Tag Archives: digital-footprint

Twitter has changed, but so have I

Back in November, I celebrated 12 years on Twitter and I reflected,

“I still love Twitter, and it is still my go-to place to connect and learn from others when I’m online. But, 12 years in, I miss the power of this network to engage me in deep learning filled with rich conversation. However I also recognize that my focus has changed too. I transmit more than I converse, I dabble more than I engage. If I’m honest, I probably could not have maintained the engagement I gave Twitter at that time for 12 years.“

Recently, I responded to a tweet that asked: “has anyone ever found a friend through twitter and actually met up with them?”

https://twitter.com/hashplanted/status/1260988566676668422?s=21

And I responded, “Again and again and again…”, then shared a few examples:

I genuinely miss the days when I would get onto Twitter at about 4:30, after a day of teaching, and I’d scroll my timeline all the way back to the last tweet that I read in order to ‘catch up’ on what I missed during the day. I miss conversations that would last 15+ tweets, with others joining in to the ‘conversation’, and I miss the sense of connectedness and intimacy I had with genuine friends that I had never met face to face. I miss how Twitter was connected to blogging, and conversations went from sharing a link to conversations in the blog’s comments. It was a different time, and it comes with some nostalgia.

But as much as Twitter has changed, so have I. I lurk a lot more. I move conversations to Direct Messages, or other communication tools. I transmit – meaning, when I write this Daily-Ink, or a post on Pair-a-Dimes, or on my Podcast, or YouTube, then I share a link on Twitter… sometimes my last 3 or 4 Tweets might be me sharing something I’ve done. This can seem like I’m marketing or doing self-promotion, and some people don’t like that… I look at it 2 ways: 1. I produced some content to share, and I’d actually like some attention on it for the effort. And, 2. Is it really self-promotion when I’m not selling anything?

If it really bothers someone, it’s really easy to hit the unfollow button. I also don’t read and comment on as many blogs as I used to, and so I’m not engaging the way I wishes others do. That said, I still find it funny when someone retweets a link I share (be it to my content or someone else’s) faster than it would take to read the content that was shared! I make it a rule not to share anything I haven’t taken the time to read or watch myself.

So, as much as I miss the old days of Twitter, I’m using Twitter differently and can’t expect the same experience I had before smartphones, hashtags, and less than 500 people on my timeline. Things have changed. But I still love Twitter, and 95+% of the time I see good things and ‘Angry Twitter’ doesn’t show up in my network. That’s a far better ratio than Facebook, and my community on Twitter that I engage with is still pretty awesome. It’s not what it used to be, but neither am I.

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PS. Twitter EDU is a free eBook I wrote to help people find greater value in the tool when they get started. Share it, if you know someone that can use it.

The size of your digital footprint doesn’t matter when it comes to viral social media shaming

When I started building my digital footprint, I saw a positive side-effect. If I googled David Truss, the first few pages belonged to me, or were about me. It got to the point where I actually felt bad for someone who shared my name. I mean, if you share the same name as someone famous, it makes sense that you will search your name and see that famous person. But if you are a young David Truss, you don’t expect to be inundated with information about a Canadian educator that no one has ever really heard of.

This gave me an illusion of ownership of my digital footprint that no longer exists. I used to tell students and educators that if you created a long tail of good things on your digital footprint, that would protect you from negative attention. For example, if someone wrote a blog post that said something mean about me, unless they were famous, or unless it was a major news publication, that article might end up on the 5th or 10th page of a Google search of my name. Essentially, it would be buried behind a trail of positive things I’ve done. That illusion no longer exists thanks to social media and #hashtags.

The reality is that everyone is one public, stupid mistake, one careless tweet, or one embarrassing Facebook post away from public humiliation that can last for years. And with respect to the public mistake, it might not be something recent, but could also be something that is dug up from the past. I didn’t grow up with cell phones and ubiquitous access to digital photos, but I’m sure that there are some embarrassing photos of me in my youth, sitting in photo boxes, in other people’s photo albums, or stored in basements or garages. I’m also sure that at least a few of my 30,000 tweets and several hundred blog posts, over 13+ years, have not aged well and can be seen as either rude, condescending, or even embarrassing.

Nowadays, it’s all too easy to be publicly shamed by something in a way that can go viral and absolutely overshadow your digital footprint, no matter how big it is. Viral videos and hashtags can create a storm of unwelcome attacks to you and any digital footprint you might have built. This is horrible. Imagine only being judged by you worst indiscretion. Imagine trying to escape that indiscretion a decade or more later, but that’s what comes up when your name is Google searched. Is this the kind of society we want to live in? A person can commit a crime, serve time, and move on… but a single tweet can haunt someone for years afterwards.

