Privacy: A blessing and a curse

The privacy the internet provides is both a blessing and a curse. Through apps like yik yak and formspring there has been a lot of bullying and abuse, but they have also served as outlets for people to express less commonly held viewpoints. While on a campus with a very outspoken and opinionated student body, it can be intimidating to share one’s viewpoints if they don’t align with the majority. Yik yak and apps like it give the soft spoken a platform from which they can share their ideas and show other people the other side of the story without having to put their reputations on the line. One thing I have noticed about yik yak at tufts is that the idea of the community policing itself really has worked through the downvote system and I have only really seen positive posts about members of the Tufts community.

Having a name attached to your Facebook provides accountability in many senses, however I think most people are worried about putting their real name on their Facebook because they don’t want future employers or the like to be able to peer into their private lives as easily. Yes cyberbullying definitely exists, but it exists on anonymous and non-anonymous platforms alike, as stated in boyd’s “The Politics of Real Names” it is, “important to note that both Facebook and face-to-face settings continue to be rife with meanness and cruelty” (boyd).

From previous readings I was aware that Facebook had a lot of access to our personal information, but reading the exact text was still pretty alarming. Previously I thought that it was fine Facebook kept my information because I had nothing to hide, after realizing the extent of the information they gathered though I now think it is a bit excessive and uncomfortable. The fact that they can hand this information over to third parties or different companies if they were to switch hands was also pretty alarming.