Privacy and Confidentiality

Privacy is always an issue that comes up when discussing new media networks. Is anything ever private? We cannot know that for sure. Supposedly, whatever is made private on a social network stays between you and whoever you choose to share that with. But how much of that is true when they are people working on those social networks moderating everything that is posted whether shared or private?

Of course, social networks are not the only type of new media. So how does confidentiality stand up against new media on the whole? Let us take a site like YouTube for example where anyone can share pretty much anything. What happens if someone captures an unauthorized video of you which of course invades your privacy and decides to post it? Chances are with all the million of videos on YouTube, you will probably never see that footage. However, whether you know it or not, your privacy is being invaded and posted for the entire world to see without you having a single clue.

So is there such a thing as confidentiality with all this new media? Can anything be kept a secret for too long? Even people with the highest social status such as politicians are exposed more and more by today's new media. It seems as if nothing is safe with this new media simply because of the fact that word spreads so fast. The media has the power of destroying someone's reputation within minutes, for that is how long it takes for word to spread on a global scale with this new media.

Also, with all this new wave of media comes a new wave of criminals. There are people out there who make a living exposing others. With hackers and such, nothing processed through the media is ever private. Even a social network as gigantic and popular as Facebook has privacy flaws. When it comes to new media, nothing is ever private or confidential for too long, everything comes up to the surface one way or another.