| |
Thu, 05/13/2010 - 22:59 — Nick
| |
Preserve Your Facebook Privacy,
Post Cautiously |
 Have you ever posted something that came back to bite you, like extreme political views, racy pictures, or complaints about your boss? If you did, you’re not alone, and until now, foolish posts were all your own and only viewed by friends in your social media network and maybe the random high school classmate you decided to “friend”, the one you barely remember. But what if everyone could see these blunders and more? What if your profile and interests were broadcast to a wider audience.
As you know, recent changes to Facebook’s default privacy settings are slipping users’ profile info to search engines, and newly proposed features are stirring up controversy in Congress as well as creating privacy concerns amongst users. Retrevo's research (data below) earlier this year suggests that people were already getting themselves into trouble by hastily posting content that they find themselves regretting later. Facebook’s new privacy settings aren't going to help. |
 |
|
| |
|
 Hindsight is Staring Back
It’s tempting to let the “moment” motivate a post that clearly steps outside the boundaries of good judgment. And it should be said that some things are better left unsaid or to be discussed in the privacy of your own home –minus the computer that resides there. However, hasty posting is more common than you might think. In fact, over 1/3 of our respondents admitted to having poster’s remorse and iPhone users rank slightly higher than other smartphone owners. Are smartphones making it too easy for people to embarrass themselves?
"We live in a digital age where everything is expected to be public and instant," says Manish Rathi, Retrevo Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing. "Whether it's pictures from your kid's birthday party, or your perspectives on political events, people are sharing their thoughts faster, and with a wider audience than ever before. Look at trending topics on social media sites like Twitter and you'll find people sharing their opinions on everything from the Gulf Cost oil spill to Justin Bieber. Given the urgency and frequency with which people are expected to share, it's no wonder some postings might later be regretted."
 Then there's the aftermath, nearly 1/3 of those who regretted their post say it ruined their marriage or relationship with someone or caused problems at home or work. Then there’s the question of age, seeing that more respondents under 25 fell victim to their own regretful posts compared to their over-25-year-old counterparts.
|
|
|
|
|
 My Smartphone Made Me Do It
Making technology mobile certainly creates more opportunity to post on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Interestingly enough, we found that over 1/3 of our respondents admit to using their iPhone or smartphone as a computer substitute. Maybe people wouldn’t post as much if they only did it at home in front of a "real" computer. It would be easy to lay the blame on the gadgets and skirt responsibility from the user, but as gadget enthusiasts, we’re unlikely to do that. The reality is that when it comes to removing your shotgun post that will more than likely cause you major headaches, breakups, or even job loss, these same mobile devices and computers also let you remove your posts just as easily. Almost half of those who said “yes” to regretting their posts, said they were able to remove it, thus proving that technology can save more than your data. |
|
|
| About Retrevo Gadgetology |
| The Retrevo Gadgetology Report is an ongoing study of people and electronics from the consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo.com. The data for this report came from a study of online individuals conducted by an independent panel. The sample size was over 1000 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. Most responses have a confidence interval of 4% at a 95% confidence level. |
|
|
|
|
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Trackback URL for this post:
http://www.retrevo.com/content/trackback/1371
|
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
Comments
I have never posted any bit
I have never posted any bit of data to a social network. Reading this post just confirm my decision to completely ignore them. But I still think that facebook has data about me, for example: if I attend a party and somebody takes a photo of me I don't have any control about it. He could upload it to facebook and they could create a minimalistic profile of me, by using a face recognition technique like face.com Who knows whats going on behind facebook closed doors...
A way to stop the Library of Congress archiving all tweets
Thanks for the article. I've definitely gone back and deleted posts/updates that I thought might be offensive to others.. that I thought were fairly benign and hilarious at the time I made the post. :) However, you may have heard that Twitter will be pointing its "firehose" feed at the Library of Congress for "preservation" (archival) and research purposes. So.. basically.. all tweets, from 2006 until today (public tweets, not from locked down accounts), will be sent to the Library of Congress. So much for having a chance to go back and delete them.
Even though this was announced one month ago, it still hasn't really hit home yet because the LOC hasn't started receiving the data. There is a 6 month embargo/delay that Twitter will impose before they're sent over.. so basically, all tweets from the beginning of Twitter in 2006 through April 13, 2010, will be archived forever at the Library of Congress starting as early as 10/10/2010.
So, in just a single example of how this is could be problematic -- imagine your child, who is 16 now, makes some fairly "stupid" tweets. He puts down his teacher, calls his friends off-color terms, and basically shows little restraint in his banter with his cohorts. Now, he is up for a distinguished internship. Imagine those 'trending topic" style tweets where he is playfully referring to his friends with derogatory terms. Or, he is talking about how "wicked drunk" he was at some party and how he explicitly describes his fumbling forays. Imagine it's a very competitive internship, and not only is the host organization screening its applicants, but the students he is competing against are also screening each other, and anonymously submitting information they're digging up to the host organization.
This is, of course, hypothetical.. but as you can imagine, things could get much worse and serious in different contexts, especially as political and social views change.
I think it would be wise to not allow your tweets, as benign as they may seem, to be archived in perpetuity. I would hope that Twitter would actually allow users to opt-out of having their tweets sent over to the LOC; however, seeing that that's probably not going to happen in the near future, I hacked together a little Twitter app called #noLOC.org.
You simply authorize this Twitter app (OAUTH, of course), and any tweet that you make with the hashtag #noloc, will not be indexed by the Library of Congress. How? Well, as I said above, Twitter will wait 6 months after a tweet is published before it's submitted for archival (24 weeks).. so #noLOC.org will automatically delete your hashtagged tweets on the 23rd week.
We've decided to add some alternative hashtags that are equiv to #noloc including: #noindex #noarchive and the shortest version, simply #n.
I'm glad that I found your article on Twitter.. because I just launched this little app earlier today. :)
Take care,
Neil