Introduction to Social Media Investigation: A Hands-on Approach, 1st Edition (2015)

Chapter 19. Social media sharing

Abstract

There are plenty of social media sites that allow social interaction around users sharing media like photos, videos, and music. In all cases, the social component of these sites comes from people being able to follow others who post things a person finds interesting. The content people share on these sites can reveal a lot of information as we have already seen in the chapters about Instagram and YouTube. This chapter presents an overview of the different types of information people share on these sites and how to find those people.

Keywords

Social media

Social networks

Photos

Videos

Music

In addition to the many sites dedicated to supporting social networking as their main purpose, there are plenty of sites that allow social interaction around users sharing media like photos, videos, and music. In all cases, the social component of these sites comes from people being able to follow others who post things a person finds interesting.

The content people share on these sites can reveal a lot of information as we have already seen in the chapters about Instagram and YouTube. In this chapter, we will look at some of other popular sites in these categories and what kind of data is available.

Photos and Videos

It used to be that video sharing was uncommon because the bandwidth required to upload video and download it was too taxing. However, smartphones with cameras that take photo and video, generous data plans, and Wi-Fi access have made it much easier to do.

As a result, sites that used to be restricted to photo sharing now also support video sharing, and there are a number of sites dedicated entirely to sharing videos.

Flickr

Flickr is one of the most popular of these sites, with close to 90 million users. People can upload and view other people's pictures on the sites. Each user's personal page is a photo stream that shows all the pictures they have uploaded. Figure 19.1 shows an example of a user's photo stream. Users can tag images and add locations.

FIGURE 19.1 An example of a Flickr user's photo stream.

Anyone can click on any picture, like it, or comment on it.

Users can create limited profiles that include their name, location, occupation, and contact information if the user chooses to share this. You can find this profile by clicking the “…” on the right at the bottom of the user's header image, as can be seen in Figure 19.1.

Users can also create social connections to one another by following people whose pictures they are interested in. Many photos and videos on Flickr are public, but users can make them private or restrict them to different groups of friends.

For an investigation, Flickr images can be interesting sources of information about the kind of events a person attends, the types of places they tend to go, and the subjects that interest them.

Photobucket

Photobucket has 100 million registered members and stores photos and videos. It operates with many features similar to those Flickr offers. Users can create short profiles, follow others, and maintain a photo stream with their pictures and videos. There are privacy controls that users can set, so some images may be publicly visible and others are protected.

Photobucket makes money by selling prints of the photos people upload. It is also a common site used to store photos used online for business websites, blogs, and auction sites like eBay. Thus, the types of photos people upload are much more varied, with less personal content than one might expect.

Vine

Vine is a social video sharing app used on mobile devices. It has about 40 million users and is growing very quickly.

Users create six-second video loops that can have captions. Profiles are very limited and basically have a name, profile photo, location, and a short descriptive sentence. The main thing you can find on a user's Vine homepage is a series of videos he has created. Users can like videos or comment on them.

All Vine posts are public, and they are often shared on other social media sites, like Twitter. Thus, if you suspect a target might be posting to Vine, you can see if they link to any videos on Twitter, Facebook, or other sites. This might help you locate their Vine profile more easily. You can also search for people by their real name on Vimeo.

Figure 19.2 shows the view of a Vine video on an iPhone. The username is at the top, and this links to the user's profile page.

FIGURE 19.2 A video on Vine.

While you might think that it is hard for people to reveal too much in a six-second video, Vine played a role in the investigation of an Australian student. In August, 2014, 23-year-old Chris Lane was jogging in Oklahoma where he was studying on a baseball scholarship. He was shot, and despite witnesses' attempts to revive him, he was declared dead on the scene¹.

Three teens were arrested for the murder, and one claimed they did it “just for the fun of it.” In their investigation of the boys, police found a Vine video posted by James Edwards, the youngest of the accused who was only 15 years old². The clip shows him brandishing a weapon (a still from this Vine video is shown in Figure 19.3). Another investigation on social media found photos of guns and money on the suspects' Facebook pages, shown in Figure 19.4.

FIGURE 19.3 A still from a Vine video showing a murder suspect brandishing a weapon. His face is blurred here for privacy.

FIGURE 19.4 Two additional photos from the suspects, taken from their facebook pages.

The teens are currently facing charges of first-degree murder and are being held without bond. They are set to go to trial in April 2015.

Vimeo

Vimeo is a video-sharing site with many features similar to YouTube. It has 22 million registered users and 100 million visitors each month. Users can upload videos and follow other people whose videos they like. They can also restrict the privacy of their videos. You can search for people by their real name or email address on Vimeo in the main search box.

Like on YouTube, the content people post is used in investigations. Though Vimeo is less popular, it, too, has been cited in cases. One such case is that of a French teen who posted an aerial video of the city of Nancy that he took with a remote-controlled drone³. The video collected hundreds of thousands of views before it was ordered to be removed and the teen was investigated. French law requires drone operators to have the equivalent of a light aircraft license, because officials fear they could injure someone if they crashed. This video maker did not have that license, so he was arrested and charged with “endangering lives.” The videographer eventually pled guilty and was fined $550⁴.

Music

There are many sites for listing music preferences and listening to music. Some of these have social components. This section looks at a couple of the most popular social music sites online.

Last.fm

Last.fm is a site that recommends music and allows users to keep track of their favorite artists and songs. They have around 50 million users. Figure 19.5 shows a Last.fm profile page for Malcom, which includes his library—a list of songs and artists. Profile information includes name, gender, and location. Users can also participate in discussions, and those posts can be tracked from the profile page as well.

FIGURE 19.5 Malcom's Last.fm profile page.

There are privacy settings on Last.fm, though most profile information is public. You can search for people on Last.fm by their real name or by username. While sites like this are unlikely to have a lot of information about people's activities, they do yield a lot of insight about people's interests and preferences.

SoundCloud

While Last.fm allows people to curate music they like that other people have created, SoundCloud lets people upload and share their own audio files. In the same way YouTube and Vimeo let people upload video, SoundCloud supports uploads of audio, both music and spoken word. The site has roughly 40 million users.

Figure 19.6 shows Malcom's profile page on SoundCloud. It includes the audio files he has uploaded. Users can comment on audio files and follow users who they find interesting. You can search for people by their name or username on SoundCloud in the search box shown at the top of Figure 19.6.

FIGURE 19.6 Malcom's SoundCloud profile page.

We have seen many stories of people being investigated for their posts on social media. SoundCloud offers an interesting anecdote about a user leveraging the site to share results of his own investigation. Posting under a pseudonym, a Turkish user used the site to share audio files of secretly recorded phone conversations of the prime minister talking with others⁵. The calls discussed illegal and corrupt activity. In response, the Turkish government blocked access to the site entirely.

Conclusions

As with the smaller social networking sites we looked at, smaller media sharing sites for photo, video, or music can also reveal useful information about users, their preferences, and their social interactions. The types of investigations you can conduct on these sites are similar to what you would do on their larger cousins like Instagram and YouTube. While it may be less likely that you will find any specific individual on these sites, if you do find them, these sites can be an excellent source of information.