I was channel surfing last week and came
upon a programme on BBC Knowledge with
the above title. The description of the show
says, “Meet people from across the UK who
have made some of the most extraordinary
faux pas on Facebook and other social media
in the last few years.”
All of the people featured have learnt the
hard way to think twice before uploading
pictures and personal information to social
media, and be mindful of what they tweet.
There were two friends who got booted out of
America and lost money shelled out for a
holiday because of a tweet that one of them
put out weeks before their trip. While he
tweeted about plans to “destroy America”,
intending to have a good time, drink and take
in all the fun Hollywood had to offer,
Homeland Security was not taking any
chances and officers were waiting for the pair
on their arrival at LAX. They were detained,
interrogated, and finally, denied entry into
America.
The hacker who hacked into Selena Gomez’s
Facebook account and put out some posts
that turned Justin Bieber fans into a hate
army against the actress admitted that when
hackers attack, they are just thinking of the
challenge of beating/breaching security
protections, not much about how it affects
the lives of the people whose accounts they
hack into. Well, the authorities in the UK
needed to send a message that such invasion
of people’s lives is unacceptable and gave
the young man a 12-month prison sentence.
A Scots Guard was barred from the Royal
Wedding of William and Kate for posting a
tweet that referred to Kate Middleton as a
“posh b*&ch.” If you don’t remember
anything about social media, at least try to
remember that badmouthing your employers
is a big no-no (that is if your job is
important to you). Also refrain from posting
inappropriate photographs that somehow put
the reputation of your employer under strain.
There were also cases of people uploading
videos of illegal behaviour to YouTube – there
was one person who filmed his speed racing
and posted it on YouTube for the
entertainment of his friends. The police were
not entertained and they showed up at his
doorstep. One of his punishments was to stay
off YouTube for two years.
There is another programme, Catfish the TV
show, on MTV that shows the danger of
carrying on an intimate relationship with
people you don’t really know on social media.
In Catfish, people who have been carrying on
relationships with others on social media and
have never met each other contact the
programme to help them meet with social
media love. Often they reach out to the show
because the other party is being evasive,
avoiding a meeting and is generally suspect
in their behaviour.
Sometime last year, news circulated that the
Facebook post of a young lady cost her
parents an $80,000 settlement, which the
father had been awarded in a discrimination
suit against his former employers. The girl
posted, “Mama and Papa Snay won the case
against Gulliver. Gulliver is now officially
paying for my vacation to Europe this
summer. SUCK IT.” Nothing wrong with
bragging when you feel that you or your loved
one has received deserved justice. The
problem was that as part of the settlement,
Snay and his wife had agreed to keep it
confidential. Discussing the settlement with
their daughter was in violation of the
confidentiality agreement, not to mention a
disclosure made to 1,200 of their daughter’s
Facebook friends.
Even heads of state have found themselves
entangled in the web of social media and
related matters. Not too long ago, the
President of the United States of America
(POTUS), Barack Obama, found himself, once
again, the subject of a selfie scandal when
David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox (Baseball
Team) got a selfie photo with POTUS, which
he tweeted to his followers. The problem is
that the selfie became part of a Samsung
marketing campaign, and the image of
POTUS cannot be used for commercial gain.
And who can forget the buzz over POTUS’
selfie with the UK’s David Cameron and
Denmark’s Helle Thorning-Schmidt at the
funeral of Nelson Mandela in 2013? It seems
the David Ortiz selfie was the last of its kind
though, as POTUS has ignored subsequent
requests for selfies at public appearances.
Last year, the Prime Minister of India,
Narendra Modi, came under fire on election-
day when he tweeted a selfie of his inked
finger against the party symbol, the Lotus,
while at the polling station, and outside.
Electoral laws in India do not allow
politicians to make public rallies or use
media to “display to the public any election
campaign materials within 48 hours of an
election and also within 100m of the polling
station.”
And at home, it is undeniable that social
media played a role in the level of
participation in the 2015 elections. It has
been a while since we had elections as
exciting and engaging as the March/April
2015 elections.
There have been cases where homicides and
suicides have been directly linked to social
media activities, so we must all be very
careful that our desire to have fun and share
our lives with our friends and fans does not
bring us harm. The bottom line is that we
must pay more attention to what we decide
to share with the world and when. Keep in
mind that the rules that apply in the real
world do not vanish in the virtual world of
the Internet.





























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Christine01:
Shear

lol but you gotta admit his post makes sense. i enjoyed reading it.

southernbelle:

lol but you gotta admit his post makes sense. i enjoyed reading it.

Sure, I enjoyed reading it too.