Thursday, 16 June 2016

Social media and surveillance

The article begins by talking about the different aspects of everyone's life and how there are different types of small "life spheres" that affect the way we essentially behave. These "life spheres" could be family life, friend life, school life. Each different type of sphere has different type of behaviour depending on people and the article essentially talks about how everyone is a type of actor that changes their behaviour and persona as we switch between these "life spheres". The article then focuses a lot more on social media and digital surveillance on society. It talks about how large companies such as Facebook or Google are actually monitoring their users on a day to day basis and essentially use this as a way to gain profit, for example, Google could track a user's behaviour in order to target specific adverts towards their tastes at these users which would increase their profit through efficiency. The article finally talks about government surveillance by talking about a recent and very controversial case of the whistle-blower Edward Snowden who essentially leaked confidential information about the government which the government considered treason. The article focuses on the idea of how the government argues that their surveillance is for the greater good of it's populace and society as they would be paying a small price of privacy for the freedom of everyone else, but this can be argued that we are essentially giving up our own personal freedom which is wrong.

In my own personal opinion I'm not too bothered with people or large companies tracking me online. This is because a lot of the information that I put up online is something that I have no trouble with people knowing. I willingly put up information that I would be happy to let people know because it doesn't affect me negatively if someone else were to have it. If there are somethings that I don't want people to know, I wouldn't put it up. I think it is the classic saying of "you have nothing to hide, if you have nothing to fear". I think this is a small price to pay because the advantages of an open source and interconnected world through the internet outweigh the disadvantages. The internet and advanced technology has increased society in different ways and rapidly created new opportunities. However, it can be argued that this type of attitude can be abused by the government or any other person until people's freedom is at risk, but I think that if it were ever to come to that then people would rise up against the totalitarian dictatorships. 

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