The way the law interacts with and affects our relationship with media is complicated, and my feelings about it are complicated. Laws in all spheres – not just relating to media – can feel arbitrarily chosen. Why do copyright laws protect us from some things and not others? How is it possible that we are legally allowed to jailbreak our iPhones, but we have to follow the sometimes outrageous demands of social media terms of service agreements? Why is it a woman can pose as a 15 year old boy to harass a teenager her daughter doesn’t like into suicide and she’s protected by the law to do so?
Diving into the minutia of these laws can and will make you feel at least a little hopeless. The United State’s obsession with protecting free speech over anything else feels like the right thing most of the time, and I’m certainly not here to argue in favor of censorship. But it does make you consider the implications and ramifications of such laws when they allow harassment to reach fatal levels, and there are no consequences besides the ones you find in the court of public opinion – which, if you move and change a few things about yourself so you aren’t immediately recognizable, really means nothing at all. At the end of the day, you can sue someone for defamation but you can’t sue them for certain kinds of harassment. It honestly seems so arbitrary and convoluted sometimes that it is incredibly frustrating.
And then there are the issues around net neutrality – the opposition of which is so obscene that it makes you realize that, while we live in what many might consider a capitalist nightmare, it could very well be much worse. Where do we draw the lines? How much freedom are we willing to forfeit so that faceless corporations can make an extra buck? As long as the people in charge stand to make a profit, the limit does not exist. The social media you use own you, the websites you visit own you, the “personal brand” you’ve carefully cultivated online doesn’t belong to you. And what are you going to do about it? Not use social media? Not likely. Truly harrowing stuff out there, people.
If you, like me, find this all terrifying in a very George Orwell dystopian kind of way, I can only try to impart some tips to try to keep as much of yourself as possible on the internet. It’s not much, but it’s better than a kick in the pants. (Apologies for the Letterkenny reference; I honestly can’t help myself.)
Tips! This is an obvious one, or it should be, but you’d be surprised by how many need to learn it: don’t put anything, anywhere on the internet that you are not 100% okay with the entire world knowing. I don’t mean like bank account information, because that really can’t be helped if you’re online banking and shopping, and in general the security measures for that kind of thing are pretty tight. What I mean here is personal stuff. Had a bad day and want to rant? Expect that you’re ranting to an audience of about 7 billion, give or take. The same goes for pictures. Yes, your cleavage looks great in that pic, and if you don’t mind the entire world seeing it, more power to you. But if that isn’t something you’re comfortable with, don’t share it.
More tips! Talk to your children and your parents about media literacy as soon as possible and as often as possible. Protect them from outside influences and ne’er-do-wells, but especially from themselves.
Make an effort to set up stringent privacy settings for yourself and your older and younger loved ones. It won’t save you or them from everything, but it might help.
The most important and obvious tip I have for you is this: be kind to each other. What you put out there stays out there, and people read it and see it. You don’t know what people are going through. Be kind.
