Ever have one of those Mondays when you look up from your computer and it’s suddenly 3 PM, and you’re like where did all the time go?
Yeah, I thought so.
But while time flies on a Monday, in the meantime I got some great feedback from my last post about what I’ll call the unintended consequences our “over social media-fication,” for lack of a better term. Seems like I hit a nerve, and I appreciated the comments.
And certainly my endgame was not to be a negative nelly, but rather to acknowledge some of the negative downside behaviors social media hath also wrought along with all the good stuff (and I do think mostly it’s good stuff) that it’s brought us.
Good stuff like the idea that you the individual can talk back to a brand and often get a response — or the brand pays the price for not listening.
The idea that you can be connected to virtually the entire planet.
The idea that the kid you haven’t spoken to since sixth grade is suddenly all up in your business (okay, maybe not that one).
There’s a lot of good stuff.
But I’m not ready to sing “Kum-Bah-Yah,” either.
There’s also emerging arenas where social media deliver as much grey as they do black and white.
Lest you think Uncle Sam is —-in’ around on this front, just last week they made it clear that technologists were also fair game in the war on << fill in the blank >> Terror? Information? Hackers? Software developers?
In a story published by the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder confirmed the death of ISIL operative Junaid Hussain, a British citizen who was killed by a U.S. airstrike a week ago today in Raqqah, Syria.
According to the story, “Hussain was involved in recruiting ISIL sympathizers in the West to carry out lone-wolf style attacks.”
Ryder went on to say that Hussain “…had significant technical skills and expressed a strong desire to kill Americans…” and that “…he was responsible for releasing personally identifiable information of about 1,300 U.S. military and government employees” and ‘specifically sought’ to direct violence against U.S. service members and government employees.”
In other words, U.S. Government policy is that they’re now going after hackers not only with more traditional counter-cyber measures — they’re going after them with bombs.
The Wall Street Journal penned a story on Hussain also, citing U.S. officials who viewed Hussain as a top threat because “he was on the leading edge of Islamic State efforts to recruit in the U.S. He would post names, addresses and photos of U.S. troops on his Twitter feed and suggest followers find and kill the person.”
Yeah, not exactly the kind of Twitter following I’m looking for either, but another great example of the unintended consequences of the potent maelstrom created by global social networks.
And may make you think twice about who you follow.
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