of them have detail formats for people to include as much detail as possible about who you are, and they even give you free space to write your own biography. Still, I think there is so much we can know about who someone really is based on a couple fill in the blanks about our ‘favorites.’ A lot can be infer about the person, assuming they did not lie, but I still believe you only get to know a person until you actually interact with them. I think the ethical problem presented in social networking is the access we give to people to our lives, even being aware on how little we know of them and how little they know about us. When we see posts about people that we barely know or know nothing at all, our reaction is completely different than from someone we know even if they have the same exact post. It is just easier to assume or judge people when we do not know them because of the different meanings we can give to any text. It is not an excuse, justification nor makes it right, but is usually how it works. Technically one is not being unethical for thinking wrong of a person for what they post online, but some people take it farther than that. Good example is YouTube. People post videos of themselves all the time doing ransom stuff, singing, dancing or showing basically any skill that can be show off in video. Now a vast of these videos, not to be mean or anything, but truth be told they are horrible, people do not know how to sing or dance or whatever is that they think they can do. And yes if you decide to broadcast yourself to the world, you’ll have to be ready to take on some harsh criticism. But there is a line in between telling someone they are bad at something from insulting them. Most people probably fell comfortably posting on people YouTube videos insulting and diminishing things because they do not know them, so they do not feel remorse or they know that they will never have to go the awkwardness of seeing them face-to-face ever. Obviously the website expects certain behavior from users since they remove comments due to inappropriate content. So users if users are aware of it, why do they still decide to break the code? Does the fact that we sent the message through a computer miles away from the person directed to, (and often don’t even know the person) makes us forget the fact that the other person is still a human? Have social networks make us unaware of the power of words?

Ethics should be expected from any person when interacting with another person, even if is in a social network. I think people forget about ethics when they do not know the person at all. But, once someone classifies the other as friend or a foe, whether they know them in person or not, ethics would be a factor when interacting. True different rules sort of apply depending on the kind of relationship you have with people outside and inside the network. Between close friends there is always an understanding of what can be post online, between acquaintances you don’t really have an interaction although you might want to know more details about stuff they post. Between strangers there is still a question mark, especially on social networks where people expose big part of their lives.