The Permanent State of the Internet

During a piece on NPR’s On the Media, host Brooke Gladstone interviewed one of the show’s producers about the permanency of people’s online actions. Producer Nazanin Rafsanjani discussed his futile attempts to remove something he had posted on the internet over five years ago. Rafsanjani had written a passionate email to iranian.com discussing America’s response to 9/11. Several years later out of embarrassment and a desire for privacy, he tried to get the letter removed from the website. The editor of the website refused because the site’s policy was that every post was permanent. No matter how badly Rafsanjani wanted the letter removed; there was nothing he could do. This is a great example of how permanent one’s actions on the internet can be. While many people think their online actions are transitory and have no consequences, there is a lack of privacy in the internet which allows almost anyone to see these actions forever. For this reason, people should be very careful with what they post and allow others to post of them on the internet. A great example of this can be seen with the social networking site facebook. While I was in high school, two kids got suspended because of questionable photos they had posted of themselves on facebook. I have also heard on multiple occasions that employers and even school admissions committees examine a potential employer/student’s facebook or MySpace page to gain a better perspective on the applicant. There have also been scandals where politician’s children were singled out because of incriminating images posted of them on social networking sites. All of these examples show that people need to be very careful with their online actions, for even this blog post could be seen by anyone around the world.