Social media came as a blessing to us with many drawbacks. Well, I will not be talking about the comparison of centralized and decentralized media as I am writing on a decentralized platform with the experiences from a centralized one while writing I am gonna mean both of them in general. And this is about our privacy issue, our personal space.
Though centralized media has some privacy-oriented extra features in the front layer, decentralized media is open to all so both of them have their own uses and sets of rules to seek benefits.
Recently, a friend of mine, who was quite a celebrity type on social media, started facing some privacy-related issues. She has to encounter plenty of fake accounts on her name using the photos she shares publicly on her profile. She would ask us to report those profiles often, and this thing goes on. Actually, the problem with a fake account is that not everyone knows this as a fake one. Suppose Leonel Messi, an international figure, everyone knows there are plenty of fake accounts with his name, no one even expects any of them to be real. Even if I get a text from Leo himself, I would feel like this is a joke, or he got hacked and someone is spamming, hehehe. The same goes with any national celebrities too. But the common ones like us, who share everything publicly and have some enemies, have to face the ugly experiences.
Well, Facebook privacy has improved a lot, (not the bigger issues we might argue, the general one, things that an ordinary person knows and can access) now if we report such a profile, they review it and close them. But the problem arises when the real person doesn’t know that he or she got a fake profile which is spreading rumors or communicating with others using her identity. In the end, later she finds her identity to be used for many unethical reasons. And she feels the heat and then takes action.
Back in 2018, someone did the same with me out of enmity. Made a clone profile of mine, took some of my infos that was public at that time, used them to fulfill the basic information, and then reported my profile with reverse allegations that mine is fake, that was tricky to disable someone's account if you don't have proper official documents that match your identity, then that's a gone case for your profile. I made two mistakes, one was not having every info on my profile the same as official ones, actually, I didn't prefer that, and the second one was keeping everything public.
Not every information we share publicly is needed, some need to be confidential and kept in that way. Also, we should have some limitations while sharing things, if not then they might be abused, and they won't hit you every day, once in a while is pretty enough to leave a mark for the rest.
A cure is there but isn't it better to prevent? Because prevention is always better than cure. We can share as few private things as possible on public platforms. I had restricted all my things only for friends and recently I have hidden some of them too just because I am digging more into them. Here on the decentralized media, we can also keep away our personal infos and just share as much as things that won't affect us in any way. Look around, how exposed you are to the public, how vulnerable you are making yourself, fix them, because you can't trust anybody randomly that won't misuse them if possible.
All the content is mine if not stated otherwise.
Well said brother 💪💪
Thank you for your appreciation.
Privacy is a major concern for Facebook. Even if you report an id, the person on the other end can appeal and sometimes get it back after submitting some usual information that too are collected from the real person's ID. It's very disappointing and disturbing at the same time.
Privacy feels like an illusion to me now. The more I dig, the more fears I experience.