My perception of social media changed a lot last week. I went from thinking of it as a sometimes helpful annoyance to a deadly hazard run by criminally negligent executives. Nearly getting kicked to death as a result of a Facebook post will do that to a person, I know that now firsthand. What happened was pretty nasty and could have been lethal, so I’ve spent some time thinking through what I did wrong and could have done better. Let me tell you my story and perhaps you can learn from my mistake.
I defer to no one in my disdain for Facebook (or their partners in crime, the NSA). However, I don't see the rationale for blaming Facebook in this case. What should they have done? Run every posting for a rave against a database of unoccupied homes, or homes listed for sale, or addresses not in the name of the poster? Next, once it was determined that the teens in question were trespassing, and the party had (temporarily) been broken up by law enforcement, should it then have been the responsibility of the sheriff's dept (on their busiest night of the year) to contact Facebook and insist that the post be deleted? Because otherwise I doubt that Facebook would have deleted the post based on information from someone who did not own the property in question. Rather than affix blame after the fact, what preventive steps, if any, could have been taken? I'm wide open to feedback on these points.
The article went smoothly until the part about hispanic kids and the racism word popped up. It left me wondering if white kids would have brought the author to wonder about retaliation from family or friends. Strande indeed...
What a strange story. It begins with an observation on the dark side of social media involving teenagers, shifts to an anecdote about a three-on-one assault, and wraps itself up with a smartphone discussion.
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The Deadly Side of Social Media
Posted by: Rob Enderle November 4, 2013 05:00 AMMy perception of social media changed a lot last week. I went from thinking of it as a sometimes helpful annoyance to a deadly hazard run by criminally negligent executives. Nearly getting kicked to death as a result of a Facebook post will do that to a person, I know that now firsthand. What happened was pretty nasty and could have been lethal, so I’ve spent some time thinking through what I did wrong and could have done better. Let me tell you my story and perhaps you can learn from my mistake.