Online Presence

My online presence has gone up in recent years, especially with my new position as head of social media and media coordinator of our Club Esports Team. I had to create social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to post updates on our team and various things that we are doing as a club, including a charity live-stream over the weekend of November 22-23. Especially since I have to monitor those accounts as well as my own, my online footprint has greatly increased. I do not have a personal website, but I do have control over social media accounts of a club sport for my school.

For my personal accounts, I intentionally have not linked my phone account to my accounts as I do not want that information to be discovered and potentially get several scam calls a day. The only exception is Snapchat due to it being a contact app first, social media site second. My sites all have my name, email, and sometimes my phone number, but that is pretty much it because I do not want too much getting out there. Just by glancing at my Instagram account, as it is the account I most frequently use, they know what school I go to, who my closest friends are, and where I have been and love to go. They know the social media accounts of anyone I include in my posts as well, from my graduating high school class to my college roommate.

I have several sites that I use on a regular basis that have my email address, such as YouTube, Twitch, Fantasy ESPN, Discord, Hulu, Reddit, LinkedIn, my banking app, and Uber. Uber also has my phone number to text me alerts and Twitch has my number to enable Dual Factor Authentication, which I think is the best and only reason why one should give their phone number to a website. The app I am most nervous about is Venmo, as it automatically transfers money from my checking account to pay someone else and vice versa.

I believe that not just Facebook but social media as a whole manipulates its users and their emotions. News that is presented to the consumer of social media can greatly affect one's emotions, especially if the news is mostly negative and full of suspicion. The study conducted by data scientists of Facebook headed by Adam D. I. Kramer did reveal that not only did the news stories affect the emotions of their users, but also affected what they posted. I tend to stay away from news in general, but inevitably the news will creep into my feed and affect me in some way. 

I definitely need to be careful with what I put on social media and what I allow sites to know about me. In today's world, it is so easy for hackers to take whatever they want, so what is stopping them from hacking me? Everyone should be aware of this, no matter what kind of an online presence they have.

Source:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/