As senior Joshua Kim was browsing through Twitter, he was startled by a new follower: @GBNBackstabber.
On Sept. 17, anonymous Twitter user @GBNBackstabber tweeted about specific Glenbrook North students. Within just hours of its creation, @GBNBackstabber was shut down.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Kim, who operates the student run Twitter account called @GBNUpdates. “If you add the GBN name to it, you’re representing the school whether you like it or not. If students represent the school in a negative way, it’s just disappointing.”
According to Instructional Technology Coordinator Ryan Bretag, the @GBNBackstabber account might have been brought to GBN’s attention either through complaints made by parents or by the notifications the school receives from Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a content monitoring service that automatically notifies users of any internet content with a set of selected search terms. “We don’t have a copyright on the term GBN,” said Bretag. “We have authority to go and say, ‘Someone’s trying to utilize our official name and logo and they’re not a representative of our school.’”
He said the school does not actively “troll the internet.” Instead, Bretag goes online to ascertain whether or not online accounts are official GBN accounts. If the sites seem harmful, Bretag contacts Twitter and requests for them to be taken down.
While @GBNBackstabber was still active, an anonymous tweeter created @GBNCompliments in response to @GBNBackstabber, tweeting, “@GBNCompliments is not going to stand by and watch innocent people get hurt for no reason.”
Kim said he operates @GBNUpdates to encourage students by expressing school pride and informing students with important school updates, notifying students with tweets as often as multiple times a minute.
Kim feels that this account benefits students in different ways than other accounts.
“I remember hearing kids talk about how they are not informed about certain things, whether it was the bell schedule for a shortened class period day or announcements that students tend to miss,” Kim said.
Kim believes the students’ social media accounts boost the school’s pride and genuinely give students a voice.
