User talk:Auj00003

Online Visibility
Facebook. 7th grade. My first profile picture, friend request, status update. My first step through the cyber threshold and the first blip on the radar of my online presence. Fast-forward 10 years later and my online presence is, well, just that: a noticeable presence. Autumn is visibly online.


 * Instagram
 * Twitter
 * LinkedIn
 * Tumblr
 * Snapchat
 * Google+
 * WordPress
 * Spotify
 * Blogger

All of these websites and more represent me online, and now Wikipedia can be added to that list. Looking at that list, I feel quite visible online, despite each of the online platforms I belong to showcasing varying levels of personal information about me to the public.

For instance, my Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts are all fairly regulated when it comes to privatizing my information. I have much stricter privacy controls on these platforms, limiting the amount of information that people I don't know can receive from these profiles. But what about those people whose friend requests I accept? The people who make it behind the private settings, into the limelight of my online visibility, will find themselves seeing pictures of me, and of my friends and family; getting notifications when I like certain posts; seeing fleeting images of my personal life on my Snapchat story; or gaining crucial information like my email address or birth date from my "About Me" section that I created in 7th grade, when I had no notion of how busy the Internet would be 10 years later. Despite going to extra lengths to keep my information private, by simply agreeing to be party to platforms which such high online visibility, I forfeit some of my right to my privacy — I even sign it away in the terms and conditions. This The Gaurdian study explains just how problematic our 'click and go' attitude towards privacy policies can be for our online visibility. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat are all more personal forms of my online visibility, but other online platforms allow me to make visible a more professional, albeit more impersonal, online presence. Sites such as LinkedIn and WordPress let me communicate academic achievements, class-related research, or post my resume for job-search purposes. These websites have considerably less privacy settings because the intended audience is broader: I want employers to find me and check out my accomplishments, I want fellow scholars to read my work and give me suggestions. However, in wanting to appear visible to more people, I again relinquish my control over who sees my information and what they do with it. At least once a week I receive a notification from LinkedIn that says a colleague 'has created connections with someone you may know', which will direct me to this person's LinkedIn page. While the site is created specifically for these kinds of networking purposes, it makes me wonder how many times I have popped up as 'someone you may know' on another user's device.

Creating an online presence certainly comes with the risk of, well, existing in the massive space that is the Internet. Web 2.0 has only made growing one's online visibility more accessible, literally placing information about you into the hands of countless other social media users, with or without your knowledge. Convergence also plays a role in making online visiblity more transparent as it combines several elements of media in one compact place, allowing for information that might otherwise be spread across multiple visibility platforms to be concentrated in just one. Wikipedia maintains a wonderful touch of anonymity, yet allows the convergence of diverse ideas, media, and topics in just one place, making everything but the user highly visible. Perhaps this is why sites like Wikipedia remain popular despite the flow of technology towards more and more transparent platforms.

Auj00003 (talk) 11:29, 5 March 2018 (UTC)