ABC’s The Bachelor and Bachelorette dating franchises have spent the past 20 seasons of The Bachelor and 11 seasons of The Bachelorette creating the most romantic dating scenarios as if they were straight out of a fairy tale. However, every … Continue reading
Throughout the semester, we have discussed a wide range of areas regarding social media regulation and policies. I know we have talked a lot about privacy, but I think it’s an issue that will only continue to gain attention. I think the one of the biggest concerns about privacy that is beginning to gather more awareness is the topic of children’s privacy on social media. Before the debate in class, I never thought much about parents posting pictures of their children on the social media platforms. It never occurred to me that it could be intruding on their children’s privacy. As far as I know, there are no social media sites that directly address posting photos of underage children. As parents become more informed about the potential risks and become a greater concern, maybe social media platforms will include this issue in their terms and conditions.
To combat the privacy concerns for children, France’s national police released a statement urging parents to take caution when posting pictures of their children to Facebook in an effort to protect children from sexual predators and other online dangers. Under the country’s strict privacy laws, parents could end up facing jail time if they are convicted of violating the laws. The statement comes in response to a recent viral challenge that urged parents to post pictures of their children and urge others to do the same. French privacy laws prohibit anyone from publishing photos of other individuals without their consent. The French police posted links to a newspaper article in which one expert explains that the law carries fines of up to around $49,000 and/or a year in prison. Also, children have grounds to sue their parents in the future if they feel their rights have been violated. Last year, Germany similarly warned parents not to post pictures of their children online where they can be seen by anyone, sparking massive debate among social media users. It will be interesting to see if other countries will follow suit.
With our digital assets growing with each new online account opened, many social media websites have created policies on how to memorialize or close an account of the deceased. Twitter clearly states that it will not give you access to a deceased user’s account regardless of your relationship to the user, but it will accept requests to deactivate the user’s account from either an immediate family member or a person authorized to act on the behalf of the estate. To request that someone’s account be deactivated, you will need to use Twitter’s privacy form. After you submit the form, Twitter will send a confirmation email with further instructions. You will need to provide proof of your relationship to the deceased, including your ID and a copy of their death certificate.
Twitter also allows immediate family members and other authorized individuals to request the removal of “images or video of the deceased from when critical injury occurs to the moments before or after death,” by sending a request to via their privacy form. However, Twitter states, “When reviewing such media removal requests, Twitter considers public interest factors such as the newsworthiness of the content and may not be able to honor every request.” I found this aspect of Twitter’s policy troublesome. The newsworthiness of a gruesome photo of someone’s last moments shouldn’t be more important than the emotional pain of the deceased loved ones. With respects to the family, Twitter should take down the photo regardless of its “public interest factor.”
If you want someone to be able to take over your account when you die and want to avoid this process, you’ll need to provide someone with your login information. Users can also use SecureSafe. This site has a feature called data inheritance that allows you to pass on important passwords and files to chosen beneficiaries in the case of an emergency or fatality. The transfer will happen automatically and securely. With the amount of data people have, this is something everyone should consider using.
Throughout the movie, I found myself having a lot of compassion towards Ava. I was rooting for her and Caleb. I had to remind myself that she wasn’t a human, but she wasn’t a robot either. She was so much more than that. She was artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, I had sympathy for a machine, even when her inner workings were visible. The twist at the end was very unexpected. How could she just leave Caleb there? Was she programmed to manipulate him or was that her decision? Who was in control? As she was going from closet to closet putting herself “together”, it made me wonder if an AI were walking down the street, would we even realize it?
The movie really made me think about the future for AI and what it means for our society. People are turning over everyday tasks to machines without necessarily realizing it. In The Atlantic article, Adrienne LaFrance explains, “People who are between 20 and 35, basically they’re surrounded by a soup of algorithms telling them everything from where to get Korean barbecue to who to date.” Are we even in control of our own lives if a machine is always telling us what to do? John Markoff said, “That’s a very subtle form of shifting control. It’s sort of soft fascism in a way, all watched over by these machines of loving grace. Why should we trust them to work in our interest? Are they working in our interest? No one thinks about that.” A quote from Nathan really stuck out to me. He said, “One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons.” With unbelievable advances in technology, could this be possible?
