An increasing trend of bringing personal lives into the public realm, largely driven by the intervention of Internet and technology, is dividing experts when it comes to drawing the boundaries to what extent this is fair or desirable.
Efforts are being made by corporations and government officials for setting up certain online identity systems. No doubt, technology is going to play an even bigger role in the identifying once-anonymous faces: Facebook, for example, is already employing facial recognition technology in ways that have alarmed European regulators.
Real-life instance of Facebook’s impact on your reputation
Post the Vancouver riots, locals did not need any such kind of facial recognition technology, and they just combed through different social media websites in order to identify some of those involved. A star player on junior water polo team of Canada, Nathan Kotylak, was one of them. On Facebook, he tendered an apology for the damage caused by him. The pointed fingers impacted not only him personally, but also affected his family members.
According to news media reports, his father, a doctor by profession, had to bear the brunt. His ranking on RateMDs.com, a a medical practice review website, dropped after users made negative remarks about his son’s alleged involvement in the riots. Other people subsequently went to the Web site to defend the doctor and improve his ranking. Understandably, there was a wave of backlash to the identification, largely Internet-assisted of those involved in the riot. A student based in Vancouver, photographed during it admitted to theft. The ‘culprit’ mentioned on her personal blog that this ‘21st-century witch hunt online’ was ‘just another form of mobbing’.
An adamant female commuter somewhere in the New York area was recently the hot object of online scorn and was forced to shut down both her LinkedIn and Twitter accounts after her name popped up on blogs. She entered into a verbal tangle with a conductor and asked him, “Do you know what schools I have been to and how well educated I am?’. The scuffle was publicized after a fellow rider hosted a cellphone video on YouTube. Though that person took it down, other users were quick to repost it, keeping the story alive in public realm. In fact, the original video poster’s identity is anonymous since the person’s YouTube account has been closed.
Implications of the trend for businesses
Taking the phenomenon from a narrow individual level, to a broader business spectrum, you can gauge the gravity of this issue. It’s now a widely accepted fact that social media can make or mar a brand, owing to its positive vibes or nuisance value, depending on the way you deal with its nuances.
