Week 15: Audit Your Online Presence

 Social Media

In relation to the “I’m 14 and I quit social media” article, I completely understand how the girl feels about suddenly knowing your mom and sister have been posting about you. One of my closest friends doesn’t really have a presence on social media, just recently at the beginning of December they finally deleted Snapchat and I couldn’t be happier for them. They explain the feeling of deleting Snapchat as a weight off their shoulders as they found the app pointless and annoying.

I personally wouldn’t delete my social media because I tend to use it to browse through other people’s posts and I don’t necessarily worry about posting for myself ever. For example, I use Instagram to follow artists and small businesses, I use Pinterest for craft ideas and art references, and I use Snapchat to communicate with people that don’t live close by. 

In terms of online privacy, yes I do worry about it, but it’s been less of a worry now that I don’t use google too much and I switched my browsers to Brave. With a simple click of a button, I can clear my cookies and feel safer working online and browsing through sites. The main part of my worries is on my phone, occasionally I’ll talk about something I’ve never talked about before, and then later I’ll see an ad for it (One time I thought of something, never said it out loud, and I got an ad for it like an hour later). In a recent update for Windows 10, there’s a big popup with ad tracking options all selected to be on, so I had to go through them all and turn them off. I think all ad tracking should automatically be turned off, and only turned on if the user allows it. 

Going through and looking at my Facebook account, it really only shows the company a very basic idea of myself. It shows that I play and make video games, I draw, I live and worked in Niagara Falls, and they know my birthday. I’ve never really posted anything that was opinionated or controversial so that doesn’t display politics, wealth, or living situations which is more important information compared to “I draw”. 

My online footprint would probably be really easy to follow, I’ve basically used the same email and password for everything up until college so if someone genuinely tried to figure out what websites I’ve used google to login to, it wouldn’t be that hard. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m scared of someone getting into my account. Over the summer I had a few accounts I had got logged into by not me, so I had to change a few of my passwords to differ from the same variant of this one password I’ve used my entire life. Now it’s gotten to the point where I wrote down all my passwords onto a journal because I cannot for the life of me remember which passwords go to which accounts. 

I was also curious if there was a way to calculate an online footprint so I searched “Digital Footprint Checker” and the first result is this website that asks for a bunch of personal information in order to find out if that information is online. I thought it was pretty funny how the site thinks/knows people are dumb enough to fall for that. 

Digital Footprint Site: 

https://salt.agency/tools/social-profile-checker/#start

Week 13: EOTOs pt2

 Whistleblowers

I first learned about whistleblowers in my business ethics class and once I heard this was a thing, I was torn between "oh good" and "oh no". 

In terms of the whistleblowers themselves, they are unbelievably brave for calling out the place that employs them for their wrongdoings. I think whistleblowers should be more normalized and less of a scary thing to become.

Once you whistleblow on a company you start to risk your entire left depending on how big the issue was. 

The Panama Papers are one way to look at the dangers of whistleblowing. When these important papers were leaked, nothing really happened to the people that were involved. These people were blatantly avoiding tax and no one did anything to fix this problem. The only thing that did happen from this event was that the reporter Daphne Anne Caruana Galizia was murdered. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers

Week 12: EOTO Terms and Concepts

The Smith-Mundt Act

The Smith-Mundt act is an authorization of the department of state to conduct propaganda activities. It was originally introduced by Karl E. Mundt and it was made to broadcast ideas from America to other countries, along with things like movies and books. This act was passed and signed by Harry Truman on January 27, 1948.  For over 60 years the American government was exposing different countries to different types of propaganda such as magazines, radio shows, and tv broadcasts. This meant not a lot of information from other countries was allowed into America, but American propaganda was being broadcasted in other countries.

The Obama Administration overlooked this act in 2012 and it is now called the Smith-Mundt modernization act. This amended the foreign relations authorization act of 1987 AND the united states information and educational exchange act from 1948.  This got rid of that control of American propaganda in other countries allowed for other countries to broadcast information to America. This also allowed the government to make propaganda targeted at Americans but this hasn't been a big enough problem yet for it to be talked about. A quote from my research site: 

"The actual change has prompted little discussion outside public diplomacy and international broadcast circles"(Smith-Mundt reform: In with a whimper?).

