Mommy Blog Lines: Tal(k)ing Care

As the current social media climate that is given to concerns about Covid-19, anti-racism protests and police violence and reform rages around us, we are returning to our blog to think of how these matters influence families and their online presence and privacy. In the following months we plan to canvass the question of which  voices matter and how social media and technology silences, vails, exposes, and even exploits, various voices and positions.  Deciding on the tone for our blog, and on our relationship of authorship and authority is the first thing we want to consider. Who's talking on line and who's listening?

  89119400-law-concept-burden-of-proof-gavel-in-court-library-.jpg In The Facebook Fallacy: Privacy Is Up to You  NYT journalist, Eduardo Porter, challenges  the claim  Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive,  Mark Zuckerberg, makes that  the social network's use of  providing its users with greater and more transparent controls over the personal data they share could protect its users’ privacy. However, given the latest revelations of the mass amount of information shared without the consent of people who have had their privacy breeched, Zuckerberg's claim  has been proven as bogus.  What, then, is one to do about protecting their privacy online? As Porter says, " Even if we were to know precisely what information companies like Facebook have about us and how it will be used, which we don’t, it would be hard for us to assess potential harms". According to  Professor Acquisti, flipping the burden of proof of privacy regulation from  consumers’ pr

Concerns have been raised this past week by experts  about the amount of information being collected and dispersed by a few giant internet companies  after widespread reports  that U. K. - based Cambridge Analytica used data from more than 50 million Facebook accounts to influence the 2016 USA presidential election.   Folks are also starting to wonder how secure their personal information is on social media networks. News reports  claim that it increasingly depends on where people live and access the web on the planet. Keeping ones privacy online is no longer - and may never have been -  easy, if at all possible.  While there are articles that provide users with advice and guidelines on how to use the internet in ways that protect the personal privacy of users , many people still give away personal information about themselves and often about their children through their blogs and online posts.  At this time of being sensitive to what is being posted online - pediatri

  Privacy and posting and pictures We are learning that our phones and online apps pick up lots of information about us: what we like and what we do—even where we are located and going.    In this post, I’m prepared to take a risk and    post this photograph I recently took (my phone cam knows when!)    I took it while on a walk. I wonder if the computer can pick up my coordinates and know my exact location in this photo. There’s a small figure in the pic—you can see it if you look carefully. Can the computer tell who that is? Questions like this would never have occurred to me last year. I thought we had more freedom to guard our privacy by following some sensible self-censorship. I think we are all learning to fear that once we are hooked into technology, performing with it, everything is open to being known and perhaps exposed.    Having “nothing to hide” has taken on new meaning—rather than meaning we have a clean slate, it seems to say that we literally are left with noth

Watching Emma Watson and Tom Hanks in the Netflix movie The Circle where Watson's character, Mae, shares every single second of her work and personal life on line by wearing a " SeeChange " camera 24/7 in a commitment to be transparent and giving up her right to privacy. As she rises through the ranks, she is encouraged by the company's founder, Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks), to engage in a groundbreaking experiment that pushes the boundaries of privacy, ethics and ultimately her personal freedom. Her participation in the experiment, and every decision she makes begin to affect the lives and future of her friends, family and that of humanity. Is this the way y/our world is going? Will interpersonal interactions and relationships die when there is no space for personal privacy and interpersonal private relationships? While Mae has entered into this 'voluntary' situation as an adult - how may this influence/violate children's privacy? Where does on

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKJjKkGzggJFXNl4bQwK3w6agDpGvqzpTGfXU4WD832GkcAKa2rCN0iuRQ6XUuFKXQknXLnbEBzQvd4SwOPrvphRWCeRRQS3M48GMB4rYP-oSD6bXUGqmlpJc9Ke-tsIDHtWB5ur-l8LuN/s1600/care+less.jpg Careless people are dangerous and immature.  Check Gatsby. The villains in this American tragedy are reckless with other people's emotions. The same is being said of Caitlyn Jenner of the publication of her The Secrets of My Life .  One reviewer calls her "emotionally careless with the women in her life" in "How Caitlyn Jenner Betrays Her Family in Her New Memoir The Secrets of My Life". There may be some lessons to be learned for mommy bloggers who want to talk about their families, especially when their children are moving into adulthood. How does the nature of a family blog change by the very definition of aging and maturing children within the family? Let's speculate a bit about possible areas related to family for bloggers to