Final Post

 

Final Post

   Throughout this course, I have learned a lot about technology. Since a young age, I have been surrounded by smart technology and artificial intelligence. I had an iPod by fifth grade, iPhone by 6th, as well as an iPad. Getting access to technology at such an early age was definitely for communication with my parents and staying in contact with them when I was at extracurriculars. It has always been a huge part of my life and society as a whole, so I have never known life without it. Technology has given the world so much and has advanced, grown, and adapted throughout the years. Although its impact has had both negative and positive effects, I know that our world has benefited from its advancement over time. Throughout Media Law and Literacy, I have been exposed to more about how integrated technology really is in our daily lives. 

My relationship

My relationship with technology cannot be described as healthy or unhealthy because there is so much baggage that comes with it. In terms of physically using technology, my daily average screen time on my phone is 4 hours and 21 minutes. This is not a terribly long time considering I use it to connect with others and will use it for work and school purposes as well. Therefore, I think my relationship is healthy, and I spend a lot of my time interacting with others face-to-face. 

I have always used social media in a professional way, needing to use it for branding purposes through pageants. I have used it working for companies and running the social medias for two different stores I worked at when I was in High School. I feel like running those accounts and enjoying it was a reason why I still use social media as often as I do. I also am now studying Strategic Communications and minoring in Social Media Marketing so using social media could become a full time job for me. 

Throughout Covid-19 and quarantining, I did not originally have a healthy relationship with technology because it was my only way to communicate with others. I was on my phone and computer all of the time while at home and developed a very toxic relationship with technology. All of the negative effects that came with social media were amplified and constant in my daily life. After a while, I realized how toxic it had become in my life and started to spend more time outdoors and exercising. I started to learn that I needed to limit my screen time and use my screen time in a positive manner. I used to sit and scroll for hours and the algorithm will take a hold of me and send me down a spiral of related content. Once realizing this I believe that can be the first step in getting away from the hold that social media can have on you.  

Social Media 

Social media is one of the biggest uses of technology. The use of social media has rapidly grown since the end of the twentieth century and has changed how we communicate with others. There are currently an estimated 4.7 billion users around the world. Social networking sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube, have had many an immense impact on society by connecting the world and giving a close-up look into each other's lives. I have all of the above listed social medias and use them all consistently in my everyday life.

Social media has taken a toll on many users' mental health, including my own. All of the negative effects, such as FOMO, depression, body image issues, and anxiety, have heightened in all of us with the rise of social media. Social Media has also increased the amount of cyberbullying, adding to the effect that technology has on mental health. Harassment and bullying on online platforms have increased, especially in an anonymous form. Access to direct contact with others makes it so dangerous for anonymous bullying as well as anonymous threats. Everyone's personal and private information can also be more easily exposed and permanently live on the internet. This causes an increase in stalking, identity theft, fraud, and account hacking. Although, this did increase the strength of cyber security and helped create better media laws on the internet.  

I feel I definitely give technology more time than I should. Although I will spend time face-to-face with others, technology can still be a major distraction in my life. I have to rely on it every second due to work, school, extracurriculars, and contact with my friends and family. It can end up taking up a lot of time in my life, but the reasons listed above are important to me, so I feel like the amount of time I give to technology is valid.  

In the sense of technology in a news aspect, you have to take everything you see with a grain of salt. It is important to understand that everything you read, see, or hear might not be true or come from a reliable source. Technology has been revolutionary in connecting the world and sharing news in a matter of seconds or even live. We have access to pretty much anything and everything. This has made us smarter in gaining more knowledge; we just need to be aware that the news could be fake or misleading. I worry about these things sometimes, but I feel comfortable that the news is not ideal; I believe it is what we must deal with in order to keep our freedoms. It is an accepted part of the society we live in, but we can stop it from occurring as often by fact-checking and being more aware.

