Gransnet, Facebook and Twitter.

Actually, it was awful. A young woman, after all that study and hard work, losing her job, never able to teach again. Her family were devastated.
We her colleagues, had to contend with the fall out.

Marydoll

When I was teaching, staffwere warned to be careful what they posted on Facebook, etc, especially when applying for posts. They were checked.

One teacher I knew was sacked for gross misconduct, struck off the teaching register and ended up in court for her posts on social media.

What a foolish woman!

Ooh exciting ! What lovely gossip that must have led to !!

Germanshepherdsmum

Oh dear - my only online presence is GN. If you were to google my name you wouldn’t find me now I’m retired.

But if you're applying to join a Facebook group, you'll probably have a profile, some existing friends and a record of posts you've made or responded to. I'm wary of people who have none of those because it looks as though they've created an ID just to join my group.

I recently received a request from somebody called Misty McMuffin from Texas. She had made very few posts, but had a lot of male friends. Her profile picture looked like Jennifer Arcuri's twin sister. I declined her request and she hasn't contacted me to appeal.

GN is what it is, an interest group in that we are all within roughly the same demographic.
It's just a chat forum, not the true gospel of all world news

I find FB very useful, and can't understand the pride some have in not being on it. The local hub is very useful for reporting flooding on our roads out of the village, lost cats, selling stuff, and I too am on a few interest groups. Yes, there are a few bonkers posters, a few malicious posters, but they are easily spotted and disproved, unlike the MSM with their biased editorials, front pages, which many, sadly, take as some kind of gospel. I also read twitter, and it is a great source of up to date information. I select who I follow, and find that reporters such as Peston use it a lot, it is a good way of reading succinct, up to date reports and opinions. GN is what it is, an interest group in that we are all within roughly the same demographic. I certainly have more trust in what I read on twitter than what I would read in the MSM, assuming I bothered to buy a newspaper!

I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and past students abroad. Also my own gd as this is. The media they use , I also belong to a few interest groups. GN is great for a gossip, support when things are bad, and a healthy debate.

I use facebook for the looking at friend's photos of their cats/dogs/etc and I have used marketplace a bit but you even get 'odd' posts on there. I have a twitter account but don't really use it as I don't really understand it and I waste enough time time online as it is.

I am always surprised when I see photos of grandchildren on GN. Have the parents given permission? My son would be raging if I posted such photos and rightly so. Are people so naive and unaware that these photos can be manipulated by unscrupulous people?

I spent the whole of my career teaching pupils and advising staff not to post identifiable pictures of pupils on social media. Any photos on our school website had to be back or side views and pupils were never identified by name.
Sad, but necessary.

Yes, there are those who post very unwise photos (and other things), and don't lock their profiles right down.

That's not the fault of social media though - it's because a lot of people don't use them sensibly.

When I was teaching, staffwere warned to be careful what they posted on Facebook, etc, especially when applying for posts. They were checked.

One teacher I knew was sacked for gross misconduct, struck off the teaching register and ended up in court for her posts on social media.

What a foolish woman!

I get fed up with the number of emails that I receive telling me that there is something that I should see from someone that I know. I haven't posted anything myself.

You must have opted into getting those emails, though.

FB can be very private, or as open as you want it to be. I only have 'friends' I know, and who also post. I wouldn't stay FB friends with people who read my posts but don't contribute anything - what's the point?

My posts can only be seen by those people, unless I have tagged people (and I only do that if I am happy for the post to go wider). If anyone tags me, I have to approve the post before it goes onto my timeline, so what's on there is only things that I have allowed or posted myself.

I get no notifications unless I am logged in, and they take the form of a number on the top right corner, so I can choose whether or not to open them - no emails, no 'dings', no communications that I haven't asked for, and I only allow friend requests from friends of people who are already my 'FB friends'. My personal details (eg DOB) can only be seen by me, and I don't complete personal details about marital status or educational institutions attended, as people I want to know those things already do.

If people want the world to know about their lives they can set things up that way, but it's by no means required. Anyone who knows your name can possibly find you on FB, particularly if you are called something like Anastasia-Louisa Ponsonby-Smythe - it's less likely if you are a Mary Smith - but if, like me, you have everything locked down they will only see your profile picture. Mine is a stock image of something that interests me, not a picture of me. Who do people think will want to go to great lengths to track them down anyway?

