Sunday, November 22, 2009
Being transparent
Does Internet promote transparency or increase ways of hiding eveil deeds ?
First of all, we have to think of transparency as one of the four keystones of Internet, it is an absolute fact that internet is all about it. With this great tool, no one can be totally anonymous, you have to justify your indetity for a number of things. If you want to buy online for instance, you have to tell the machine who you are, which is not always the case if you pay in a traditional store. The check-out girl won't ask you your name of the peremption date of your credit card !
Everytime someone gives his opinion, comment on something or interact with a fellow internaut, he or she has to leave a trace, to create an account, to log in. Tranparency is one of Internet's great strength, it obliges us not to be honest in what we say, but at least to be honest considering who we are. Therefore, its is very much compromising for anyone with bad intentions
There are many ways for someone to fight against transparency : creating fake accounts, giving fake e-mail adress that will never be verified...My experience as an intern for an e-marketing company was very relevant as far as i am concerned : I had to comment on products that the company sold, as an ordinary consumer, and to give a positive opinion about it.
Of course, I had to moderate this, I had to give semi-good or neutral comments...And to do not be discovered, I had to change names, tones, sense of spelling for each new post. I could be anyone.
Helping a company with viral marketing is a very common practice but worst things can happen : lost in the wild wild net, anyone who is a little skilled, who knows about informatics can create terrible pages, full of hatred, promoting illegal affairs, disinformation...
This way, Internet can be also a tool to increase the ways of hidding evil deeds ! Thatwhy we have to work with all our forces, all our skills to increase, to perfect this transparency in order to fight efficiently with those people who use their screens to hide.
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