Technology creates a huge draft between generations. Older generations, like my grandparents, do not understand how to use technology and will get frustrated with it often. They have a very negative relationship with technology because it is ever-changing, making it hard for them to keep up. Technology has become a vital tool that you need in order to communicate and connect with others, leaving non-technology users disconnected and essentially left out of society. It is hard for the older generations to grasp the concepts of all of these new technologies and social platforms that they did not grow up with. This lack of understanding of how to use technology can heighten their chance of believing misleading information and getting taken advantage of. They can either completely and blindly trust the internet and technology to be honest in its information or do just the opposite and think all technology is evil. It has its obstacles for many, but it can also be a great way for them to connect with their friends and families that they may not see as often.  

Online footprint

Thinking about your online footprint can be so scary because anything and everything posted on technology can be traced. As we have learned in this course, on most social platforms, once you post something, you lose the right to take it back, and it will belong to that platform from then on. You enter contracts all of the time on social platforms, giving away your rights without even knowing it. This makes it hard to know just how big your online footprint really is. Everything you post can and will follow you for the rest of your life. It is a scary thought and it is why we need to be conscious of what we post and think before we post. Since I did pageants in the past I have a pretty big digital footprint when you look me up online, but I have always been conscious about what I post because of this. 

Final Thoughts

When I reflect on my thoughts and relationship with technology, I cannot help but feel thankful and resentful of all of its factors. I am thankful for all that technology has given us, but maybe it is too much. When does technology cross the line from helping into overstepping? Just because technology has helped in the past does not mean it will always be helpful in every scenario. We have become desensitized to technology's power and hold on to our society. As long as we are aware I believe our society can combat the negatives of social media and not let it overtake our lives. Using it to our benefit and in a positive way. 

Age of A.I.

The Age of Artificial Intelligence

What is A.I.? 

The dictionary definition of artificial intelligence (A.I.) is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. 

Artificial Intelligence has a learning, "deep" mind that mimics the neural networks of the human brain. Artificial Intelligence can keep a vast amount of data that humans cannot fathom and can teach itself to become more advanced. 

Artificial intelligence has become an integral part of our daily lives. It has gotten to a point where I do not think most humans could live without it, even though the exponential growth of artificial intelligence began only in the 1950s.  The new digital age has great promise, but we have opened our eyes to the line where personalized service meets exploitation. 

Positives 

A.I. holds great potential for prosperity. It has helped the world grow, advance, and enhance throughout the technology timeline. It is continuously being developed to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently.   

Artificial intelligence can make new discoveries that can help advance humans further than we can imagine. In the video, In the Age of AI ,they show the world's most complex board game, AlphaGo. 

They showed one of the best AlphaGo players in Asia playing against an A.I. machine, with the human only winning once while the A.I. outsmarted him in the other matches. This was incredibly exciting and scary for those who know the game and know the strategy and skill it takes to master this game. The A.I. was able to produce new moves that no one had ever thought of before. It is crazy to think about how so many things that took humans decades to learn and develop can be solved and advanced by A.I. in seconds. This holds many positive attributes toward discovery and innovation.

Negatives

It will deepen inequality and create a big economic tear in society. It will take away jobs and leave the owners with all of the money. This leaves the majority of our middle and lower class without jobs or a source of income. It will create a struggle between capital and labor, and changing how we wish to distribute capital from artificial intelligence will make a difference in society. We have seen this occur in many factories and even in our everyday lives. Machines have become more advance to take over the manufacturing that humans used to produce. Machines have also taken over everyday jobs such as checkouts at a grocery stores. 

A.I. are tools and will serve whoever controls them; if they use it evilly, it is a danger to society. For example, computer scientists are like people who have suggested nuclear war. It is so easy for these technologies to fall into the hands of those with bad intentions.  

Security and Privacy 

It is no secret that artificial intelligence knows a lot about our personal lives. This has become so common that we have become desensitized to the concept that they could be using our information for better or worse. We have come to assume that artificial intelligence has improved our quality of life, so therefore it will always have our best interests at heart. Although this holds some truth, we have to open our eyes and understand that artificial intelligence can and will be used to take away our privacy. Once our privacy is taken, those who hold that information have ultimate power and control over us, whether we are aware of it or not. 

