Prism: Why only the guilty and the kinky actually care
In the first of a new weekly column, A Social Media Agency's Iona St Joseph takes a look at what people have been talking about on social media over the last week, starting with fears about Prism, complaints about Game of Thrones and grumblings about the new tech from Apple and Microsoft. Who knew social media users did so much moaning?
The Metro upset social media users with its Game of Thrones spoilers
The people of the internet were up in arms this week, after news that the US government’s Prism internet surveillance programme was apparently spying on everyone’s Facebook and Gmail accounts. The New York Times quickly disbanded the rumours, saying that nothing revealed suggests that the NSA were targeting ordinary Americans, so we (apparently) don’t have anything to worry about… yet.
But what happens if (when) they start monitoring everyone’s social media and email activity? I’m not going to be devastated that the government can easily find out that I once ate 10 bags of Space Raiders in one day (true story), just by looking at my Facebook page.
Sure, I’ll probably just double check that what I’m posting online isn’t going to end up with my family being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night for interrogation, but to be honest, I usually think twice about posting anything remotely controversial anyway.
So why is everyone so concerned about having their posts and emails viewed? Well, they’re not really. The only people that don’t want the government viewing what they’re doing is the 1 per cent that are up to some sort of online criminal activity.
The remaining 99 per cent that don’t want everyone at GCHQ checking out their Facebook profile are the ones who don’t want the authorities lol’ing at the naked pictures they send to their partner whilst they’re at work. C’mon, you know it’s true…
Game of Thrones: SPOILERS ALERT
In case you STILL don’t know what happened in THAT episode, don’t click through to any of the links in this post. Just in case.
The internet practically imploded last week after a particularly exciting episode of Game of Thrones, but meltdown 2.0 came when someone (*cough* The Metro *cough*) published some serious plot spoilers. Now, surely, getting annoyed at the internet for ruining a plot line is like getting annoyed about British summertime being rainy and crap. We all know it’s going to happen, and we complain about it continuously, but we keep going back for more.
The Metro were at the forefront of a lot of GoT related abuse, mainly due to the fact that they wrote up a spoiler-tastic article about it. Needless to say, fans watching on catch up were not best pleased.
So should they have written it up so quickly? According to Twitter, the answer was a resounding ‘NO WAY OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D DO THAT’, but, to everyone else, covering a story about a TV show that has already aired is pretty kosher.
Just a bit of advice for the future; maybe avoid reading an article about something you haven’t watched yet and want to avoid finding out what happened.
iOS 7: The iPhone’s fancy new look
Apple unveiled its brand spanking new operating system on Tuesday, iOS7. The new operating system is, essentially, Apple’s desperate attempt to catch up with Samsung and its swanky new S4.
Apart from a few tweaks, not a lot has changed in terms of the iPhone’s interface since the original iPhone was released. We all remember waiting for a huge update when we though the iPhone 5 was going to be release, but it turned out to be the 4S… and all we got was Siri, which was cool for a while, but everyone’s bored of it now. There’s only so many times asking a phone where you can hide a dead body, and it offering up a list of swamps, dumps and reservoirs, is funny.
Xbox vs PlayStation: IT’S ON
Much of the conversation on social media this week has centred around the fact that both Microsoft and Sony are both releasing their latest version of their consoles, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.
So which is best, how will you choose?! Let’s be honest: you’ve already picked one. I think it’s pretty safe to say that if you’ve got an Xbox, you’re going to go for the Xbox One. If you’ve got a Playstation, then you’re going to go for… you guessed it! The PS4. There is, however, an exception to this rule.
Unless you’re willing to fork out the best part of £500 for a console that won’t even let you play any of your old games, or share your games with your friends, then you’re probably going to stick with the console you’ve already got. Which sounds like a very sensible idea.
You can follow Iona's daily musings and opinions on Twitter @ionastjoseph