Journal Entry #4 (Netiquette)

For this assignment, we learned about the appropriate etiquette and the unspoken rules of the internet. This assignment was very interesting and quite fun to research! However, the most surprising part of the assignment was when we researched different companies that hide scary information in their Terms of Service Agreements that you've most likely agreed to. Many major social media websites take the photos you post and own them after they're posted, and even companies like Netflix and Amazon scam the people who use it as well as other companies that require you to give them your credit card information when you sign up for a free trail. Some of these companies will take in your information and after the free trial is over, you will not be notified so they end up just taking money from your account! I think that internet users should definitely concern themselves with the Terms of Service Agreements of different companies but not for all of them. For major companies, I believe that it's less of an issue because everyone who had accepted to it would be angry and the company could suffer. However, with smaller, suspicious companies that you have never heard of before, I think that people on the internet should definitely concern themselves with them and read them thoroughly.

Personally, I would rate my online behavior as a 6/10 because when I learned about the different Terms of Service Agreements that I had agreed to, there was a lot of them! At this point, I don't really care too much about what I've agreed to online because I just assume that nothing bad will ever happen to me online (even though I should never assume that I still do). One thing that I can take away from this assignment that could help me improve my online behavior would be to read the Terms of Service Agreements better and understand what I'm agreeing to. If I do this, it would make my internet experience safer and I would know more about what I was signing up for!

When it comes to young people and netiquette, I believe that the biggest issue is cyberbullying. Cyberbullying ties in to netiquette because it regards the inappropriate behavior of someone on the internet and among teenagers it's very common. There isn't exactly anything that we can do to stop cyberbullying entirely,  but if teenagers looked in to what netiquette is and how to behave properly on the internet some of it could be reduced!