Freedom of Speech: In the United States, although freedom of speech is a right for every citizen, the abuse of this right might lead to significant consequences. In the movie, Val actually did not do anything completely wrong besides posting Laura’s video, but it is totally wrong to tell Laura to commit suicide just because Laura is kind of mean on her. Furthermore, this is a kind of abuse on freedom speech right. Actually, there are variety of forms of abuse on freedom of speech in real life that do not just really on inappropriate words and actions. [1] For example, spreading rumors of someone without checking the source by just clicking the mouse on Internet, taking or posting picture and videos of other without permission in public such as Facebook page and YouTube. In the movie, not only Val’s words that form the tragedy is a kind of abuse of this right but also her posting the video in the first place is an abuse since she is posting humiliating video of someone else without that person’s permission. Also, Blair’s action is also one kind of abuse on this right since she is taking the video of Laura without Laura’s permission. In Unfriended, the abuse of freedom of speech leads to another severe consequence, which is cyber-bullying. Blaire and Val’s action of posting harmful things about Laura ended up leading to her suicide. This is still cyber-bullying, whether it was a conscious decision or not for Blaire and Val to lead Laura to suicide. Even though it is also revealed in movie that Laura has been mean on Val and Laura is mean based on most classmates’ opinion, it is just too much for a teenager, who is having some hard time dealing with some family issues. We would say the freedom of speech is never an excuse for cyber-bullying [2].
Intellectual Property: What people post online and whether or not other people can use this information at times becomes a gray area in the online world. For example, if someone posts about an idea he/she had within a social media post and another person goes and uses this idea for monetary gain, how does this come into play with the law? The video of Laura was uploaded onto the internet and many people saw it. If the video was downloaded and posted elsewhere, it can be questioned whether or not this is intellectual property infringement on Blaire because she filmed and uploaded it.
Privacy: The film in some sense is exploring how anonymity of Internet social network is changing each person’s social boundaries [5], making people behave differently on Internet than in daily lives. In reality life, Blair and her Skype group member seems to be people with integrity on Laura’s death and refuse to admit they are actually playing parts in Laura’s death, but it turned out that each one of them is either anonymously commenting on the video or posting videos in the first place. Internet allows everyone to explore the good sides of our personalities such as creative, sharing sides and the desire to establish positive connections with people, but the anonymity of Internet also exposes the evil side such as imposing cruelty on other people or people we barely know. Besides anonymity problem discussed above, it would be also appropriate to talk about cyber privacy in modern social media age. Although it is a horror movie mostly related to ghost, it also makes sense if audiences accept the view that all the tragedies in the movie is caused by human being such as Laura’s relative who is seeking for revenge. If the movie is based on human action, then this unknown revenger must have hacked into Blaire and her groups members’ computers to monitor their movements because this revenger even knows the content of the message Blaire is sending to her boyfriend. In this case, the cyber privacy of Blaire and her group member is severely invaded by hackers. Actually, in modern society, everyone’s cyber privacy is being challenging by numerous ways. For examples, when people are using search engines like Google, they usually tells Google what’s their hobbies, and Google would use those data to push up annoying ads. Some searching engine companies are even illegally using users’ microphones to listen to what users are talking about in daily lives so that they can push the most appealing ads to users [6].
Crime: The main focus of Unfriended is an attacker seemingly enacting revenge on behalf of Laura's death due to cyber-bullying. This revenge is executed through the cyber-bullying, which is illegal. Furthermore, this revenge is enacted through cyber-bullying, hacking, and murder. This movie identifies cyber-bullying as the root cause as to why all of these terrible things were happening. If one breaks the law, especially one that involves the harm of another, then a potential domino effect of chaos can occur. When a person commits suicide, not just the person that has passed away feels pain. It trickles and can soon activate evil within another individual. Furthermore, the movie addresses the problem of security. Endless amounts of personal information can be found on the internet and is not stored securely. Unfriended identifies the dangers of using the internet due to its insecurity, especially with social networking sites.
Errors Failures Risks: This film touches upon social media and the potential risk of putting personal information on the internet. In theory, when done correctly, this information is private and can only be accessed by those that the user allows. However, when there are errors and flaws involving the security of the code, hackers now have the ability to try and access this information. At times this can be costly. For example, a database can include someone's Social Security Number. If this database allows for an SQL Injection attack to happen, then this person has the potential of getting his/her identity stolen. In Unfriended, Skype's security system allowed the hacker into a private video-chat room to then cause harm to the people within it. Security has to be thought of at the beginning stages of an application, or else errors can lead to serious issues.
Work: This movie highlights video-chatting, a major form of communication that came about with the computer and mobile technology inventions. Oftentimes phone calls were used to provide communication between points at different locations. However, video-chatting applications such as Skype allowed for the intermingling of computer and mobile connections. One could download this application on his/her phone and then call a person using his/her laptop. Furthermore, instead of using up minutes to be in a group phone call with friends, individuals can get together or meet strangers in online chat rooms. With this form of connection now a common use, telephone companies and providers have the potential to cut down on job hires to save money. Furthermore, companies are starting to use social media to help with decisions involving hiring new employees. If a person posts something insensitive and/or offensive online, then this person may not receive a job offer because of it. One has to be just as careful with his/her online presence as he/she is in real life.