It’s mind boggling, the degree to which people have discarded their privacy.
My wife and I enjoy crime-story entertainment and derive a lot of our inside slang from various cop/law shows etc. One case of that is when a place is bugged, it’s known among detectives as being “up.” So when Amazon Alexa ads started showing up touting the benefits of installing a listening device in your home, we turned to each other and said “Why on earth would you put your own house up?”
I don’t disagree about the motives behind the companies who own the big social media platforms, but I still have a different perspective on it.
Even though discussion forums, like this one, don’t typically collect and exploit user data, that’s really the only significant difference that separates discussion forums from other kinds of social media. User base exploitation aside, discussion forums, like GDF, are as different from Facebook as Facebook is from Twitter and as Twitter is from LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever. They’re all a bit different, have different purposes and different user bases who see and like or dislike different things about them, but it’s all lumped into the larger category of social media.
I’ve been heavily involved in social media for over ten years now — not so much as a user, but as someone who advises and helps clients get up to speed using social media for business purposes. Part of my job is supervising social media specialists who manage accounts that regularly get millions of views, likes, shares, etc.
So my involvement with social media is mostly an extension of everything else I do in my job — just another way to communicate with and influence target audiences on behalf of clients. From a personal standpoint, I have personal accounts on most of the major social media platforms, but I don’t use them much and I’m careful about divulging too much.
What is your experience and what is your following like?
My “experience” is what I’ve observed, and I don’t have or, based on that experience, want, a “following” made up of the social media users I’ve observed.
I don’t mean to generalize in such a way as to suggest social media is useless to all graphic designers. I do, however mean to say that it is indeed useless to me for professional purposes. The prospective clients I seek do not spend their time on social media happening upon professionals they seek to hire. In fact, I’d say it’s much more typical that they might use social media to purposefully investigate individuals who have already made contact seeking hire. In those cases, I wouldn’t want even my best work or cleanest persona displayed in a setting like someone’s Facebook feed, for example. I may concede that LinkedIn, conversely, is probably useful as an active platform for professionals. But honestly, as someone who has sat in the Hiring Manager chair many times, I’m more apt to judge a candidate’s social media presence as a measure of their priorities, rather than their prowess.
Therein lies the crux of the story. If you don’t have a social media account or a following, you don’t get an opinion?
My experience with the internet starts before you could use a credit card for purchases, and also from seeing the results of other people in my family buying into the early “coupon cards” the grocery stores put on your key rings back in the 80s. The writing was on the wall loud and clear.
I shudder to think what it would be like to try to find a job these days with no social media presence.
As far as internet privacy concerns in general go, here is an amusing little read:
Why so?
Very scary!
WAW AMAZING
I had a dentist appointment yesterday. Somehow, we started talking about privacy or Facebook, and my dentist mentioned a Frontline episode he saw about FB. I started watching it this morning. Pretty interesting. It’s a two part episode with both parts on YT.
…never mind…
Totally agree with you!
Don’t feel that you have to market yourself in every channel. The only place you need to be is where your future clientèle will be. If you wanted to cover all of your bases, this is how I would do it without losing your mind.
I work in digital marketing and I would approach this totally different than most people do. Everyone complaining about social is discussing it in terms of their personal accounts, but when you look at yourself as a brand or company, the way you do it totally changes. Here is my suggestion:
All the avatars, URLs, and bio information should be the same. Always link back to your website and aim for consistent naming conventions over all the accounts. You should probably spend no more than 30 minutes per week with this method.
It might seem limiting to post this little, but you’re not trying to build a massive audience. You can engage with others, but most of your efforts will be a one-way communication. You’re not there to debate, challenge or discuss everything that comes across your feed. Only address comments if you feel they need it.
If you’re thinking from a business POV then using social media plays a huge role in establishing your brand online. Everything has its pros and cons. Cheers 
social media is best to show your work it help a lot people