Dinahmo

I signed up to Facebook to gain access to my local village's page to find out about activities, services etc in and around the neighbourhood. Various friends are on it and I'm amazed at how regularly they post stuff, often very trivial. One acquaintance regularly posts the results from her weekly art class.

I get fed up with the number of emails that I receive telling me that there is something that I should see from someone that I know. I haven't posted anything myself.

If people are posting stuff you're bored seeing, then you can stop following them. It then doesn't show up on your timeline but they are still your friend. And if you don't like getting emails from Facebook you can turn them off.

Perhaps your friend is proud of her art and wants people to see it.

That's the difference with GN and Facebook, I think. With FB you can control what you see. With GN, you get what you're given.

I remember my grandfather telling me that it is advisable to always have a healthy dose of scepticism when being presented with unvarified "facts".

I find Facebook useful to keep up with what’s going on where we used to live abroad and scattered friends. Local allotment page, village page for news, local history page and GP’s site.

I signed up to Facebook to gain access to my local village's page to find out about activities, services etc in and around the neighbourhood. Various friends are on it and I'm amazed at how regularly they post stuff, often very trivial. One acquaintance regularly posts the results from her weekly art class.

I get fed up with the number of emails that I receive telling me that there is something that I should see from someone that I know. I haven't posted anything myself.

I bet you were. Our HR department routinely did that. It’s amazing how much of their supposedly private lives people are prepared to share with the world.

Slightly off topic...

When I was working and interviewing people for jobs I used to check them out on FB/LinkedIn etc. You weren't meant to do that.

Oh boy, on more than one occasion was I glad I did

Oh dear - my only online presence is GN. If you were to google my name you wouldn’t find me now I’m retired.

My Facebook pages are full of knitting shops, Maine Coons and pictures of my friends having fun.

Mine's full of knitting and crochet, lost and stolen dogs (upsetting), news from family, an old school group, yoga and the National Trust (now, they can be controversial).

However, as Elizabeth says, people are generally who they say they are on FB because we know them whereas on sites like GN anyone could be anyone they want to be.

"Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be........."

growstuff

I think it depends Dickens. I run a closed group for people with a specific interest. They have to apply to join and I do a cursory background check - nothing heavy, but if people have no online presence, I'm very wary.

... yes, you're right I guess. I also help to moderate a specific interest group on FB and we do those checks too. We also have a couple of 'trick' questions which are designed to weed out those who are not really interested in the subject but want to use it as a platform for their own ends. I'm also a bit cautious about no online presence - but equally so about those who belong to 300+ other groups!

I've never understood the pride some people take in not being on social media. It's as though they think that what so-called 'mainstream' sources are more reliable, despite being run by people with vested interests, and as though even reporters 'on the ground' have the last word on what's happening. Of course they don't. They can see more than we can at if they are at the scene of an incident, but so can ordinary people with phones, who put videos on Facebook or wherever, and those videos are less likely to be propaganda if you know the people who post them because they are friends.

If people don't want to use social media, there is no shame in that - it can be quite unpleasant - but I think it is foolish to write it off as an inferior source of information, and I never see ignorance (ie knowing nothing about something because of having opted out) as a sensible source of pride.

On Gransnet when social media is discussed there is often someone that will state that they do not do social media. Some have the impression that everyone on here is who they say they are but are wary of Facebook

In general users of Facebook use their real name and provide a profile picture, they put on so much information about friends, family, work, and social life.

On here it is just a user name. I remember a post some time ago where someone had put a picture of their lovely house which turned out to be a stock photo.

This is an interesting thread, thank you to everybody who has posted so far.

I'm on Facebook but not Twitter. My Facebook pages are full of knitting shops, Maine Coons and pictures of my friends having fun. You can choose who you interact with on Facebook (and Twitter, I think). I'm not Facebook friends with people I don't know personally and I'm not friends with conspiracy theorists. I find GN much more random, literally ANYBODY can post.

I hope we get more posts here, I'm enjoying reading them.

I agree volver.

I also belong to a local residents group and a number of groups for language teachers.