Algorithms reach deeper into our lives, and that should make us more uncomfortable. These computers are trying to personalize the world to you, but this is when you need to be aware and still have control over your world before the companies try to control you. Social media users are really not users because social media platforms are using us. Using us to get ahead and make a profit off of manipulating us and our content.

Surveillance capitalism is a private human experience that is claimed as a free source of raw material fabricated into predictions of human behavior. Shoshana Zuboff, a professor at Harvard Business School, describes the disturbing picture of how Silicon Valley and other corporations are mining users' information to predict and shape their behavior in her new book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism." 

There are a lot of businesses that are able to predict what we will do. They try to spin A.I. in a positive light by saying that behavioral predictions are taking the uncertainty out of life. A.I. is learning as much about you as it can. Whatever we search, we leave a digital trace or digital exhaust, and those algorithms are used to predict users' interests. Companies know where you have been, gone, going, and basically everything, with your permission.  

One of the first companies to do this was... Google. I know, right? Our trusted default browser that we search anything and everything on. Google's revenue increased 3590% from 2000-2004 after giving into surveillance capitalism and going against its "Don't be evil" motto. Google boasted about two things: 1. Now they knew that they could use cues in the online environment to change real-world behavior. 2. Celebrated that they can do this in a way that bypasses the users' awareness. 

Another example that conducts micro behavioral targeting in our everyday lives is Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. These were developed to help improve user experiences and create a fast and intimate way to live with A.I. What we do not think about is how these devices are used to understand more about you in real time. They are always listening and know every single intimate detail about you, down to each breath you take. It is a complete invasion of privacy that you allow into your life. 

Finally, China has developed Sharp eyes, putting a camera on every corner of the street- watching everywhere, frequent security expos. This will create a total surveillance state and promote the collective punishment of an ethnic group. China is promoting its tech to other countries to squelch political uprisings and resistance and make an all-encompassing "bamboo curtain" with shared A.I. This will divide the world into two artificial intelligence superpowers: a Chinese and American tech sector. 5G networks have become the high-speed backbone for the rise of A.I. The U.S. fears that 5G- the Chinese government could have backdoor access to U.S. information, making A.I. a better tool for totalitarian governments versus democratic governments.

Overall, technology has become a means of control versus freedom. Some keys to combatting this are awareness, clearing our history, and limiting the amount of information we give out so freely. We cannot be careless with our privacy and must take control before the artificial intelligence can control us. 

Privacy: Online and Off

 

"Privacy"

    As you can see, the title Privacy is in quotation marks. This would be because we say we have privacy or need privacy in today's world when in reality, almost everything about you and your life is exposed to the public or our government. You will never actually have true privacy in this world when the government knows everything... our name, age, date of birth, location, address, and so much more. With Artificial Intelligence improving and updating every day, it is so much easier for popular media platforms such as Facebook, Apple, and Twitter to collect our personal data, track our digital footprint and sell that information to other companies and even the government. Every time we join a new social media platform, we enter another contract where we give away more information as well as our right to privacy. Those companies now own every single thing their users post on their accounts, and the users unknowingly lost their entire right to privacy. 

    When I was watching the videos posted on our private blog page, I was extremely concerned with how much our society lacks personal privacy. Especially when watching "How Revenge Porn Turns Lives Upside Down" by Dairteh Chisolm, I was disturbed when hearing how her toxic ex-husband attempted to sabotage her by uploading pictures of her onto a personal website. Chisolm is a well-known TV personality who received backlash from this, which led to her 11-month-long court case and 13 trips to fight for her privacy rights in court. This is scary in our generation to think that we lose the right to whatever is posted, whether we choose to post it or not. One wrong decision made out of spite can ruin someone's life in an instant and can never be taken back. It is terrifying that artificial intelligence becomes smarter and advances every day making people more susceptible to being tricked in to giving away all rights to their privacy. Harmful content is posted every day, and once it is posted, it can never be taken back. In all honesty, anything that is ever recorded, written, typed, or said over any form of technology will live forever. People are always warned that nothing is ever really deleted, even if it is in your hidden camera roll; that content is most likely already uploaded and saved to an artificial intelligence program somewhere, even after you delete it. Our society needs to combat this by being more aware and not letting the government and companies take advantage of our rights. 

