Social networking sites - do we share too much information?
TriumphantAngel
Posts: 1,760
I just finished reading the story of the mom who lost her little boy as a result of a backyard pool drowning incident, and the furore it has created because she shared this information with her 5,000 contacts via twitter. i don't know the full circumstances, and i just want to make it clear i am in no way attacking the mom or saying that her twittering contributed to his death. it's an awful thing for any parent to have to deal with and i feel terribly sad for the family.
i don't use twitter, i have facebook but do not use it to 'keep in touch with people'. i can do that via phone, email, or face to face contact for anyone that i really want to. facebook allows you to suspend your account but not cancel it. that in itself annoys me. this story to me, raises an interesting question about how much information we should share about ourselves and the timing of it. why should say the aunt or uncle of this little boy hear about this in such a cold manner, the exact same time as say perhaps someone you went to school with ten years ago and have barely spoke to since?
interested to hear your thoughts..
A mother in the US has come under fire for updating her Twitter status while her two-year-old son was dying.
Shellie Ross sent a message to her 5000-plus followers 34 minutes after paramedics arrived at her Florida home to attempt to revive her son Bryson, who had been found floating unconscious in the pool, US ABC News reports.
"Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool," Mrs Ross wrote at 6.12pm local time.
Five hours later, after Bryson had been pronounced dead, Mrs Ross Tweeted again: "Remembering my million dollar baby".
The 11.08pm tweet included a photo of Bryson in her post and followed it up with another photo post just minutes later.
Mrs Ross's 11-year-old son found Bryson floating in the pool and called 911 — he and his mother had been cleaning out a chicken coop while Bryson played in the backyard.
Police say Mrs Ross — who tweets under the name Military_Mom — said her son had been in the pool "maybe five minutes", and attempted CPR on him while on the phone to emergency services.
Police said they are aware of Mrs Ross's Twitter account but would not comment further as the investigation was ongoing.
Ms Ross's use of Twitter has sparked outrage with Twitter users and other online commentators, including food blogger Madison McGraw, who said she was shocked to read the tweets.
"The first I thought when I saw the tweet was that it was very sad," Ms McGraw was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying.
"But then I thought, 'Who would tweet that her son just drowned?' I couldn't believe it."
i don't use twitter, i have facebook but do not use it to 'keep in touch with people'. i can do that via phone, email, or face to face contact for anyone that i really want to. facebook allows you to suspend your account but not cancel it. that in itself annoys me. this story to me, raises an interesting question about how much information we should share about ourselves and the timing of it. why should say the aunt or uncle of this little boy hear about this in such a cold manner, the exact same time as say perhaps someone you went to school with ten years ago and have barely spoke to since?
interested to hear your thoughts..
A mother in the US has come under fire for updating her Twitter status while her two-year-old son was dying.
Shellie Ross sent a message to her 5000-plus followers 34 minutes after paramedics arrived at her Florida home to attempt to revive her son Bryson, who had been found floating unconscious in the pool, US ABC News reports.
"Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool," Mrs Ross wrote at 6.12pm local time.
Five hours later, after Bryson had been pronounced dead, Mrs Ross Tweeted again: "Remembering my million dollar baby".
The 11.08pm tweet included a photo of Bryson in her post and followed it up with another photo post just minutes later.
Mrs Ross's 11-year-old son found Bryson floating in the pool and called 911 — he and his mother had been cleaning out a chicken coop while Bryson played in the backyard.
Police say Mrs Ross — who tweets under the name Military_Mom — said her son had been in the pool "maybe five minutes", and attempted CPR on him while on the phone to emergency services.
Police said they are aware of Mrs Ross's Twitter account but would not comment further as the investigation was ongoing.
Ms Ross's use of Twitter has sparked outrage with Twitter users and other online commentators, including food blogger Madison McGraw, who said she was shocked to read the tweets.
"The first I thought when I saw the tweet was that it was very sad," Ms McGraw was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying.
"But then I thought, 'Who would tweet that her son just drowned?' I couldn't believe it."
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We share however much we please. I imagine that 99% of us understand that our photos, blogs, etc. are recorded and kept by corporations, governments, and private individuals.
My #1 passion in Life is understanding human behaviour. It fascinates the hell out of me to try to learn what motivates people, what makes us tick, how we form perceptions of the world around us. Personally, I love sharing my life lessons with anyone who will listen (or typing with anyone who will read.) I was brutally flamed on this forum for sharing honest info. I found it cathartic.
