People you don’t know, from around the world,
can see what you post on social media sites, apparently no matter how your
privacy settings are set. This is one of several problems using social media.
I’m sure you’ve read
about Justin Carter, the teen who is facing felony terrorism charges because of
an alleged threat to go on a shooting spree. According to Justin and his father,
Jack, the comment was a sarcastic response to another player over the online video game "League of
Legends."
According to CNN the court
documents stated that “Justin wrote "I'm f---ed in the head alright. I
think I'ma (sic) shoot up a kindergarten and watch the blood of the innocent
rain down and eat the beating heart of one of them." Jack Carter said his
son followed the claim with "LOL" and "J/K" -- indicating
that the comment wasn't serious.”
A woman in Canada saw
the comments and alerted authorities to what she perceived was a threat. A judge
issued a warrant for Justin’s arrest. Justin’s bail was set at an extraordinarily
high $500,000. 00. Justin spent months in jail where he was beaten by other
inmates, moved to solitary confinement and kept nude “for his own protection.”
An anonymous, good Samaritan
posted Justin’s bail and he is now living back with his parents awaiting trial
on felony terrorism charges.
This may be an
extreme case but the consequences of strangers reading conversations they are
not a party to can have less extreme, but nonetheless damaging results.
While living in
Pennsylvania I spent an evening on Facebook conversing with people through
threads and posting music from YouTube. It was an average evening for me at the
time. (I’ll write about that part of my life another time as well). One of the
conversations another woman and I were involved in was a match of who could
outdo whom with the worst childhood. She posted something about getting hit
with a switch she had to cut from a Weeping Willow tree herself and I’d post that
I was hit with a 2x4 I had to saw out of the rafters myself. I posted that my
upbringing was the cause of me going to bed with a box of wine every night and
she posted that she went to bed with a whiskey barrel. It went back and forth
like that for some time. I can see, somewhat, how someone just happening upon
this thread and maybe not reading it all and not knowing the people involved
would think the comments made were true.
Guess what? That’s
exactly what happened. Someone in Texas, believe it or not, happened upon it. This
woman was neither my Facebook friend nor the friend of the person I was
conversing with. She was the Facebook friend of a Facebook friend of the woman
I was conversing with. Sheesh! Another issue with social media sites, there
should be a name for people who are connected online in a weird 6 degrees of
Kevin Bacon kinda-way. Maybe "first friend once removed" or "second friend" or something
along those lines. Even though my privacy settings were set on only my friends having
the capability
of reading my posts, I was commenting on someone else’s post and
subject to her privacy settings. Someone who I didn’t know but who knew my
mother reported the entire conversation to her.
It didn’t take long for
me to receive an email from my mother stating that she knew what I was telling
people and never wanted to see me again. I was stunned. I was completely
blindsided. I had no idea why my mother didn’t want to see me again or even what
my mother was talking about.
People who know me know that I was raised one
of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ll write more about that at a later time too. But for
now I will tell you why that is important to know for this writing. Jehovah’s
Witnesses are The Patriot Act of religion incarnate. They are trained to inform
on one another for a variety of “sins.” This is presumably to assist the “sinner”
in turning away from the bad behavior
and return to the fold. In reality it is
juicy gossip that people love to convey to intentionally wound the receiver. An
“I did my job for God,” good deed. I was no longer one of Jehovah’s
Witnesses but my mother and the informant were.
The email led me to call my mother to find
out why she disowned me this time. A few things had come to mind. Possibly the boudoir
pictures a friend took of me recently, the tattoos, what? That’s when she told me that she had learned
through some “third party” that I was airing out the family’s dirty laundry on
Facebook. The tattoo disowning would come later. After telling her the truth about
the conversation and letting her know my disgust that she would believe someone
I didn’t even know over her own daughter, I realized how scary it was that
someone I didn’t know, living across the country, saw something I wrote in what
I considered a private conversation. I felt like my house was bugged.
I was very wrong to think that any
conversation posted on a social media site is private. I learned my lesson. But the person reading that conversation was also wrong. She had no idea
what the conversation was really about and she didn’t know either of the people
involved in the conversation. And she had
no business acting on anything she imagined the conversation might have been
about. Tattling on a 40+ year old to her mother is pretty outrageous behavior,
but as I said, that’s what Witnesses are taught to do. But she also caused a rift
between my mother and me. My mother didn’t need any help in finding an excuse
for a rift but help she got. This strange episode in the Facebook saga
led to a few sleepless nights and a hell of a lot of anxiety for me.
In Justin’s case, if the Canadian woman had
read more of the conversation she might have seen the “LOL” and “JK” that
Justin posted after his sarcastic comment and realized it wasn’t a threat. If
she knew Justin personally she might have known that he wouldn’t do such a
heinous act. But she was a
stranger watching a conversation from a distance.
And yes, if Justin had thought through his
comment before posting it, he might have thought better of posting it. I’ve
posted many things and later thought, Uh-oh
that could be taken soooo not how I intended. We all have but most of us aren’t
up on felony charges because of it.
to be continued . . .
