Easter morning, my dad walked into the choir room at church to a long-faced choir member, Jeff. He asked Jeff what was wrong, and Jeff told him that his sister's husband, who is Syrian and currently working in Syria as an IT support guy, had not been heard from in three or four days. That was not like him, for he regularly updated his Facebook and Twitter accounts and Skyped or phone-talked with his wife at least twice per day.
It turns out that the husband had been captured by Syrian officials and imprisoned. He was brutally beaten but released a few days later. Apparently his Facebook contained some anti-government sentiments that were neither overlooked nor taken lightly. He cannot even go to the hospital to mend his bruised/broken ribs for fear of being recapture and further abused.
What I find so interesting about this occurrence is the ability for something like Facebook to act as a double-edged sword. He was using the medium as an outlet to vent, protest, complain, whatever. But it turned into a weapon used against him very quickly.
Has anyone encountered something like this? Obviously not to this extreme, but how has technology both helped and hurt you at any point?
well i can say that employers have started using facebook as a way to judge potential new employees. they will look through your face book to determine if you drink or smoke or do drugs. they use it as a means to get a look at the personal you that you don't want to necessarily tell them about, and how that personal you would interact in their business. so i recommend setting you profile to private haha or at least don't have anything you wouldn't want your boss to know about.
ReplyDeleteWell, the most recent thing I've heard has to do with the world of sports, where a professional athlete commented on the 9/11 attacks. He claimed that they were a huge conspiracy after the reactions of joy for killing Bin Laden. He and his team came under attack. Now ESPN is having a debate whether tweeting personal thoughts or even in general is proper conduct for a professional athlete.
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