Can A Hashtag Send You To Jail?

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Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

  • It’s completely depressing to watch the news coming out the Nepal earthquake. So much senseless death, and a reminder that no matter what plans we make in life, we are all just babies in the eyes of Mother Earth. The amount of tragedy this past weekend has been so very hard to stomach. With that, both Facebook and Google have rolled out services to help families check to see if their loved ones are okay, and to help them be located. Good on them for these efforts.
  • Jennifer Pawluck is a 22 year old who was just found guilty of harassment, after posting a photo on Instagram. She took a picture of someone else’s graffiti work and posted it with some anti-police hashtags. The photo upset the officer, his wife and children. The arrest happened in 2013, and the verdict came down last Thursday. Once again, social media can be a risk when you don’t understand the implications of being a publisher and the law that go along with it. 
  • YouTube celebrated it’s 10th anniversary. It’s hard to imagine that YouTube is already ten years old. It’s even harder to imagine another business coming in a disrupting their model. Well, not so fast. That disruptor could be Facebook. Just as YouTube was lighting their candles to celebrate their birthday, Facebook jumped in and spat out the candles by announcing that they now serve up four billion video views to its user base every single day, up from three billion in January, and just one billion back in September. Of those four billion views, 75 percent come from mobile devices. Facebook is getting serious about video too. 
  • App of the week: TVFoodMaps.

Listen here…