Wikipedia defines censorship as "the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by the censor." Merriam-Webster defines censor as "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable."
So here's the question. Is a request not to respond negatively to a post on Facebook censorship?
Senator Edward Kennedy died last night. A friend of mine, who is a friend on Facebook, posted a status update saying "RIP" and a note of respect for Senator Kennedy, and followed up with a comment requesting that her conservative friends respect her feelings and not post anything negative in response to her post. Unfortunately, two of her "friends" were not respectful of this request and proceeded to bash Kennedy. Vehemently. A few of her friends, myself included, suggested that - out of respect for their friend - perhaps they should refrain from these kinds of statements. That if those were their opinions, they could post them on their own statuses or their own pages, and leave her post alone. Unfortunately, they argued that Facebook was a public forum, and they were entitled to say whatever they wanted. That her request was censorship.
I think that censorship isn't the issue here. I think this is a case of respect. Whether or not you are a fan of Senator Kennedy, the woman asked her friends to respect her feelings. And they didn't. And that's wrong.
And in the end, both of them ended up apologizing to her. For not respecting her request. So in fact, respect was the issue - not censorship.
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Who I Am This Time?
Have you ever Googled yourself? It's interesting to see what pops up.
When I first tried to Google "Barbara Eberhard" years ago, the first entry was about Eberhard I, a graf (Duke) in Germany in the 14th century who was married to a Barbara. There is some evidence that my family may be related to that family, but really it's very hard to tell. One of my uncles has been doing a genealogical search and has the family traced to within a few generations, and those generations come from the same part of Germany. So it's entirely possible that the Barbara from the 14th century and I are related. Even so, I don't take that search as an entry related to me.
These days, when I do a Google search of my name, I find many more links that are actually me. Of the top 9 links returned, 4 are me - my bio as a member of the Advisory Board of the GMU College of Health and Human Services, my LinkedIn page, my bio on our company website, and some kind of website that seems to match bits of information together and tries to match people that way. Still, it's interesting that almost half the searches are "accurate" in the sense that they are about me.
Three of the top 13 searches when I use AOL Search are me - my LinkedIn page, my company bio, and the CHHS bio. Interesting that AOL Search did not find the spoke.com entry.
The newest search engine from Microsoft, Bing, found a bunch of links that none of the others found - my Facebook page, my contribution to Hillary Clinton's campaign from last year, my entry on Classmates.com (which I haven't looked at in years) - for 6 of the 11 links.
Part of the reason that I do these searches on myself is to see if anything bad gets posted about me. Another part of the reason is that, in this day and age, when you meet someone, they often "google" you to see what they can find out. So again, I want to make sure that what's posted about me is appropriate and actually me.
So the question is what would I do if there was a link that was about me, but was not something that I generated. The spoke.com entry is a little weird, but at least it's ultimately about me - my last job, but still it's accurate information. But what if there was some kind of negative information posted. What would I do? Honestly, I have no idea. How would I prove it was untrue, who would I contact to get it changed or removed, and really, does any information on the Web ever disappear completely? I guess I'll cross that bridge if/when it ever comes up.
In the meantime, it's interesting to see what "Barbara Eberhard" yields.
P.S. Extra points for anyone who recognizes where the title of today's blog comes from.
When I first tried to Google "Barbara Eberhard" years ago, the first entry was about Eberhard I, a graf (Duke) in Germany in the 14th century who was married to a Barbara. There is some evidence that my family may be related to that family, but really it's very hard to tell. One of my uncles has been doing a genealogical search and has the family traced to within a few generations, and those generations come from the same part of Germany. So it's entirely possible that the Barbara from the 14th century and I are related. Even so, I don't take that search as an entry related to me.
These days, when I do a Google search of my name, I find many more links that are actually me. Of the top 9 links returned, 4 are me - my bio as a member of the Advisory Board of the GMU College of Health and Human Services, my LinkedIn page, my bio on our company website, and some kind of website that seems to match bits of information together and tries to match people that way. Still, it's interesting that almost half the searches are "accurate" in the sense that they are about me.
Three of the top 13 searches when I use AOL Search are me - my LinkedIn page, my company bio, and the CHHS bio. Interesting that AOL Search did not find the spoke.com entry.
The newest search engine from Microsoft, Bing, found a bunch of links that none of the others found - my Facebook page, my contribution to Hillary Clinton's campaign from last year, my entry on Classmates.com (which I haven't looked at in years) - for 6 of the 11 links.
Part of the reason that I do these searches on myself is to see if anything bad gets posted about me. Another part of the reason is that, in this day and age, when you meet someone, they often "google" you to see what they can find out. So again, I want to make sure that what's posted about me is appropriate and actually me.
So the question is what would I do if there was a link that was about me, but was not something that I generated. The spoke.com entry is a little weird, but at least it's ultimately about me - my last job, but still it's accurate information. But what if there was some kind of negative information posted. What would I do? Honestly, I have no idea. How would I prove it was untrue, who would I contact to get it changed or removed, and really, does any information on the Web ever disappear completely? I guess I'll cross that bridge if/when it ever comes up.
In the meantime, it's interesting to see what "Barbara Eberhard" yields.
P.S. Extra points for anyone who recognizes where the title of today's blog comes from.
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Ever-Expanding Circle of Friends
I've been on Facebook for about 6 months now. I joined primarily because I have a few friends with young kids who post pictures of their kids there, and I wanted to be able to see how they change and grow over the years. I was a little concerned about my age relative to Facebook. I assumed, wrongly as it turns out, that Facebook - like MySpace - was primarily for "kids". I am not a kid. Haven't been for quite a while now. But I got a couple of invitations from friends not all that much younger than I am, so I figured I would try it.
