This weeks lecture was mostly about Facebook and the violation of privacy. It was brought to our attention that a young university student committed suicide after his roommates streamed a video of him having sex. The ridicule he suffered after his sexual orientation was broadcast to the world led to his suicide. The discrimination of gays and lesbians is still a major issue, and looking at movies you can see what. When people think of homosexual discrimination they immediately think of Brokeback Mountain, however the movie 'Alexander' starring Colin Farrell generated controversy when outing him as having multiple relationships with men. The film 'Troy' is also notable for the fact that the filmmaker left out the fact that Achilles was believed to be in a relationship with Patroclus (Information can be found here, there are other websites that have more reliable information, however they were blocked by Griffith).
The lecturer also discussed Facebook's relationship with the CIA, and how one of the major sponsors of it is In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel also works for the CIA, looking for technologies that could be useful to them. Facebook also records everything that you click on, and keeps it forever. Now I'm scared one day it'll be released and everyone will know how much of a stalker I am!
In the lecture we briefly touched on the idea of the internet filter. I don't like the idea of it, I can imagine how the censoring could snowball out of control. China doesn't have Facebook anymore, what if that happens to us too?
I found the lecturer quite eye opening and scary, but still it won't stop me using Facebook!
Thanks,
Emily
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