Learning assignment #2

2a

Social media naturally is a media that shares your posts to a wider audience. Despite who your content was originally meant for, anyone can see it. Restricting audience by privacy settings can stop a majority of people, but does not mean that the content you've published is only visible to the people you wish to see it.

It is probably not a surprise to anybody in this day and age, that very personal information is best kept out of social media - or the  internet in general. Privacy and secure connections have been a discussed topic, especially after the new information security law.
This has caused companies and many other communities to reconsider and -construct their ways of communication both inside, and out of the house.

PERSONAL CONTENT

It is also not news to anybody, that when you post something on the internet, it is there to stay. You cannot delete anything for good, even if you take down a picture you posted on Facebook. Facebook takes ownership to any material posted, and therefore the ownership of your photo is held by Facebook.

Sharing personal content can have both positive and negative effect. If I think of influencers, whose followers consist of people who can relate to them - they could not be successful without sharing personal information. For example Instagram is so full of people who want to lead by example, share pictures of their meals, take beautiful photos at the beach and post make-up tutorials, that you've got to stand out of the crowd somehow if you want to be memorable and gain followers. You stand out by your originality, and to be original - you've got to share YOU.

Of course you can regulate how much of you you want to put out there. For me a good rule of thumb is "would I be ok with my father-in-law to see this" or "if my kids see this when they're older, would they be upset". As much as I want to be open and honest on my personal social media accounts, I do not want to do it with the expense of it having some negative effect in my own close relationships or my own future.

Originality and personal aspect of social media content is important in a business world too. Especially with the education I have, and the place I work at - connecting with people on an emotional level is crucial. Our company wants to especially connect with the relatives of older people. They are the ones concerned about their parents, they are the ones that often take the first step and make the first move to have someone come and take care of their loved ones - so we have got to show that we are a reliable, trusted, warm and delicate choice to walk beside their relatives. We cannot show our values to be true without somewhat personal - easy to approach - kind of material. Because of the content they see on social media, they probably make the decision to hire us - and trust is formed with the client and their relative because they see that what they've seen online is true in real life.


COPYRIGHT

"Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself." (wikipedia)

Despite this definition, many social media pages have the terms of use that not many people bother to read (often including myself), that has you agree that your content is now available for the third party to use. For example, Instagram's Terms of Use enable the company to select images that users have posted on the site and sell them to a third-party marketing company (lexology.com). This is an unlikely scenario, but technically possible without violating any copyright laws.

For us to share relatable content and be approachable, we need to share actual faces from our  company. So far we've introduced the people working at the office, but we want to share stories of our employees that actually do the work in the field. We also share stories from our clients - we take interviews and share photos.

To be able to do this, we have to get their signature on a contract that tells them where we will use the content, and what it means that the ownership of those photos and words are now our. This part is a little tricky with some older people, as they have a hard time understanding the importance and value of social media. They are incredibly pleased with our services and definitely want to help, but it is a little hard for them to wrap their heads around it. What I like to do, is tell them that no content of any sort will be published anywhere without their verbal consent of the produced material. This applies to both photos and text. Especially with elder people with family, we also call their close relative and tell them what we're doing, and get their verbal consent as well. Verbal consent is gathered from our own employees too, and their consent is written to our secure internal communication application.

2b

I typed onto Google my name, and the first thing that popped up was my personal (private) Instagram account, then my Facebook account, then my art page. The next results were of someone that has the same name as me, but is already dead. Next result is my LinkedIn profile, and then Fonecta info. After those my thesis is found, and a little after that an article that was written of my art show at the beginning of 2020. After those results only name meanings, and such pop up.

I went to image search, and not many pictures of my face pop up. Some paintings, some faces, but mainly pictures of things that do not relate to me. 

The information seems to be correct. It reminded me that I should really update my artwork's website, as it is very outdated and can be found so easily. 

I have control on what information is online. If I choose to not share it - it wont be shared. If I post it somewhere, I cannot be sure where it might end up at. I am always responsible for anything I ever post on any social media platform. By changing your account or other content to be private will certainly cut out some audience, but it would be a complete illusion to think that things done and said in a private Facebook group will never get out of there. Or private Instagram account. All of the content is usable for the site holder, as well as anyone who can see the content might take a screenshot and send it to their friend. Also related to this, you can't ever be sure that a deleted photo or a comment will not pop up anywhere ever again. 

2c

This article lays down what information must be shared with anyone using a platform. Many (if not all) platforms collect information and data constantly of the people using it. For example, Instagram continuously collects data that can be shared with the users, about when is the best time to post a photo, what kind of audience is interested in your content and what kind of reactions your stories have gotten. 

Article 13 says what must be informed to the "data subject" and what they must agree on - in other words - Terms of Use. All of the points that are presented on this article must be public and open information to the data subject, wherever any data is collected from the data subject. 

These are points that are meant to protect the data subject, but also allow information to be collected and processed.

This current General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was updated on May 2018, which meant a lot of changes for many companies and ngo's. It made internal communication more difficult at the time, but I am quite confident that everyone is now more familiar with how to keep things private and secure on the internet now. I think that these changes are good, but people probably should be a little more aware about the information that is collected of them personally online - and probably would, if the Terms of Use were read, and understood. 

Picture: www.canva.com (picture gallery)