Social Network Status Updates Come Back To Bite You

from the is-nothing-private? dept

Lots of people wrestle with the question of what in their lives is public or private, particularly as they put more of them online. But it may pay to err on the side of caution, as plenty of instances continue to pop up to remind us that really, very little, if anything is private once it's online. Take the case of a Philadelphia Eagles stadium worker, apparently fired after he called the team "retarded" in a status update, for letting a player sign with another team. Or the New York City cop, whose update that he was watching the movie Training Day -- which features Denzel Washington as a cop who doesn't play by the rules -- in order "to brush up on proper police procedure" helped a suspect beat a gun-possession charge. Part of the issue is that as people get more and more friends online, even stuff they think is private essentially becomes public. That will undoubtedly have an effect on people's online behavior, and could hamper the growth of social networking and online life-sharing.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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If You're On A Jury, You Probably Shouldn't Ask Your Facebook Friends For Their Guilty/Not Guilty Votes

from the just-a-suggestion dept

Apparently, a woman in the UK came up with a rather novel approach to "crowdsourcing," when she used Facebook to ask her friends how they would vote in a criminal case for which she was on the jury. Not surprisingly, using Facebook in this manner got her kicked off the jury pretty quickly. Of course, I would guess this isn't the best way to get out of jury duty either, as I'd imagine such a stunt would put you at risk of getting charged with contempt of court as well.

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