Navy_Pete said:
I hate going out to eat with people that post photos of their meals. Sure, grab a group shot, but no one cares some don’t care what your food looks like. It's a useful darwinian kind of self sorting feature though for social media.
I can see it being annoying in certain situations. Discretion is important. There’s a time and a place. Casual/with friends, like you said. Business lunch with the boss? Not so much.
There’s a large following for food porn. Some people really enjoy it. I think it’s genuinely interesting that the practice doesn’t lend itself to only a select group. I know those of any age (I’m middle-aged myself), rank, position/experience, etc who take photos of a dish they’d like to share. It’s just one of those things. For instance, another phenomenon is constant captures of video-game playing and screen-grabs. That hobby doesn’t garner interest for some, but there’s a large following for those types of profiles. Again, just one of those things. Social media is a strange beast at times.
There are users here familiar with my social media habits, so I’m comfortable discussing them. I was poking a bit of fun at myself above. (I’ve been a hobbyist, as well as professional-gig photographer on various occasions for years. I’ve been tasked with some local military events also. I find inspiration in the every-day and I always have some sort of camera with me...and can always find something to take a photo of. On occasion, it’s food
)
I find that many people, particularly the current younger generation who are touted as being oh-so tech savvy, have little clue or regard for the digital trail they leave. I have seen personal FB pages of professional people who really should know better with no privacy filters posting phone numbers, etc. There are proven linkages between posts and crime ('hey, be away on vacation for a week. C U when we get back'. Returns to a break-in). I have also read on these pages how social media can (or used to) have a security impact on deployments.
I remember some years back some kid on one of the CAF facebook groups who was going through BMQ and talking about how as a Comms Researcher he'd be getting top secret clearance. So I took about 20 minutes, then randomly messaged him photos of the front of his house, and his parents and sister's names and places of employment. It was amusing seeing how rattled he was by that. Good little lesson learned. A little bit of benevolent red-teaming never hurt anyone.
This is true, and very troubling. And it can’t always be attributed to some of them not knowing, because some of them do. They just don’t see it as being a genuine concern. However, it’s important to give adequate weight to the fact that it’s not always a younger generation thing. There are those of older age who don’t recognize the risks for whatever reason; whether it be an overall understanding of technology, a navigation issue with certain platforms, etc.
Before the outbreak started, my 50+yr old colleague went on vacation. While he and his family were away, there was an incident involving a credit card, and a package delivered and picked up from his house. He had a doorbell camera, so footage was captured. Thankfully, everything got sorted out. But in discussion when he returned we were talking about the situation, and I had to explain to him that all his FB posts were public. ‘That anyone, anywhere, could see everything he posted. ‘Had to explain what the little ‘earth’ icon indicated. He legitimately didn’t know, and he wasn’t new to the platform either.
