These days, ironically, when people want to be alone, they would go into their rooms and switch on their laptop and Internet, and let the whole world in into their personal lives.
I believe some (or is it, many?) of us mistakenly think that the Internet is our own personal and private playground. Our cyber-interaction with netizens are usually not done face-to-face leading us to be under the false impression that we are untouched by the rest of the world.
With blogs, social networking sites, chat programmes, etc., we are actually "out there" albeit virtually. What we write, what we post and what we upload are not exclusive to us alone. It can be read, viewed and shared by others too. Sure, we can set our privacy settings, but there are still people who can read, view and share what we write, post and upload. They can, by their own right, reproduce what we write, post and upload.
We cannot claim that our blogs and accounts with social networking sites are our own personal space. The fact that these applications use the Internet as its platform makes it a very public place. Just because we do not see others on the Internet does not mean that others do not see what we write, post and upload.
We have to take responsibility for what we have written, posted and uploaded. We cannot simply say that we can write, post and upload anything we please just because the blogs and social networking accounts are our own personal accounts. That, I believe, is a misguidedly naive point of view. Remember that people got divorced because of what was posted on their spouse's Facebook accounts. Remember that people got sued just because they put up on their blog a link to another blog which speaks badly about a person.
Again, let me say that the Internet is a very public space.
If we want to write something in private, do ourselves a huge favour: Buy a personal diary and keep them locked safely in the room.
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