We have spent a vast amount of time in COM301 discussing and debating the pros and cons of social networking. Is it beneficial or not? How does it compare to other types of communication? What is people's obsession with it? This article suggests one possible theory to the last question. People are lazy. Since there are no laws telling federal authorities that they must have a more reliable source than Facebook to make a decision, they are not going to put in the extra effort to find more verification. In class, we have often talked about people's uncanny abilities to create a different persona online. If college students are able to figure out that on social networking, not all is what it seems, shouldn't the feds realize it too? In addition, everyone knows that the security on social networking sites aren't exactly top of the line. User's accounts can easily be hacked into or created by someone else. There is no telling if there is any truth to what is found a person's social network page.
Honestly, I find this situation somewhat bizarre. Americans trust homeland security to keep our borders safe, and now I find out that Facebook is being used as a "reliable" source for this? There is an enormous amount of people trying to get into this country, and security could deny them because of a picture on his or her MySpace page from five years ago. I don't even remember what kind of pictures I have on my Facebook from last year. Who knew that a site like Facebook, which is supposed to help "you connect to people", could determine what country a person makes those connections in.
2 comments:
Federal Authorities using sites like Facebook to determine something as important as citizenship is absolutely ridiculous! I've heard of employers using facebook to investigate potential candidates for job (which is why my facebook page is loaded with privacy settings), but never the Feds. It doesn't seem like a fair way to operate at all.
So, after all of this blogging and researching...I am finding that CMC and basically all online things are completely ridiculous. Seriously, how can the feds decide on your citizenship though online networking! There are fake facebooks out there. I am friends with a dog on facebook. I know some who made a facebook for thier 1 year old child. Dumb.
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