Transcription de la vidéo
Journalist: Welcome to La Mission Locale covering the Paris suburbs Villemomble, Gagny and Pavillon-sous-Bois, partnered by the Paris Cité des Métiers and Moovjee.
Sébastien: I’m Sébastien Bencherqui. I’m 27 and I’ve set up and developed a company called Bubblz on the Net. So I use social networks a lot.
Journalist: What is a social network for you?
Sébastien: Everyone has their own idea. I’d say a community with a shared interest. LinkedIn is for business and Facebook for friends, although some use it for business too. People get together on Instagram to share art and photography. There are often great pictures. So each network has its own interest and communities.
Journalist: And how do you use social networks?
Sébastien: In various ways. Facebook for entirely personal use, LinkedIn only for business. I use it to stay in touch with all my business contacts, to find out what they’re doing and be able to contact them at any time, because now you can chat on LinkedIn. Then I use it to promote my company. When I have news, I put it on LinkedIn where I prefer to communicate, but on Facebook too.
Journalist: Do you think social networks help to create a digital identity?
Sébastien: Clearly! I’d say digital identity has two aspects. First, it shows who I am, so I produce content, ‘like’ things, share articles and write. My public or semi-public content tells people about me and the identity I’ve created. In defining your digital identity, you also have to look at the information you’re giving out. My feeds will be different to a friend’s on Facebook and LinkedIn because we won’t like the same things, read the same articles, etc. Algorithms are so powerful now that when they see I like or share something, they’ll heap content on me. So social networks clearly play a major role in creating my digital image.
Journalist: So what are the dangers of using social networks?
Sébastien: I think there can be a lot. Given that everything’s public or semi-public, if you express yourself poorly or improperly, it can impact on your image, which we were talking about. With the US presidential campaign, we also saw that when you like something, the recommendation engines direct you to similar content. So if I start to like Republican posts, I’ll only get those. And with the fake-news system, I’ll get fake content about Democrat candidates, etc. So that’s a risk too. The other social-network danger is that there’s no filter. People can contact me and suggest things I don’t like. Or I could get caught up in some craziness I don’t share. Those are some major risks that immediately came to mind, but there are others too.
Journalist: Thank you, Mr. Bencherqui.
Sébastien: Thank you.