Its effect on our society has lead to globalization in America, and less American ideologies being forced down other countries’ throats. The old act pushed for no global broadcasts but allowed themselves to broadcast locally which meant other countries were being blasted with American propaganda and the American people weren’t being broadcasted global information. As if the American public were placed in a bubble with no outside knowledge of global news. The old act can also relate back to misinformation by the use of propaganda influencing society.

The new act allows for the global exchange of information from broadcasting. This helps Americans get global news about what’s happening in other countries. It’s important to become globally notified of news because then everyone becomes aware of worldly situations and how the effect of America affects other countries. This way all countries can be unified in allowing the news to be spread to everyone no matter where they live (as long as their country allows for freedom of knowledge).

In terms of this act affecting our generation, I think we as young adults have been raised to not trust everything anyone or the government says so if they were to use propaganda on us I don't think it would be very effective. In terms of how this affects different segments of people, this act is mainly the US government vs. the American people while also the US being against every country. The government’s use of propaganda is bad enough when they use it on their own people, but especially now most people know what propaganda looks like and how to respond to it. I personally don’t know how bad American propaganda was in other countries, but if I was living somewhere else, I probably wouldn’t like the fact that the American government is trying to force their ideologies on the people of other places. 

Smith-Mundt reform: In with a whimper?: 

https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/smith-mundt_modernization_pass.php

Other sites:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/aug/23/facebook-posts/no-obama-didnt-make-it-legal-media-outlets-purpose/

https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/smith-mundt-modernization-act-2012

Week 11: Privacy, Online and Off

 Privacy

The thought of the government and large corporations using our data is quite terrifying. Governments using the excuse of "it's safer" or "beneficial for the country's safety" is just bogus. 

Encrypting data on all apps, software, and hardware should be a rule all developers have to follow. No platform should not encrypt data and it should be optional to get a VPN, but VPNs are the one way to know all your data will be secure and safe. 

Me and my friends always use VPNs, clear our cookies often, use browsers that don't mine data, and more. The only time I ever use google now is for google drive so that my essays and presentations can be accessed from either of my computers. 

^This the H@CK3R stealing everyone's data 

Ted Talk I liked about privacy:

 https://www.ted.com/talks/will_cathcart_the_future_of_digital_communication_and_privacy#t-303656

Week 10: Diffusion of Innovations

Video Call Software

Video chatting has been around for a while but only recently has it been extremely normalized and essential to work environments. 

The first video call happened in 1964 by AT&T with a program called Picturephone. This era of developing video chat in the diffusion of innovations terms would be considered the Innovators section of the graph. This beginning portion of video calls lasted until around the 1990s. 

The 1990s era of video calls could be considered the early adopters section of the diffusion graph, with the introduction of CU SeeMe for Apple's Macintosh users. But Video chat really took off in 2003 when skype was invented and this introduces the 2000s as the early majority of people using this type of technology. 

The late majority section of the diffuse map can be sectioned from 2015-2020. From 2015-2019 people all around the world were using video calls to stay in touch, play video games together, or handing a long-distance relationship. But for the year 2020, all students, teachers, business people, and many more have all adapted video chat due to the global pandemic. All people who now have to use video calls for work have gone from video calls being fun to do in your free time, to a necessity to continue working. Most people know how to use some sort of video call software now. 

The near future will be considered the laggards that still haven't used video calls.

The negative side effects of this technology make people fatigued for being on an important meeting call. Meetings are already boring enough, but being on camera, knowing audio etiquette, and barely being able to hear someone due to internet issues can be exhausting on a worker when the meeting can just be a simple 5 sentence email. 

Dean Smith's Social Media Dilemma

I think not having social media has its pros and cons. The pros of social media are being able to communicate with family and friends and the opportunity to meet people you normally wouldn't otherwise. The cons of social media are becoming addicted to constant stimulation. Many young adults and teens scroll through social media for hours just so that the mind is distracted and doing something.

I also think that it's easy for someone like Dean Smith who has a stable job and stable life to not have social media. There's a certain point in your life where you don't need to care about keeping up with the family(my dad does the same). Personally for me, in order to get a job in the video game industry, I have to be wildly present on social media. I have to have a LinkedIn so that potential employers can see what I look like and what job's I've had in life. I also have a website where I display all my games and art so that potential employers know how well I'm going to perform if they hire me. If I didn't have either of these pieces of tech, I would never be hired.

Video Call History: https://www.eztalks.com/video-conference/history-of-video-conferencing.html