Lately I’ve been questioning my appearance on social media a lot. Since I intend to live a meaningful life, I ask myself: does this add value to my life? And to me it does. I simply love sharing everything about my eco-positive lifestyle. Besides that, I love reading tips from other too, most people I follow are an inspiration to me. Social media and the online world is so accessible for us, I did not question the reason it was created. The following book has taught me a lot about privacy and the online world: Je hebt wél iets te verbergen by Maurits Martijn (translated: you do have something to hide).
(Quick disclaimer: this blogpost is in English because I like consistency on my blog, but this book I’m about to share is only written in Dutch. But I know, a big part of my readers are Dutch).
Why I still use social media
I think if I didn’t want to share my eco-positive lifestyle with anyone, I would not be sharing information about myself on any type of social medium. That’s just because, if I don’t inspire, what am I doing? That’s a personal thing, I don’t think I see the benefits besides from inspiration. It’s time consuming and sometimes makes me miss the real things out there. Just a week ago, I saw a whole family walking on the streets all staring at their phones. I had never seen something like that before, I must say it’s usually just the younger generation.
It’s always a battle for me, enjoying what I am doing in the moment but also wanting to take pictures to share later. I think our phone make us less creative and less in the moment. But I must mention that the whole social media world can be positive too. I have a love-hate relationship with social media. But for now, I’ve chosen to share everything about myself (I even write personal diaries on here).
Privacy: do we know anything about it?
Okay, so that’s clear: I share a lot. But I had never really thought about the consequences of it. And that’s a weird thing if you ask me. It means I have not thought this through. That changed a while ago when I read ‘Je hebt wel iets te verbergen’. And that’s the reason I feel like I should share it on here. It does not have much to do with an eco-positive lifestyle, but I feel like this is a very important subject: privacy. I think we should all know what we are doing when we’re sharing certain stuff about ourselves online. In my opinion we should educate ourselves.
You do have something to hide
That’s where this book comes in. It provides you all the information about your privacy. What parts of your privacy are you giving away? And what are the consequences of this lack of privacy. This book shows you what’s really going on behind the scenes of social media. Facebook hasn’t been dragged to court over nothing. Privacy is a serious thing and I feel like it’s important to know when you don’t even have privacy any longer.
There’s so much information about individuals out here, all stored as big data. Cookies, advertisements, algorithms, I didn’t know much about it. And what if these companies social media companies get too much power? It’s on the news frequently, Facebook should be split up. What if your insurance company can reject you if you have a hereditary disease? Or when your bank only gives you credit if you have a well-enough Facebook account? You can read all about it in this book.
Have you read Je hebt wél iets te verbergen by Maurits Martijn?
Yours sincerely,
Romee