The Story of Justine Sacco

There are a lot of occurring internet controversy when it come to posting on social media, especially when in the hands of teenagers. Due to the lack of control when posting, teenagers tend to post offensive self-opinions and highly inappropriate content that goes beyond restrictive internet policies.  However, it is not only teenagers posting irresponsibly. Sometimes even adults go past restricted limitations of internet usage.

In the story of women named Justine Sacco who is thirty years old, Justine herself, supposedly tweeted out a racist comment that stated the following: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get aids. Just kidding. I’m white!”.  This caused a never ending stream of hatred by offended people to rise against her. The hate that came with the comment lead up to Justine potentially losing her job as a senior director of corporate communications at IAC. Not only did this tweet offended people, there were numerous other tweets from her that affected both her reputation and career.

After the immediacy of her comment took effect on being spread all around social media, Justine’s friend, Hannah, was suffering from the lack of control as hashtags and retweets started being were posted nonstop. Lack of control gave Hannah the inability to delete the racist comments. And finally, permanece ensured that the tweet would never simply go away, Which meant that it was too late for Justine.