One day, I was browsing through the friends section on an acquaintance's social networking page. One of the avatars was a photo of a woman posing with a dead foetus! Seriously. She was cradling it up to her face. My reaction was, "Why would she broadcast that image to the entire webosphere?!?!" I clicked over to her page, and I soon had my answer. The dead foetus was her beloved fourth child. The first and only son. Born at 20 weeks gestation. She had an album full of pictures: Dead foetus held by Mom, by Dad, posed with both parents, close up of tiny foot with wedding ring around his ankle, tiny footprints tattooed on Mom's arm. To me, the avatar pic was creepy but intriguing. To the woman, it was love pure and simple.
I get squeamish when my MySpace 'friends' announce they are menstruating. In my opinion, that is too much information! Even I think that some things should be private.
why build a nationwide intelligence database when you can have the people your spying on do it for you?
I've just learned from another cousin that a great-aunt isn't doing well, and I learned this because she posted on FB for everyone to pray for her grandmother (my aunt). My cousin can't call every single family member every time my elderly aunt seems to be taking a turn for the worse, so it will probably be another week before the news travels to my grandparents, then to my mom, and then to me. I appreciate the timely updates from FB and the opportunity to send my love before time runs out, and I'm sure my aunt appreciates all the prayers that have been mobilized so quickly on her behalf.
While I would never want to find out about the sudden death of a loved one via Facebook or Twitter, I can understand how a distraught mom might quickly reach out to everyone she knows to request prayer to save her son. :(
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
when i first moved away from home, i thought it would be a great way to stay in touch with my family and really close friends. eventually it just got really hard not to offend people. i had so many friend requests from people i had not had contact with for such a long time. add to that the people that meet you and think after 5 minutes it's acceptable to become your facebook friend.
maybe i just took it too seriously. i mean people always say don't put stuff there that you would not want anyone to see. i do get that, i'm happy for my parents/good friends to see pics of me out having fun and hearing what i've been up to and reading all about it. just not so happy for people i'm not overly close with having the same priveledges. i guess the easy answer is to only add people you are very close to, but have you ever tried explaining to someone why you won't add them. holy crap. ridiculous. i just don't care enough about it to even put myself in that position anymore.
my friends all think i'm crazy. ah well.
That being said - I joined Facebook a few months ago - and I have lots of friends that I have never 'met'...but it's nice...I know that everything I put up there is there for public comsumption - I am careful about the info I put up there, and wouldn't post something that I was uncomfortable with people knowing. I'm an open person, and a friendly one as well. I LIKE talking to people, and I feel totally comfortable knowing that people can see whatever I put up there. I keep in contact with all my family via Facebook because they all live on the other side of the country, and we are all busy and sometimes we don't get the chance to talk enough...but I also keep in contact with actual friends through facebook, to organise playdates for the kids, or to catch up with someone..or to arrange to catch up with someone lol! Plus I also get to see what my friends are doing, and sometimes I wouldn't necessarily know that stuff because we get busy. When your kids take over the phone, you need to find an alternative way to arrange things, and for me it's facebook. People that don't want any information about themselves to be public knowledge shouldn't have a facebook account, but that doesn't mean that everyone shouldn't use it. It works for a lot of people, me included...
facebook recently changed its privacy settings, you can turn off indexing so a google search will no longer pull up your facebook and you can keep things private to everybody but friends, i think you can select just your family seeing it as well....
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
I'm a really open person too, so I don't care too much about what people think about what I post. I am careful, however, not to post anything I wouldn't want my great-aunt (I have a lot of great-aunts
Whether or not we see things eye-to-eye, I'm happy for the deeper understanding it's given me into the minds and lives of some of the people I love the most.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
I do the same, as well as using a different name rather than my real name. Facebook, in my opinion, is a gov't conspiracy that no one should truly divulge themselves on, because everything is being tracked. But, I do like keeping in touch with some friends I can't see very easily.
I find the OP story rather disturbing, that she needed to get online and talk about her son, rather than deal with it in the real world.
I use facebook more less to people watch, and probably update my status once every few weeks. I have high school & college friends on there, relatives (including my mother), and work colleagues and work networking people as friends. I don't post anything that I wouldn't want any of those people to know. I live 500 miles from where I grew up, and it gives me a chance to see a bit of what is going on there.
