The following describes the Social Media Disclosure for our Rocketry Chat Forum website.
Social Media Issue
We live in an interesting time when privacy rights are championed alongside an unprecedented voluntary willingness of people to share their most intimate and superfluous life details with the world, even in places such as our Rocketry Chat Forum website. While apparently benign on the surface, the dangers of unrestrained public disclosure of sensitive information is beginning to surface.
Key social media players are being sued for unauthorized or abusive use/misuse of personal information. Failure to protect and warn are likely going to be focal factors. Lawsuits are filed seeking damages for statements held to be responsible for people’s death or suicide. Bloggers presuming to operate under an unfettered freedom of speech or greater latitude offered to members of the press are losing civil cases for defamation, slander, libel, and so on.
As social media rapidly advances to allow more technologically sophisticated and easy dissemination, the simultaneous fallout of revelation without boundaries is mounting. Thus, a sober approach to the benefits of social media while sidestepping the perils of imprudent disclosure can facilitate an enjoyable online experience without the consequences of excess in settings such as our own Rocketry Chat Forum website.
Presence/Scope of Social Media
You should assume that social media is in use on our Rocketry Chat Forum website. A simple click of a button to endorse a person, product, or service builds a cumulative profile about you, which you should always assume can be discovered by others. Attempting to share a website with someone, whether by direct press of a button or else by email forwarding facilitated on a website, you should assume that this may not stop with the intended recipient and that this can generate information about you that could be seen by a veritable infinite number of people. Such a domino effect could be initiated right here on our Rocketry Chat Forum website.
Something as simple as a blog comment provides the opportunity for knee-jerk reactions that can become public and may not truly represent a position (at least in strength or severity) that you might hold after a period of more reasoned contemplation. You should also note that the ease of accessing one site through the login credentials of another or using a global login for access to multiple sites can accumulate a dossier on you and your online behaviour that may reveal more information to unintended parties than you might realize or want. Any or all of these features could exist on our Rocketry Chat Forum website at one time or another.
These few examples illustrate some possible ways social media can exist, though it is not an exhaustive list, and new technologies will quickly render this list outdated. The objective is to realize the reach of social media its widespread presence on websites in various forms (including this website), and develop a responsible approach to using it.
Protecting Others
You should recognize that divulgences made in and on social media platforms on this website and others are rarely constrained just to you. Disclosures are commonly made about group matters that affect and impact others. Other disclosures are expressly about third parties, sometimes with little discretion. What can appear funny in one moment can be tragic in the next. And a subtle “public” retaliation can have lifetime repercussions.
Ideal use of social media on our website would confine your disclosures primarily to matters about you, not others. If in doubt, it’s best to err on non-disclosure. It’s doubtful the disclosure is so meaningful that it cannot be offset by acting to protect the best interests of someone involuntarily being exposed by your decision to disclose something on our Rocketry Chat Forum website (or another).
Protecting Yourself
You should likewise pause to consider the long-term effects of a split-second decision to publicly share private information about yourself on our Rocketry Chat Forum website. Opinions, likes, dislikes, preferences, and otherwise can change. Openly divulging perspectives that you hold today may conflict with your developing views in the future. Yet, the “new you” will always stand juxtaposed against the prior declarations you made that are now concretized as part of your public profile. While the contents of your breakfast may hold little long-term impact, other readily shared data can have consequences that could conceivably impact your ability to obtain certain employment or hinder other life experiences and ambitions.
As with sharing information about other people, extreme caution should be used before revealing information about yourself. If in doubt, it’s likely best not to do it. The short-term gain, if any, could readily be outweighed by later consequences. Finally, you should note that we are not responsible for removing content once shared, and we may be unable to do so.
Restrictions on the Use of Social Media Data
As a visitor to our Rocketry Chat Forum website, you are not permitted to “mine” social media or other platforms contained herein for personal information related to others. Even where people have publicly displayed data, you should not construe that as though you have the liberty to capture, reproduce, or reuse that information. Social media or related platforms on our website are for interactive use and are relevant only during the website visit.
Accuracy of Social Media Data
As any social media platform is built on user-generated content, you should consider this fact in seeking to determine the authenticity of anything you read. We are not responsible for verifying any user-generated content for accuracy. A best practices policy would be to view all such content as strictly opinion, not fact.
Potential Issues of Liability
You should also be mindful that your words could trigger liability for harm caused to others. While you have the right to free speech, you do not have the right to damage other people. Under basic principles of tort law, you are always responsible, personally, for situations where either:
1. you were required to act but did not (i.e., some “duty of care”)
2. You were required to refrain from acting but did not (i.e., slander, defamation, etc.)
These “sins of omission and commission” could cause problems for you, irrespective of whether you assert you are conducting business under the guise of one or more business entities. Illegal and unethical conduct, when done in the name of a corporation or LLC, is still illegal and unethical conduct. As it is rarely part of a business plan to engage in illegal and unethical conduct, you are doubtfully operating in any official capacity but, perhaps, leveraging that capacity to effectuate personal wrongdoing. You should consult a licensed attorney if you wish legal advice as to the (potential) ramifications of your situation or legal problems stemming from this website or another.
CHANGE NOTICE: As with any of our administrative and legal notice pages, the contents of this page can and will change over time. Accordingly, this page could read differently as of your very next visit. These changes are necessary and carried out by Rocketry Chat Forum to protect you and our Rocketry Chat Forum website. If this page is important to you, you should check back frequently as no other notice of changed content will be provided before or after the change takes effect.
COPYRIGHT WARNING: The legal notices and administrative pages on this website, including this one, have been diligently drafted by an attorney. We at Rocketry Chat Forum have paid to license the use of these legal notices and administrative pages on Rocketry Chat Forum for your protection and ours. This material may not be used in any way for any reason, and unauthorized use is policed via Copyscape to detect violators.
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