Amid Taiwan row over officer's helicopter pictures, six other social media bloopers remembered

The story this week of a military officer in Taiwan getting in trouble for giving his friends and family a fun day out at restricted areas of a military base is a reminder of the pitfalls of social media.

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Published: 5:00pm, 10 Apr 2015Updated: 3:30pm, 15 Apr 2015

The story this week of a military officer in Taiwan being put under investigation for posting images on Facebook of his family and friends having a fun day out at restricted areas of a military base in Taoyuan, including images taken inside Apache helicopters is a reminder of the pitfalls of social media.

While Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are great ways to connect and share information – on a personal and professional level – this incident and others in recent years show how badly some posts can backfire.

In 2014, the New York Police Department got more than it bargained for when it invited people to post images of friendly cops on the department’s website in a campaign aimed at boosting its damaged image as well as its attempt to get social-media savvy. Instead of good-cop posts, online trolls played the bad cop card, tweeting images depicting police brutality.

In December 2014, Instagram images of medical staff at a plastic surgery clinic in Seoul, South Korea, made headlines because they showed medical staff partying in an operating theatre, including one picture of a staff member in scrubs standing around a candlelit birthday cake while an apparently unconscious patient was lying on a bed behind them .