Social Media Garden

A project by Agni Gómez

It is a web page in which I group profiles of several people in social media and whose owners have abandoned them, and I summarize them. These profiles have been found within social media networks that have fallen into disuse and, with them, I raise questions about what is private and what is public in virtual spaces and questioning the decisions we make, almost always unconsciously, when we become users of services and technologies.

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How long will it take that bird to fly freely into the sky?

If you want to know the past, look at the present that is its result, if you want to know the future, look at the present that is its cause

Well ... after a long time without fotolog and stuff like that, here I go again since I had [wanted] somewhere [to post] the small reflections, stories, jokes or just my day to day ... I know that many would not be interested and to some it will even seem curious what I put here. Everyone is free to think what they want :) (...)

(Lucía Alonso López (Kowai_Random), February 1 2017, https://goo.gl/juJ4pJ) (Translation form spanish by Agni Gómez)

Thus begins the first entry in the profile of @kowai_random, on July 17, 2010 in the social network Fotolog. A social network that was very popular in the mid 2000’s especially among young people from Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Spain, and shares the basic characteristics of all social networks: you can share photos and / or text and add friends.

@kowai_random's profile was last updated on January 1, 2012 and, like many other internet and social network users, she never deactivated her account or deleted the information she had posted there. Like many other users she, consciously or not, decided to leave that information public.

Public,

Of lat. Publĭcus.

1. adj. Of or concerning the people as a whole

2 adj. Open to or shared by all the people of an area or country

3. adj. Of or involved in the affairs of the community, especially in government or entertainment.

4. adj. Done, perceived, or existing in open view.

5. adj. Of or provided by the state rather than an independent, commercial company.

6. adj.British Of, for, or acting for a university.

7. n. Ordinary people in general; the community.

8. n. A section of the community having a particular interest or connection.

9. n. The people who watch or are interested in an artist, writer, or performer.

(Oxford Dictionary - January 30 2017, https://goo.gl/ShJwp0)

Many times it has happened that, while browsing from link to link, I’ve found vestiges of social networks from before Facebook, those which servers are still online and which content has not been deleted.

What surprises me in a way is to see that user profiles, which have been abandoned for more than 8 years, have a lot of information. Information that I can access. Information that anyone can access.

What frightens me, honestly, is how much of our lives we share publicly in social networks, and how many of our memories are abandoned when we move from one service to another, from one social network to another.

I realize, then, that we do not know or are not aware at all of what the ‘public’ state of our information means, much less what it means in the context of the Internet.

When I activated my Facebook account, about 8 or 9 years ago I did not read the contract that ties me to the company, nor did I read Twitter’s, Instagram’s, or any of the 84 apps that, at this moment, I use on my smartphone. I also did not read the contract of the operating system that I use on my computer, nor the contract I accepted when having an account in google and use their products (Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Calendar, among the infinity they offer).

Who owns my information? Where is each video, each voice note or each photo? Every message I send and receive?

Where are each of the posts that we share with such joy and that, without a doubt, we have left forgotten within the ethereal space that we call the Internet and, above all, who has access to all of them?