Whenever the right-leaning media writes or opines about US President Barack Obama, it is with a tinge of, “Oh, look what he’s done NOW”.
The media, obsessed with social media, and politics, got the perfect winter “silly season” story with news that Obama has banned his daughters from using Facebook.
According to the Daily Mail online:
“His admission seems somewhat ironic, given that he made full use of Facebook and other websites to encourage the young to vote for him in the presidential election — and to raise millions of dollars for his campaign.
US President Barack Obama and his daughters Sasha (l) and Malia. The media got the perfect winter “silly season” story with news that Obama has banned his daughters from using Facebook. Reuters
Leave aside the judgemental inclination of both the web and the right-wing press for whom nothing is ever good enough. Why is the alleged “freedom” afforded by the internet so fascist when it comes to social media?
Are there rules about how one must use Facebook? Must you accept all friend requests and, if you’re public about certain things, you have to be public about everything?
One rule isn’t actually Obama’s. Facebook requires people to be aged 13 before they sign up, so daughter Sasha is just 10, while Malia is 13.
He’s said both will have to wait four years before they sign up: “Why would we want to have a whole bunch of people who we don’t know knowing our business? That doesn’t make much sense.”
Yet Obama puts his Christmas family photo on his Facebook page, wail the commentators.
Except it isn’t really his page.
Equating a social media profile for the most powerful man in the world to that of the average individual in India or Brazil or even the US is absurd. And his children are not ordinary children: anything they posted could be hacked, exposed to the prying eyes of the globe and used against them and their father.
Source: firstpost.com |
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