We are surrounded by so many visuals, from ads to apps. Everyone is trying to promote something, professionals promote their new products directly to their audience by using visual medias just like amateurs just want to share photographs with friends. We live in an era where sharing visuals with millions of people is simple. By clicking on ‘I agree’ one eliminate barriers. But, as an individual, sharing visuals on every other visual media is not without risk. Some people are tempted to share private visuals not knowing the social media’s policies of privacy.
Using visual media can be beneficial from different perspectives. Visual media like Flickr, for example, is free to sign up and use social media, where users can easily share their photographs, like and comment them. There is a possibility to create groups so that you can interact with people with whom you share the same area of interest. Bloggers also use Flickr to host images on their sites. Another benefit about social media is that one can put a visual and delete it at any time; there is no constraint of granting the site an exclusive license to display your images. Another famous visual media is Instagram. It is almost like Flickr except that you can have 16 seconds videos. Instagram is also more popular even though it was created in 2010, six years after Flickr. A lot of celebrities use Instagram, which is another difference. But there is no major differences concerning the use of both. Another visual media is Google Images. It is simply a great search engine for images, because it has a significant database, which can be used to find photographs with the same colour option. It is a great tool to search of a photographer’s work, for example. Or, it can be use to identify a photograph, because some people use fake accounts or lie about the origin of some photographs. Visual medias can be useful and practical.
However, there is a real ethical problem when it comes to visual media. Some site’s privacy policies are just pure intrusion in its user’s private life. According to Guardian Liberty Voice, “Facebook messenger’s privacy concerns have users outraged.” Indeed, in order to use the Facebook messenger app, one has to give permission to Facebook to make phone calls, send text messages, take pictures and even activate the voice recorder at anytime. Despite that, the app had been downloading 500 million times. Other apps have almost the same requirements. Adding to that, a lot of visual medias are related to Google like YouTube for example. Or Flickr related to Yahoo. So to register one has to have a Gmail account for YouTube or a Yahoo account for Flickr. It is like giving all our information to the same company; they know our habits, thoughts, and every detail about our lives and can sell our profiles to other companies.
Another disadvantage of visual media is that it is not controlled. We are surrounded with different visuals, good and bad. Sometimes, with sexual content or violence, and children with free access to those materials are endangered. Even though on the net some sites ask for the internet user’s age, it is still very easy to click on “I am 18” for a minor. There are ethical and moral issues that have to be reviewed concerning visual media.
To conclude, visual media is an integral part of our life, as it is based on the digital economy, we are more and more exposed to risks. These visuals have to be controlled by a law in order to prevent users from being robbed essential information or being intruded within their private life. This led us to think that a kind of Police of the web may be needed.
by Mickael Leveille-Sophie
Photo by Kev Shine – Flickr License
Tre'vell Hill 
Jeanette Smith