About the Internet

     Today in class I read "Web of Risks" by Brad Stone, which was published in 2006. The article, which was originally published in Newsweek talks about how our profiles on social media aren't really private. Though there are settings to protect against this, there are still ways for our boss, professor, parent, police, or complete stranger can get in to our profiles to see what we post and how we act. 
       Facebook as we know, was created by Marc Zuckerberg, who originally intended it to be used for college students to communicate. Soon it exploded and opened to the public, and now more than eight million people have profiles on Facebook. These social media sites have their pros and their cons. For example, in the reading it mentions a college student by the name of Jason Johnson who created a MySpace page. People from his school could hear his favorite song, learn his birthday, or find out that he was gay. The school he went to was none other than the University of Cumberland's, a Southwest Baptist School. The handbook for the school states that all students must uphold a "Christian Lifestyle"  which the school president explained included a ban on homosexuality. Jason was expelled from the school, but hired a lawyer and took the school to court, so he could transfer to a new school with a clean record.
       Using social media in this way, I believe, is wrong. Sure its okay to check up on someone's profile, but with good reason. Like this other example of a college applicant who had a picture of himself with a bottle of vodka. He ended up not being able to get into that college, because he was demonstrating illegal behavior.


/!\ EDIT:   This is going to be a response to the above paragraph, written as an edit instead of a new post as instructed by the professor. This response is about agreeing or disagreeing with what I said above, and what I think about the author for writing "Web of Risks". 
       ~The author, Brad Stone did portray his opinion about the web in this writing, and I agree with him in some ways. I agree that the web is a dangerous place and that posting personal information could come back to haunt someone in the future, but I also believe that someone should be able to do as they wish.