Yesterday I was caught up in a discussion with a fellow student about Twitter when she posted a public message to me after discussing one of her ‘tweets’. It dawned to me that I could not delete that message as it was her ‘tweet’ and there’s nothing I could do about it. So she can write anything to me and everybody who reads it will link that message and me together. So it doesn’t matter what I write on Twitter, although I was a bit careful at first, now all other users can write notices to me which can put me in a bad light.
The same is happening now on Facebook where these tweets can be transferred to, so all friends of me or even friends of friends can see my tweets in my feed or their own. And I can tag photo’s of other people with their name and it will show in my feed and theirs, being displayed for both our friends or friends of friends. They could remove the tag but the information will not leave the feed.
So even if we’re very careful on what we write ourselves on websites like Twitter and Facebook, other users can write things about us or upload pictures we rather not have online. And of course the netiquette should prevent this, but will people respond when you tell them not to? I know my friends would, but we’re not alone out there. And I don’t have a solution just like that with a snap of my fingers.