    Until researching for this blog, I had not realized how often data breaches occurred and did not realize how deep data tracking goes into our personal lives. Research shows that the average probability that an organization will have a data breach of some kind has increased from 25.6% to 27.7% in the past year. That sounded crazy to me when I was thinking, "what could a company possibly do with my birthday? Information about what I like, shop, or follow" but this data can be made useful to agencies and the government in so many ways. That is why all of these platforms, especially big social media companies, will sell our information to make a profit. The companies buying this information can now use this information for whatever they please and are able to make predictions and assumptions about us in order to manipulate us for their gain. It sounds cruel and odd to use information like where we like to shop, but it all boils down to money and power. It is crazy that all of these people will invade and take away others' right to privacy and their basic human rights for money, greed, and power. 

Social Media Tracking

    Billions of users from around the world will blindly and willingly give their personal information and permission to use it on huge social media platforms. It is so easy to simply click the "I accept terms and conditions" without actually reading the contract that is put in front of us. Everyone trusts the platform, so why should I question their motives? The answer to that is you should not have to, you should be able to feel safe using online social platforms, but when huge and vital security breaches happen, like the Facebook data breach of 2015, where over 533 million users got their data stolen and publicly posted, you are forced to take a step back and ask if you just gave up your entire right to privacy to this little app on your phone. It is a scary thought, and that is why we need to be aware of social tracking, phishing, and information leaks. 

Overall, we just need to be more aware of the tracking and privacy breaches that occur online and off. Once we are aware, we can more clearly see when things are not what they seem. The government should be protecting our privacy rights and side with us when someone takes away that right by leaking information that was not theirs. We must take back our personal privacy rights and not let the technology giants take advantage of our lives. 

Each one Teach one:

    Five Eyes(FVEY) EOTO

     In our second round of Each One Teach One presentations, I learned a lot new things about topics on awareness, theories, the media-sphere, and media policies. This included the Five Eyes presentation. I found the presentation so interesting because I have never heard of the Five Eyes before. After the presentation, I was honestly not surprised that I have never heard of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, or Fourteen Eyes before considering they do not technically want to be known about.

The Five Eyes formed in 1946 and is the world’s oldest intelligence partnership. In the past, it was used to monitor foreign communications among a number of countries, serving various political interests. Today, FVEY monitors the private communications of billions of people, worldwide. This is so crazy to think about how they have access to information on basically everyone in the world.

In the 1950s during the Cold War, FVEY intelligence monitored communications from the Soviet Union, China and other Eastern Bloc countries and was also used in the Vietnam war.

The Five Eyes Alliance monitors the citizens of other FVEY member countries. By monitoring each other's citizens, FVEY can bypass domestic surveillance regulations that would be illegal to do directly to their own citizens. The FVEY collects information by intercepting private communications, and can receive records of user data from large technology companies.

Information about the Five Eyes Alliance had been leaked to the public in 2013 through classified documents, by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. This raised questions about illegal surveillance and the invasion of online privacy. The public had been mostly unaware of the full extent of data collection and the exposure of this information left the public feeling violated about their privacy rights. 

The Five Eyes Alliance has faced large amounts of public distrust, with many believing it to be a violation of basic human rights. The documents revealed that the partner countries were monitoring the citizens of each other as a loophole, to bypass domestic spying laws for mass surveillance. Everyone can be targeted by FVEY, with companies like Google, Visa, major oil companies, being used to access any information the government needs. 

