Who's to Blame when Technology Malfunctions?

I'm happy to announce that after a week and a half of interviewing and creating e-learning programs I'm back to blogging again!

Thanks for keeping with me through this short hiatus.

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I had an embarrassing thing happen to me last night.

I shot and edited a short video tour of our new apartment, uploaded it to Youtube.com, and then linked to it through tinyurl.com on Twitter and Facebook (which I typically do with my blog postings, too). Now generally, I check the tiny link before posting it by clicking it to make sure that it directs to the page I want, but last night I was in a hurry and so I simply copied it into the Be Twittered Box on my homepage. A few minutes later, when I realized that I hadn't checked the link,  I clicked on my update status and a pornographic picture popped up instead of my video.

You can imagine the terror I felt.

Twitter and Facebook are both very public forums and I had to work quickly to deleted all signs of the tinyurl I had created, all the while hoping and praying that no one else clicked on it and was directed to the same image that I had seen. An image like that can ruin a person, even if it's accidental.

So what happened?

Obviously, I'm not one to post pornography. My Youtube video link was correct when I entered it into tinyurl. All I did was copy/paste the link that tinyurl provided into Be Twittered. So how did the signals get crossed? How did pornography end up on my status update instead of the Youtube Video I intended?

Or perhaps a better question is this: Who is to blame?
As far as I'm concerned, there are really only three potential villains in this example. The first is TINYURL. Through some glitch in their system, a link they generated pointed toward content that I hadn't asked for or created. Their service promises a shortened link to the content the user intends and by providing me with a link to something other than what I  asked for, they messed up. They broke my trust- especially since the link directed users toward something offensive, rather than simply a different video or website.

The second villain is the person who posted the pornography in the first place. Tinyurl would not have been able to direct me to that picture unless that picture was online with an accessible web address. Online pornography is a blight to the internet and should never be readily available to accidentally stumble upon. Anyone who posts pornography is already a bad guy in my book, but at the very least this person should have protected their content so that only those who were specifically looking for pornography could access it. Anything less is practically criminal as far as I'm concerned.

But the third villain is me. As a content creator and distributor, it's ultimately my responsibility to check links and content for accuracy before I post them. There are hundreds of people who have clicked on my tinyurls in the past. That means that there are hundreds of victims out there who could have clicked on my status link and viewed something different than what they expected. No one should be mislead into viewing offensive material. Especially not when they are clicking on something I've posted.

** With this in mind I'd like to publicly apologize if anyone did click on the link in question. It was completely inappropriate content and I am deeply sorry if you were mislead and viewed it. **

So, for those who distribute content, let this be a lesson to you.
In order to avoid the pitfalls of bad links-

1. Always double check embedded content and links before posting.
2. Always click through a post soon after publishing just to make sure.
3. Don't brush off responsibility if you create a bad link. Apologize.

These sorts of problems don't happen very often, but when they do it's the responsibility of the distributor (in this case, me). Whoever "handled" the information last must ensure that readers aren't getting bad content. I didn't do that.

So who's to blame?
Me. I'm to blame.