Social media platforms are no longer safe for displaying for sharing information.

Identity and online advocacy stream

Social media platforms are no longer a safe place for sharing information and displaying our identity.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are well-known across the world, these platforms have brought the world together where they are able to connect and interact with each other on real time. Each day these social media websites try to refine their systems and bring in improvement to make a person’s life easier. It created job opportunities, connected loved ones and improved human interaction to the highest level (Vanderkaay, 2010). Most users may not be aware of the downfalls of social media, whilst the positive factors may sound appealing the negative factors are far worse. Displaying an identity on social media and sharing information involves several risk factors such as, identity theft, cyber bullying, propaganda, bias views and fake news (Singh, et al. 2017). This essay shall examine why social media platforms are no longer a safe place for sharing information and displaying our identity.

Identity and Privacy- According to (Papacharissi, 2010) Identity is something that can be used to recognize a person or a group of people by their personality traits, qualities and the beliefs that they hold. One of the most crucial part to a person’s identity is their privacy which has become an increasingly important factor when a person displays their identity online. Most users on social media platforms use their accounts to share or publish their pictures or record themselves during their vacations, restaurants they visit or entertainment facilities (Brusseau, 2019). Especially with well-known celebrities or social media influencers who are actively posting about their daily lives onto social media sharing their everyday activities from their diet plans to their fitness routines, engaging with other users online and influencing them to adapt to that lifestyle (Sabine, 2015).

By taking the above statement into consideration, most celebrities or social media influencers lose their privacy rights since majority of their life is posted online, it is very difficult to maintain privacy since celebrities use these platforms for the purpose of generating revenue and gain popularity. (Snyder, 2013) Social media platforms such as Facebook use this to a person’s advantage against them by violating a user’s right to privacy and completely disregarding the ethics of a person’s online identity by using the data from their pictures and posts online on social media and selling to another company for the sole purpose of making profit (Brusseau, 2019). In early 2018, Facebook was accused of the matter stated above of selling online users’ data to a company called Cambridge analytica where Facebook used their users’ data such as their hobbies, favorite places, travel, fitness, including the likes and comments of particular celebrities, the company had made around millions of dollars by trading data with each other. This was regarded as an unethical act by Facebook and the particular reason for this circumstance was that Facebook had done this without taking the consent of its users online and sold that data to an unknown company, Facebook was later on held at court and were being investigated of being involved in the violation of privacy of its users (Rosenburg, 2018). from the paragraphs above, it can be seen that privacy is a basic human right that every person should be very careful whilst maintain social media accounts, especially when it comes to posting pictures online, which is a representation of a person’s identity, a user may never know that their pictures may be misused or remediated without their consent or knowledge.

Identity theft and Cyber bullying- Moreover, when it comes to identity on social media it can have various risks that should be taken into consideration before displaying your identity and sharing it with the public of who you are and sharing other information (Caselli, 2014). One of the most prominent factors that should be mentioned is that when displaying an identity online with friends or other strangers is that there will be other users who may dislike or be against the content that is being posted by another user, with the comment section made accessible to public, users can comment anything they desire and can affect a person to change his identity just because they may not approve of it, they may make remarks and question their lifestyle choices or make a mockery out of users online (Caselli, 2014). Cyber bullying is known to be popular across all social media platforms, they come in different forms and can affect users differently in ways that other users may not realize (Yildrim, et al. 2019). There is also a risk of having personal information and identity being stolen whilst using social media platforms, especially social media influencers who are faced with this type of risk every day, users on social media would make fake accounts and post the same exact content as other influencers and publish them. The users who make fake profiles can write down comments and start sending messages that are irrelevant or posts that would be considered inappropriate (Caselli, 2014).

