The internet and applications such as social networking sites like “Facebook” provide the means for creation of alternative societies. These pose a risk to more traditional societies based on hierarchical orders such as family, government and church and attacks are to be expected.

The simpler (and I think more likely) answer is that people in positions of authority, including teachers or police simply don’t think that societal and legal rules and norms which are supposed to apply to everyone, apply to them. Therefore, its fine to misrepresent your identity, invade peoples privacy and pass along your opinions whether based on fact or fancy.

After all, “the ends justify the means.”

In this case I think that the Police Officer could well have gotten the information required without pretending to be someone else. I also think that it is not acceptable to publicly humiliate a young person about what is or isn’t on their SNS profile especially in front of peers.

So they grab a local cop to come in and give his talk. Sad, (ineffective) but true. At least the guy in the example knew how to use Facebook! : /

In a larger sense, it seems like the larger issue is a disconnect between notions of privacy. Do I care if someone knows I like the show “So You Think You Can Dance?” Not a whit. We internet educator folks often mention how information online is often false or misleading; could it be that kids immersed in this environment value transparency and authenticity over more suspect communications? Let it all hang out!! This is who I am, no kidding!! That others will often be less than accepting of others’ transgressions suggests that we’re not quite there yet.

The problem with fear-based educational strategies, including the one you mentioned above, is that it doesn’t actually give people the tools to deal with the issues when they are in a compromising situation. Instead of remembering how to use a condom/dental dam, or be aware of your online privacy settings, you remember that horrible picture of crabs, or how much it sucked that one of their friends got their picture held up to an entire assembly. It’s incredibly frustrating to hear that educators think this is effective.

I made some social faux-pas in middle school and high school (before social networking) and in college. It was those experiences (and others) that allowed me to immediately know, the moment I started using these networks, that I needed to manage who sees what, and that I needed to tweak the privacy settings. If these networks are being used by kids too young to have made such faux-pas or too stupid to learn from them (as is shown by these accounts of kids using very lax and “open” privacy settings/practices), then education or parenting or something should probably step in and say “Do you realize that anyone can see this? People DO see this. Do you realize what the consequences could be?”.

Creating a fake profile, and then publicly showing content posted by people who were stupid enough to friend the fake profile (or to have that content publicly visible anyways), doesn’t sound all that terrible to me. I mean, these people are asking for it. Better it be done by a police officer in a school than by someone more malicious.

So there were definitely privacy conversations that needed to happen with that population, but — *gasp* — those can be actual conversations. But I suppose that would entail, you know, engaging and forming relationships and having trust and all that is terribly time-consuming. “This is your brain on Facebook” is so much simpler, huh. (<–dripping sarcasm)