Overall, this presentation had opened my eyes to how much power our government has and the access they have to our not-so-private information. It made me more aware and conscious of my digital footprint and is information I believe everyone should be educated on in order to protect themselves and their rights to privacy. 

Each One Teach One: Disinformation and Misinformation

Fact or Fake? 

Misinformation

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread, regardless of the intent to mislead.  This happens every day in our lives because we are humans, and we all make mistakes. Misinformation can happen when we spread false news before checking the facts. This often occurs in this day and age due to how easy it is to share media with just the click of a button. The media is a breeding ground for misinformation, from just sharing the wrong time for an event that you thought was correct to sharing a video on a politician that contained false content.We unintentionally share misinformation all of the time with no harmful or malicious intent.

Disinformation

Disinformation is deliberate and includes malicious content such as hoaxes, Conspiracy theories, fake news, spear phishing, frauds, photoshops, and  propaganda. It spreads fear and suspicion among the population. It is weaponized misinformation and can be powerful, destructive, and divisive. 

 It was and is commonly used for espionage or spying on other countries.  Countries would intentionally spread fake information to their rival nations. For example, during the Cold War, the USA and Soviet Union would spread disinformation. When a country or group coordinates these complicated plans of spreading disinformation, it is often referred to as a disinformation campaign. Propaganda is also often used to spread information to make someone or something look bad or good. It can be used to polarize opinions and promote violent extremism. Disinformation is very dangerous for Journalists who could be sued for Libel if they wrongfully accuse some of being a liar or spreading disinformation.

Types of Mis/Disinformation

There are many different types of Misinformation and Disinformation. Fabricated content is completely false content. Manipulated content is genuine information or imagery that has been distorted, also known as ‘clickbait.’ Imposter content is when someone impersonates a genuine source, such as using the branding of an established agency and impersonating them to scam users. Misleading content is when misleading information is presented as a fact. False context is factually accurate content combined with false contextual information. Satire and parody are when humorous, but false stories are passed off as true. There is no intention to harm, but readers may be fooled. False connections are when headlines, visuals, or captions do not support the content. Sponsored content is advertising or PR disguised as editorial content. Propaganda is content used to manage attitudes, values, and knowledge. Finally, an Error is a mistake made by established new agencies in their reporting.

Manipulators

Manipulators are basically gas-lighters to the misinformation or disinformation given. They further the extremity of the fake news by falsely supporting or contradicting topics. 

One type of manipulator is a Sock-puppet. A sock puppet is an online identity used to deceive. Misleading uses of online identities to praise, defend or support a person or organization; to manipulate public opinion; or to circumvent restrictions, suspension, or an outright ban from a website. Another is Sea-lioning. This is a type of trolling or harassment where people are pursued with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions. A pretense of civility and sincerity is maintained with these incessant, bad-faith invitations to debate. Then there is astroturfing which masks the sponsors of a message (e.g., political, religious, advertising, or PR organizations) to make it appear as though it comes from grassroots participants. Finally, there is catfishing which is fraud where a person creates a fake identity to target a particular victim on Social Media. It is common for romance scams on dating websites. It may be done for financial gain, compromising a victim, or as a form of trolling or wish fulfillment. 

How this affects society

The rise of Artificial Intelligence has made it easier to spread false information. Media is one of the main ways that people consume news and information. This is so dangerous for my generation because we can be easily swayed and gullible to fake news. Misinformation and disinformation are used to influence political views and can manipulate opinions. The algorithm in artificial intelligence can send you down a spiral of related content and close you off from seeing outside topics that would contradict what you originally clicked on. It closes you off and can get you on an extreme side of opinions. 

Certain demographics can be targeted and harassed. Communities, often minority groups, will receive backlash from false news and information spread about them. It can be dangerous for these communities, and that is why it is so important to fact-check sources before you share and spread false information. 

Overall, disinformation and misinformation can be extremely dangerous, and it is our duty as citizens to combat this false information by fact-checking our sources and their credibility.