Socio-political activities- Furthermore, Social media is place where users are able to share information with each other, such as keeping them updated with their lives and their thoughts, most social media apps allow users to comment on certain posts, write something on their page where everyone who follows them are able to view it (Gil de Zúñiga, et al. 2017). There are more than 3 billion users on social media platforms where around 1 billion users are active daily (Piller, et al. 2012). Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have allowed users to post almost any of their opinions, with countries such as the Unites States of America where freedom of speech is utilized by every citizen. The problem with the ability to speak freely especially on social media websites is that it can cause and create misleading or bias information, an example of this can be seen where some unknown users on Facebook and Twitter took advantage of the power of social media and used it to spread false and misleading information about the corona virus (Fuoco, 2020). Social media has surprisingly become prominent for the exact purpose of spreading fake news in order to promote their false online advocacy (Verhulst, 2020). An example of this can be seen in the 2016 United States of Americas presidential election 2016 where Donald trump was accused being involved in electoral fraud, multiple claims were against Donald Trump for faking votes for the purpose of winning the presidential election in 2016 (Carlson, 2020). This had caused a mayhem in the online community between the republic and democratic parties, leading on to the situation, it had caused strikes and protests being held against Donald trump (Hern, 2020). Social media is being used to promote propaganda and companies from around the world are using social media and creating accounts in order to spread propaganda. For instance, in 2015 a video was released on twitter stating that there had been attacks in Syria, the United States of America was being accused for being ivovled in such attakcs against the country. After a few months the video was monitored and officials found out that it was actually a video was from 2013 in Israel and not Syria (O’Connor, 2019). It can clearly be seen from the example stated above that, Social media is not a safe place, especially with just someone sharing a video and illustrating it in such a way to accuse someone else for being involved in a crime they did not commit, Fake news regarding online advocacy should be monitored closely by its creators since it is proven to cause harm not just for the country but a bad image “Identity” for the users who support it or share it.

Social engagement- However, social media does have numerous benefits that should be taken into consideration. Although social media maybe a place where privacy concerns are on the rise and a place where a person’s identity can be viewed in many perspectives, it has some positive sides for displaying a person’s identity and sharing information. Social media has created opportunities for people to identify themselves with other groups and communities or individuals (Meikle, et al. 2014). Social media has allowed people to interact and engage with each other, by displaying their identities it has allowed them to increase their line of connection throughout the world. For instance, LinkedIn has allowed users to create their profile in which they brief about themselves and their identity to attract other firms or organizations that may be interested in a potential candidate for their company (Johnson, et al. 2020). social media has made a platform where it allowed certain types of identities to become social media influencers where they are able to gain followers or subscribers and gain popularity and money from various social media platforms, the reason as to why they are called social media influencers is because once a person has developed that identity as a social media influencer, they have a certain power to influence the decisions of others, this can relate to influencing purchasing decision of certain products or help promote business that are trying to gain popularity (Lin, et al. 2019). For example, Kylie Jenner who is known to be one of the biggest social media influencers and is also known to be one of the youngest billionaires in the world, the social media influencer promotes her own business of beauty products by posting it on Instagram and within less than 24 hours it has more than a million likes and around 10,000 orders per day (Warren, et . al 2020). The following example shows how strong a word from an influencer can be. There is a vast amount of social media influencers most of which who made a career out of it and changed their lives around by portraying their identity on social media. As for online advocacy, social media has played quite a negative role when it comes to promoting political matters online, according to (Pulido, et al. 2018). social media is the biggest medium to post news regarding politics, it has become a means of communication for not only teenagers but for majority of the world including presidents, prime ministers and royal families to spread awareness regarding political, economic and social concerns. It has allowed messages to be spread all around the world and is known to be the best ways of increasing awareness. An example can be seen where updates of the Unites States of Americas presidential election in 2016 was held on twitter and constant reminders and messages were published from majority of the Unites States citizens to support their political party (Jerome, et al. 2016). Another example can be seen where a “Black Lives Matter” protest was held online after the unfortunate death of George Floyd, a young black male who died of an unfortunate death due to police brutality, this protest raised awareness of police brutality all across the world and educated citizens across the United States (Williamson, et al. 2018).

To conclude, the following essay has examined both the positive and negative impacts of displaying an identity on social media and sharing information are shown to be harmful, although social media has allowed the world to connect with each other and improve interaction, used to create awareness regarding certain political matters, the following reasons of identity theft, personal information being stolen, cyber bullying, fake news and political propaganda, lack of privacy whilst maintaining an identity online outweigh the pros of displaying an identity online as well as sharing information such as political views and other personal data. Analyzing so far, it can be seen that social media undoubtedly has made lives easier from the examples shown above such as social engagement. However, it cannot be denied that it has affected the identity of users online, it can be seen that users are unknowingly sharing their information without realizing the risks that they are involving themselves in. users such as teenagers who are young, who lack knowledge about the dark side of the web and share their identity and information on these platforms for entertainment purposes and get themselves tricked into sharing their data with company’s who take further take advantage of that data without their consent. Thus, “Social media platforms are no longer a safe place for sharing information and displaying our identity.”

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