Privacy, Professionalism & Social Media

Photo by Nikola Markelov from Unsplash.

This week in EDCI 336, we had a special guest, Jesse Miller, talk to us about Citizenship Online. I found his talk very thought provoking and informative, specifically on the topic of privacy and social media as a future teacher. I also picked up a few other tidbits that I didn’t know before. For example, I had no idea that the captcha system is based off of human input alone! And the concept of having self-driving cars in the future seems somewhat concerning…

As we were asked, I googled myself before the class and was mostly happy with the posts that came up (grad school articles, my MA thesis, a link to a radio interview I did, etc.). The only thing I found potentially concerning were photos from my AllTrails account. I thought that someone could potentially figure out where I live by looking at where I tend to hike (I am considering making that account private, but I’m not 100% at the moment). But aside from that, I didn’t come across anything unprofessional that I wouldn’t want an employer to see. This summer before our program started, I did decide to make my instagram private. Personally, I found most of the professional standards that Jesse spoke of understandable. However, I did find it concerning that one photo of you with a drink in your hand at a low-key party could be used against you.

I watched the documentary film, RiP! A Remix Manifesto, while eating my lunch before class. I found it very informative, especially seeing as I had very little information on the subject before viewing. The idea that in the US, intellectual property is only incorporated into the public domain after 70 years seems ludicrous to me! I think it would be fair if it lasted 14 years or so.

I also perceived some of the various examples of copyright infringement in a different light. I don’t think downloading songs should be so harshly punished, whereas the man who ripped off Mickey Mouse for his own comic pushed the enveloppe too far in my opinion, and I can understand why they came after him.