Mommy Blog Lines: Tal(k)ing Care

  We’re moving from mommy bloglines to family bloglines! Find us at familybloglines.com    Renovation and Invitation:   About US : Exploring ethics and privacy matters influencing family life and practices. Exploring how the internet/social media enables and disables dreams, daily practices, and relationships.  Who’s watching? Who’s talking? How much time are we spending/wasting?   Now that many of us have gone home again in these days of Covid-19, have we been assisted by social media or become more reliant on it? Have we leaned or caved in? Is authenticity now something we think of as a curated rather than lived quality?   About YOU : We want guest bloggers: we [might] want YOU!   Please contact us to pitch ideas for one- two- three – paragraph op eds that take up issues that arise when family  members go online.

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 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 se...

  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...

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...

My family was always very cautious about what information was put online and what the privacy policy for the family was. I imagine much of that fear and tension was cultivated by the countless chatroom horror stories that dominated the airtime on the 6pm national news. I was never allowed to go on sites that host chatrooms that match you to talk to complete strangers by chat, webcam, or both, like Omegle for example. Honestly, I never had a problem with that rule as a child… those websites freaked me out too, so I was more than happy to stay away from them. Additionally, we were never to post anything super personal online; like address, full name, what school we went to, and even, depending on the website, what city we live in. Again, I think much of this fear stemmed from the abduction stories that are constantly in the news, and frankly, I don’t blame my parents for establishing these (totally reasonable) rules… the internet is forever, and it’s better to be sa...

https://www.playmeo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/0111_group-compass-walk_div-1024x902.png What's the right word to describe voluntarily surrendering personal and private information that could be used about or against one? The rather old fashioned word wiretapping continues to be used against 3rd party interventions -- when 3rd parties tap into phone or internet conversations to gain privileged information. Donald Trump has raised the specter of wiretapping as something done to him although his allegations are often unfounded,  floundering and meeting with denial. Would a word like "open line" best describe the willingness of ordinary citizens to expose their private conversations and information to the online world listening in.  Online users who are interested have learned that privacy settings offer limited protection of one's privacy. I might find my picture advertising a product that I have not endorsed or given permission to be used in this manner. Y...

Beth on the Virani article that cautions about Facebook and privacy loss: Concerns with Facebook’s privacy regulations have been ongoing but I remember distinctly when the big scare that Salim Virani addresses swept social media. I was always suspicious of Facebook's privacy settings and how effective they might be, but assumed that because I don't use my real name, my profile is linked to an old Hotmail account rather than my current email, and I don't have the Facebook app on my phone, that my information was safe. This clearly isn’t the case, and it  now seems naïve and blindly optimistic to assume that our personal information won’t be mined for corporate gain, which happens constantly online from the use of cookies to participation on various social media platforms.   When Facebook first got called out for sneakily altering their privacy settings a series of copy and paste disclaimers proclaiming the users autonomy and right to privacy went viral. The irony of ...

Beth on the Virani article that cautions about Facebook and privacy loss: Concerns with Facebook’s privacy regulations have been ongoing but I remember distinctly when the big scare that Salim Virani addresses swept social media. I was always suspicious of Facebook's privacy settings and how effective they might be, but assumed that because I don't use my real name, my profile is linked to an old Hotmail account rather than my current email, and I don't have the Facebook app on my phone, that my information was safe. This clearly isn’t the case, and it  now seems naïve and blindly optimistic to assume that our personal information won’t be mined for corporate gain, which happens constantly online from the use of cookies to participation on various social media platforms.   When Facebook first got called out for sneakily altering their privacy settings a series of copy and paste disclaimers proclaiming the users autonomy and right to privacy went viral. The iro...