Terms of service, I admittedly do not read them and who really has the time to? Fear no more, as I was stumbling across one of my many tech forums today someone shared a beautiful site that gives the summarized version of popular sites terms of service which can be found here. You may be surprised to see just exactly what other companies do with you data.
Though many sites tend to come off as free such as Facebook or Google, they are not. Now I know you never spent a cent on Google’s services and that Facebook’s home page says “It’s free and always will be” but I would like you to hear me out here.
Software is extremely expensive to make, a service like Google Maps or a social media site cost millions of dollars as well as many skilled professionals to produce. Given that fact, how exactly do these tech companies just give their products out for free then you may ask. The simple answer here is that these “free” services are actually not the product that the companies make money off of at all. The product here is users like you and me.
By simply agreeing to ridiculously long legal jargon that often times changes without our knowledge, or opting in, we allow such companies to track our every move and profit by selling our information. Take Google for example, they do their best to know everything about their user base. Google has access to the average users interests, location, social media sites, email and who knows what else. This information is then used in order to target us with advertisements that cater to the specific user.
Though this really isn’t anything new sites like the one shared above act as a tool to show what sites track us and which do not. I feel we should have a right to have access to who obtains our information in an easy to understand manner.
How do you feel about terms of service and software as a service? Feel free to share.
Great post. People’s tweets and Facebook posts can get pretty bizarre. Social networks are a society within a society. Just like public, or a job atmosphere, or even in a family setting. These are all little sub units of a society if you will.
So with this in mind why on Earth would you go into a public place, stand up on a table and broadcast what you had for breakfast!
Who am I to judge if someone did do that, but it is out of the ordinary none the less. This brings me to my question
–Why do people find it necessary to adopt strange personas (avatars) and act ridiculous on the web?
Continuing, it seems that it is actually becoming so common to be unprofessional online that people may just start accepting it.
Trust me i’m not advocating the commonality of this bizarre phenomenon, but something about social media empowers people to cast out deep, and personal thoughts that one might not usually say in a public, or even personal setting.
Could you possibly elaborate with expertise?
I personally believe that people feel the urge to share their lives over social media as a way to make themselves feel better. There is an awesome YouTube video that better illustrates what I am trying to say which I will link to the bottom of my comment. Essentially people put on a front on social media in order to gain some sort of self gratification through “internet points” which can be measured through the amount of likes or comments. In order for someone to gain such points they post about what they feel to be uplifting aspects of their life. Say they make deans list or buy a nice new car which give the impression that their life is going good. On the other hand it would be unlikely for someone to post about a recent DUI or a class they failed making bad aspects of their life completely in the dark of their online footprint. So I feel people rarely adopt personas as much as they try to fit their online profiles to match the person they wish they were all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K418NM74fCw&feature=youtu.be