I just remembered that I do have a twitter account... I joined it last March for the NHL trading deadline. I found by following a bunch of hockey writers/reporters, that was the best way to get the scoop on trades that were going down... same thing when the free agent signing period started or for the NFL draft. I've never tweeted anything tho.
As the twitter drowning lady, I can't really say anything was wrong with what she did... maybe in a frantic moment, I would call a friend and tell them what was happening, she just did that on a much bigger scale.
On a general note, I don't know what's worse, being so narcissistic that you think that thousands of people care what senseless crap you post about your daily life, or that there are actually thousands of people who actually do seem to care.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
said it better than i can
and given their recent privacy changes, everyone should check their settings
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/1 ... 96243.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=12685
I use it myself, regardless...
IMO, if the world goes to such shit that the CIA, CSIS or whomever want to track ME down, they won't need facebook to do it....
To each his own, i guess. i'm not judging. The real problem i have with facebook, etc. is that, really, let's be honest, all they're really for is to make it easier and more likely for husbands and wives to cheat on each other. i don't know a ton of people, but even i know more than a couple families that have busted up because of infidelity that began on facebook.
Fuck facebook.
That's exactly how I feel. If I wanted a particular person from the past in my life, they'd already be in it. If they're not, chances are I'm not interested in seeing or hearing about them now. No facebook for me. Twitter's fun, but I do it without my real name, and mainly to keep up with people/entities I'm interested in, and NO work connections on it.
R.i.p. My Dad - May 28, 2007
R.i.p. Black Tail (cat) - Sept. 20, 2008
’I don’t care to talk to those people’….well then, don’t. You don’t agree to talk to every person that talks to you by signing up.
Some people I know use facebook as an actual NETWORKING site…they add as many people as possible to gain a larger audience for promo purposes, or to spread their beliefs, or who knows why else…Some people add every person they've met....others add only their immediate family. Sure for some it's an ego thing...doesnt' mean it is for everyone.
The privacy settings are customizable; even if you add thousands of people, you can control what each of those people sees on your page. I won't bother getting in to all of the ways the site can be used, but if you really think it's just for infidelity and ego strokage, you're very mistaken.
As for the infidelity....you can't possibly blame a website, can you? Does the person using it have no accountability once they sign up? .....trust?
I don't understand why people feel the need to justify not using it. The justifications never make sense to me. We don't care if you don't use it...but dont' act like you're above it...
p.s stop send me any application in facebook(mafia wars,kisses.farm)i ignore them all.
"..That's One Happy Fuckin Ghost.."
“..That came up on the Pillow Case...This is for the Greek, With Our Apologies.....”
All joking aside, do you know something else i've noticed about facebook? Facebook people tend to get REALLY defensive when people question facebook. Seriously. Its weird. A good friend of mine uses facebook. i tease him pretty hard about it, but i had to stop. He got all red faced screaming and hollering defending his facebook usage. Another time i heard a couple of coworkers talking about facebook. One asked "why didn't you facebook me last night?" When i queried them why they needed to communicate via facebook when they see eachother EVERYDAY at work, they got seriously pissed off and defensive. Then there's your post in response to mine. Lighten up, Francis.
not everyone who doesnt facebook feels the need to justify why they dont.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
I know you can privatize so much on your profile, but really, privatizing is not the point of a social network.
But now you've sidestepped the counterpoints I made, and projected more of your weird friends' behaviours onto normal FB users like me
My point was (I guess this applies to jeanwah's last comment about social networking too), that the platform is so customizable that it doesn't make sense to make broad generalizations about its users and uses...The 'point' of social networking is pretty much whatever you want it to be....sorry for getting all heavy on the train
absolutely!
i don't use any of the social networking sites. yet.
i have come to see some of the good of it (i always recognized the bad side
honestly, if not for pearl jam, friends and touring...i'd probably not even consider it. i have ZERO desire to be tracked down from people in my past, past/future employers checking me out on the web, etc, etc. but for touring/keeping in touch with pj friends around the globe...i see some good. so yes, i am considering an account with a username. no need to get too personal on the net.
i never thought so either, but man...at times it's like, WHY aren't you on fb? :? sheesh. just call or e-mail, ok?
Let's just breathe...
I am myself like you somehow
Whatever happened to that thumbs up emoticon??
:thumbup:
Thanks!
http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/267112
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'