When you join Facebook, you tell it what email account to associate with your Facebook profile. Facebook then searches that email account's address book against the list of Facebook users and prompts you to add any it finds as "friends." Now I, like most people, have a few email addresses on my list of emails for people with whom I have only limited contact. For example, one of the people in my address book is a guy who plays in a band that I go to see fairly routinely. He's in my book because I did some work with the guys a few years ago on their marketing materials, and I had added his email at that point and just never took it off. I've had the same email account since email first started becoming a popular thing in 1994. So this guy was on my list of people that Facebook popped up and asked me if I wanted to add as a friend. Well, I know him and he knows my name and we've talked a time or two at shows. So I thought what the heck. He can always say no, right? But he didn't. And we became Facebook friends. There were a couple of other examples of this in my address book - the woman who serves as medical director for the animal rescue organization with whom I volunteer was another one. She too was on Facebook and she too accepted my invitation to be her friend. Basically, I was too lazy to pick and choose among the addresses that Facebook found, so I just said send an invitation to all of them. What the heck?
When I talk to people about being on Facebook, one of the first questions I get is often, "So how many of your "friends" are people that you really don't know?" At first, I thought this was kind of a weird question. I mean, I had those few I mentioned, but most of the people who became my friends on Facebook are people that I genuinely know. Friends and family that I would normally email. After all, that's where the list started, right? In fact, I was shocked to find that Facebook came up with 42 such people from my address book. I never thought in a million years that I would know that many people on Facebook.
Facebook being a social networking thing, however, that list has grown and grown. The first person to find me on Facebook just completely out of the blue was my first boyfriend from back in 8th grade. He actually found me on LinkedIn first, and then one of us (I don't remember who) found the other on Facebook. It really makes much more sense of us to be connected on Facebook rather than LinkedIn, but still to make that connection again on either site was quite remarkable. And great fun. Several of my family members have joined since I joined, and there's now quite a network of us who share our thoughts and pictures when we never have before. Really fun. I was waiting for the day when the six degrees of separation thing happened and someone from my list knew someone I knew from a completely different setting. It finally happened this past weekend. A woman I know from a group of friends who met from hanging out at a bar went to high school with one of my old karate instructors. (see the "Old Friends" post.)
My initial list of 40 friends has gotten to be almost 100 people. I gained three more just today. There are still a few that I don't really know (one guy from my high school class that I wouldn't have known in a million years, but I figured why not). But most of that 100 people I do know. So I feel like I can say honestly, when asked, that most of my friends on Facebook are really my friends.
The thing is, before Facebook, if I had to tell you how many people I know in the world well enough to connect to them on a social networking site, I'd have said something like 40. And here I am, about to hit 100 friends. Amazing.
When you join Facebook, you tell it what email account to associate with your Facebook profile. Facebook then searches that email account's address book against the list of Facebook users and prompts you to add any it finds as "friends." Now I, like most people, have a few email addresses on my list of emails for people with whom I have only limited contact. For example, one of the people in my address book is a guy who plays in a band that I go to see fairly routinely. He's in my book because I did some work with the guys a few years ago on their marketing materials, and I had added his email at that point and just never took it off. I've had the same email account since email first started becoming a popular thing in 1994. So this guy was on my list of people that Facebook popped up and asked me if I wanted to add as a friend. Well, I know him and he knows my name and we've talked a time or two at shows. So I thought what the heck. He can always say no, right? But he didn't. And we became Facebook friends. There were a couple of other examples of this in my address book - the woman who serves as medical director for the animal rescue organization with whom I volunteer was another one. She too was on Facebook and she too accepted my invitation to be her friend. Basically, I was too lazy to pick and choose among the addresses that Facebook found, so I just said send an invitation to all of them. What the heck?
When I talk to people about being on Facebook, one of the first questions I get is often, "So how many of your "friends" are people that you really don't know?" At first, I thought this was kind of a weird question. I mean, I had those few I mentioned, but most of the people who became my friends on Facebook are people that I genuinely know. Friends and family that I would normally email. After all, that's where the list started, right? In fact, I was shocked to find that Facebook came up with 42 such people from my address book. I never thought in a million years that I would know that many people on Facebook.
Facebook being a social networking thing, however, that list has grown and grown. The first person to find me on Facebook just completely out of the blue was my first boyfriend from back in 8th grade. He actually found me on LinkedIn first, and then one of us (I don't remember who) found the other on Facebook. It really makes much more sense of us to be connected on Facebook rather than LinkedIn, but still to make that connection again on either site was quite remarkable. And great fun. Several of my family members have joined since I joined, and there's now quite a network of us who share our thoughts and pictures when we never have before. Really fun. I was waiting for the day when the six degrees of separation thing happened and someone from my list knew someone I knew from a completely different setting. It finally happened this past weekend. A woman I know from a group of friends who met from hanging out at a bar went to high school with one of my old karate instructors. (see the "Old Friends" post.)
My initial list of 40 friends has gotten to be almost 100 people. I gained three more just today. There are still a few that I don't really know (one guy from my high school class that I wouldn't have known in a million years, but I figured why not). But most of that 100 people I do know. So I feel like I can say honestly, when asked, that most of my friends on Facebook are really my friends.
The thing is, before Facebook, if I had to tell you how many people I know in the world well enough to connect to them on a social networking site, I'd have said something like 40. And here I am, about to hit 100 friends. Amazing.
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