Something I really enjoy watching
on YouTube is videos of celebrities “googling” themselves and seeing what pops
up and what questions people search about them. I always find those videos
interesting because celebrities constantly have the entire world wondering different
things about them. Although, I have never thought about doing it for myself as
I have always figured that not much would come up about me or my profiles as I
like to keep my life private. However, today I decided to embark on this
journey and see what the internet has to say about Amanda Onofrio.
Throughout my cyber-stalk
I plan to explore social media platforms such as:
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Twitter
I
began by signing out of my email as well as my social media accounts before I
began browsing on my computer. Instantly, I was shocked to see not one but two
pictures of myself pop up on the first search.
It
is not a total surprise to me that two of my Facebook profile pictures appeared
as it is part of their terms and conditions to have access to my account even
if it is private to other users, which it is. I continued by clicking on the “Images”
tab to see if I could find any other images of myself or perhaps people that could
be relevant in my life. Another “selfie” of myself appeared under the images
tab and was, yet again, a picture I had posted on Facebook. It is interesting
to see the pictures that come up of myself as most of them submit to the
sociocultural functions of self portraits or selfies as they are represented today.
I tend to post attractive pictures of myself 1) to fit into the cultural norms
and 2) to assure that the way I am depicted in a picture applies to the
normative expectation’s society has placed upon images and how women and men
should look in them. Considering I tend to post images I am confident of, I am
not surprised that I do not see any realistic pictures of how I tend to look on
a day to day basis. This is because most individuals, including myself, want to
be depicted in a way that will fit into the societal structure.
Fortunately, with the advantage of web 2.0 as defined by
O’Reilly, I was able to continue this cyber-stalk of myself with a “continually-updated
service that gets better the more people use it”…and platform that goes “beyond
the page metaphor of web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences” (Fuchs, 2017, p.
34). As I kept scrolling, I was able to find a link to my old stats from when I
was on my high school track and cross-country team.
Without
even having to click on the link, users are able to determine quite a bit of
information about me just by reading the anchor text. For anyone online,
information such as high school name, graduation year, and even the location of
where I live are all readily available in just one search. It is crazy to think
that someone who has no idea who I am can easily determine factual information,
images, and more about me without me evening knowing.
The second part of my investigation consisted of
searching myself on three social media platforms:
1. Facebook
The
last link on the first page of my Google search is a link to my Facebook page.
When you click the link users are able to get a glimpse at my Facebook page and
this is what they are able to see:
As shown in the screen
recording, users are only able to see a few photos of myself, where I live, and
where I currently attend school. Regarding internet privacy, I believe what
appears about me is reasonable because even though I purposely set my account
to private, Facebook still has “permission to use content I create and share,”
according to their Terms of Service (“Terms of Service,” 2019). Therefore, due
to my privacy settings and Facebook’s Terms of Service, the internet only allows
online users to see a fraction of my profile. However, I believe there are many
platforms out there that have the ability to invade users’ privacy. As many
users, including myself, will and have often overlooked the Terms and Conditions
for a social media platform, it is likely that those individuals are not aware of
the privacy policies they are agreeing to as well as what the company has the privilege
of theirs to use.
As stated in the HubSpot article discussing social media campaigns,
it is important to remember that “in the U.S. alone, 77% of the population has
a social media account of some kind” (Baker, 2018). While we may think our
privacy is confidential to us, we cannot forget that with the technological
advancements we have today, we are not always safe and our information is not always
going to stay secretive.
2. Instagram
It
was now time to see what would appear if my name was searched on the Instagram
platform. I went to Google and typed in “Amanda Onofrio Instagram” and the very
first link that appeared had the title tag of “Amanda Onofrio (@amanda_onofrio)”
which is my exact Instagram username. The other links that appeared were
profiles with similar first and last names to mine.
Being
that I am a private account, the only information that appeared was my profile
picture, biography, and the number of posts, followers, and following I have.
It is a relief to know that if users want to obtain information about me
through Instagram they must make an account and then send me a follow request
with the expectation of getting accepted by me first.
3. Twitter
The
final social media platform I wanted to explore of myself was Twitter. I typed
into Google “Amanda Onofrio Twitter” but this time my profile did not appear on
any of the first 3 pages of the Google search. I then proceeded to go to the Twitter
website and search for myself there. Just like my Instagram profile, Twitter looked
the same but with different images of myself. Yet again, the only readily
available information about me from my Twitter profile is my profile picture
and header, biography, and the number of tweets, followers and following I
have. The only difference between my Twitter profile and my Instagram profile
is that Twitter displays the date of when I first joined the platform.
Altogether, not much
information about me was readily available on the internet. The most helpful information
about me that is available for anyone online consists of images, where I live, where
I attend school, and my age based off of my graduation year that appears on the
MileSplit link from Google. In my opinion, what this says about my digital
media footprint is that the information I do share through my private social
media accounts is, for the most part, kept private to me and my followers. Although
Facebook allows for the limited view of my profile to appear, online users can infer
that I am an individual who cares about what is posted about me online and that
the information I share is kept private for myself and those whom I trust.
References
Baker,
K. (2018, October 2). The ultimate guide to social media marketing campaigns.
HubSpot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-campaigns
Fuchs, C. (2017). Social
media: A critical introduction. SAGE Publications.
Terms
of service. (2019, July 31). Facebook. Retrieved April 6, 2020,
from https://www.facebook.com/terms.php
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