Brandjack News

The problem with the social web is that cringeworthy misjudgements that used to just entertain a few of your friends and colleagues can now leave you exposed to the amusement of half the world.

Take this example (h/t @Sheldrake) from Bank of America.

I don’t rule out the possibility that in an internal company conference this might have gone down reasonably well, with at least part of the audience. I will even concede that the man can sing, and does a passable impression of Bono. But singing about a bank with such loving tones would have seemed absurd to most people even in 2007, and is positively offensive to more than a few today.

Outside of their context performances like this are ludicrous, embarrassing, and hilarious. They go viral on YouTube and Twitter in a very short space of time. And it is going to keep on happening. Talking to students, I long ago concluded that gen Y simply doesn’t have the same expectations of privacy that previous generations do. And it is older generations who are going to have to adjust.
While older generations argue about the civil liberties implications of speed cameras and security cameras in shopping centres, gen Y knows that if you are in a public place there is always a chance that someone is filming you. In any crowd there are hundreds of internet connected video cameras, and the chance that one of them will point at you if you do something embarrassing is pretty high. Losing your temper, getting drunk, flirting while married, all have dramatically different implications to just a few years ago.
In the UK, the courts are struggling to construct a privacy law based on the Human Rights Act. And technology is making it irrelevant.