I really enjoyed this piece on Public Shaming on ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’: (*Language/Profanity Warning)

Which led me to watch this TedTalk by Monica Lewinsky on The Price of Shame:

“The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising dollars.”

This one quote from Monica Lewinsky underlies how systematic this issue is. It’s not just about a bunch of individuals deciding to bully and shame someone, it’s an entire media industry that feeds off of it. But as she later says, quoting Brené Brown, “Shame can’t survive empathy.”

We have the power to be good and positive in our actions. Not feeding the clicks of scandalous headlines and not sharing in the bullying and shaming of others. We can block and report negative people who focus on attacking others. We can be kind and forgiving.

Our online actions can feed a system that rewards the shaming of others, or our actions can reflect the same sort of empathy we would want others to give us if our worst indiscretions (past or future) ever became publicly viral.

Empathy and forgiveness

Last night I (re)read, “(Digital) Identity in a World that No Longer Forgets”, by Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt. I say ‘(re)read’ because I thought I was reading this article, written in October 2015, for the first time… but when I looked at it again today, I saw the first comment on the article was by me. The internet might not forget, but I do!

In the article, this sentence really struck me:

“In a world where forgetting is no longer possible, we might instead work towards greater empathy and forgiveness.”

We need to recognize that people are allowed to make mistakes. Take the time to read the article by Alec and Katia. These things matter when measuring the severity of someone’s digitally inappropriate contribution: Context and intended audience, intent, history, authorship, and empathy (and forgiveness).

If we treat every transgression on the internet with the same level of disgust and anger, then comparatively we are reducing the level of anger and upset over truly appalling and disturbing comments and behaviours. Furthermore, we are creating an unforgiving and un-empathetic society, that does not allow us to apologize and/or learn from our mistakes.

I’ve written about this in my post ‘Resilience #OneWord2020‘, and I’ll end with a quote from that post:

In Online Spaces:

People will make mistakes online. They will say things that are unintentionallyhurtful, or blindly offensive. This is different than someone being intentionally biased and rude. If the slander is intentional, it should be reported. If it is unintentional, even to the point of ignorance, we need to be more resilient about what our responses are. When every transgression is treated with an attack, the most severe/bigoted/rude/biased transgressions are not given the heightened alarm that they deserve. With lesser errors and mistakes, we need to let people have a venue to recognize their errors and invite conversation rather than damnation.

Growing up, I heard the playground retort to taunts, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me.” We are past the era of letting nasty people say whatever nasty things they want, and just turning the other cheek to pretend we are not hurt. This is a good thing. We want to live in a world where that behaviour is not acceptable. But it does not serve us well to treat the attacker like they can not repent or be sorry.

DigiFoot12 – My Experience

Yes, I’m still at work. Yes, I’m probably too busy to add something new to my plate. But this is my work in a way… actually in two different ways!

1. I have been a MOOC dropout that did one assignment for the course, and I’ve never followed through with an online course… and yet, I work in an environment where I help students find success in online courses. I work in a learning centre for adults and most of them, like me, live very busy lives. I want to model the commitment I ask of our students.

2. Digifoot12 is an excellent launching ground for me as I start to build my course, Applications of Digital Literacy for our new Inquiry Hub, starting in September. I’m very excited about teaching this course and I think that almost everything I do in Digifoot12 will benefit the development of my own course. In fact, as we approached the start of this course, Verena Roberts and I had a conversation and we realized that we were taking similar approaches. She has students working as Digital Detectives, working on cases: Case 1 – Scavenger Hunt And I too had the idea of students being ‘digital detectives’ though not as an overriding theme. 

So, I have a lot to model and to learn from. I decided to use my Daily Ink blog because I’ll be posting much more frequently than I normally do on ‘Pair-a-Dimes‘, and that blog is really not for course material as that’s not the audience I’ve built there… Although reflections on this experience will creep over there as we move forward. 

What I’ve done so far:

* Joined the Student2.0 Digifoot12 Group and updated my profile. 

* Introduced myself

* Added my twitter and blog links. I’ve also posted about on Digifoot12 Twitter. 

* Added an artifact to mightybell – This one: The complete guide to building a digital footprint

* Watched the slideshow for week 1. (I had a work appointment that prevented me from being part of the live session.)

* Written this introductory post, And…

* Created this Netvibes page to help me, and hopefully others, follow along. 

Digital-footprint-me-dot-com-david-truss-cc-by-nc-sa