E-commerce has eliminated a lot of barriers for aspiring business owners. Whether you sell on Etsy, Amazon or your own self-hosted website, it’s easier than ever to set up an online store and market your goods to shoppers across the world. Internet shopping comes with obvious perks: you don’t need to leave your home, wait in lines, or interact with pushy salespeople. However, with the anonymity of the Internet, it’s very difficult for a buyer to really know and trust the seller. One major ethical concern with e-commerce is scams. A scammer is a person, group or company who does everything in their power to steal from another, usually by means of trickery and deceit. With the accessibility and anonymity that the Internet provides, scammers have become increasingly prevalent in modern times. Usually driven by personal greed or even outright amusement, they are unhindered by sympathy or morals and are the very face of human corruption.
Recently, BuzzFeed has reported that many women were furious that they were being scammed by ads they were seeing on Facebook that were not selling the dresses they showed. The ads enticed consumers with attractively low prices. But consumers said they received shockingly horrific knockoffs, not what the ads conveyed in their images at all. The photos in the ads showing off attractive apparel had often been stolen from a variety of sources. There’s a host of these websites, including Zaful, Rosegal, SammyDress, RoseWe, TideBuy, Choies, and Dresslily. They promise extremely cheap apparel via ads on Facebook that target women. BuzzFeed says that at least eight of these troubling sites operate under a Chinese e-commerce company called ShenZhen Global Egrow E-Commerce Co., which made about $200 million in sales in 2014. It’s extremely hard to reach customer services by phone, too, since the businesses are in China. This is not acceptable by Facebook’s standards. Facebook’s vice president of Ads and Pages, Andrew Bosworth wrote to BuzzFeed News saying, “One of our most important goals with Facebook ads is to present experiences that are relevant and high-quality. We understand the gravity of this issue and we’re taking it very seriously. We’re looking at ways to incorporate new signals that will help us identify which of the over 50 million active businesses on our platform are delivering products and services that are overwhelmingly unsatisfactory to people. As you [BuzzFeed] pointed out in the piece – the challenge isn’t just with ads or posts on Facebook, but also the experiences people have with businesses off of Facebook. It’s a complex problem, but we are working on it and will do everything we can to make sure people trust and enjoy the content they see on Facebook.” Furious consumers have created multiple Facebook groups, like Knockoff Nightmare, DressLily Victims – Ban DressLily and Rosegal.com Is A Scam, to share “buyer, beware” stories and photos of the alleged dissonance between the advertised photos and what they received in the mail. Customers must be aware of the scams lurking around the Internet.
Google’s phenomenal story started in a garage in California, with no one knowing it would grow to become the largest network in the world. When it comes to competition for search engine traffic, Google has plenty of competition. Surprisingly, Google executive Eric Schmidt worries more about Amazon than Bing or Yahoo. Schmidt states, “People don’t think of Amazon as search, but if you are looking for something to buy, you are more often than not looking for it on Amazon. They are obviously more focused on the commerce side of the equation, but at their roots, they are answering users’ questions and searches, just as we are.” Amazon has become a search engine itself as it continues to add more products and services each day. Amazon is also making its own push into the online advertising business, potentially competing more aggressively with Google on its home turf. For years, Google has been the undisputed online ad king. Over 90% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. The ads remain effective because they’re so embedded in Google search. Search for a product and deals for that product pop up in those subsequent search results. This is why Amazon’s growth in sales, largely driven by retail sales on its site, is worrisome for a top dog like Google. Why bother performing a Google search for a product when shoppers can effectively jump through fewer hoops by heading directly to Amazon.com, buying a new or used unit and having it in two days or less? Schmidt is concerned some shoppers will bypass Google entirely. “If more people use Amazon as a shopping search engine, that’s a direct negative for Google” says Mark Mahaney, managing director for RBC Capital Markets. Both Google and Amazon want to be the top online destination for people searching for items to buy.
The competition between Google and Amazon made headlines when reports claimed that Amazon, one of Google’s largest ad buyers, had its own ads product in the works called Amazon Sponsored Links, which would work like Google’s search ads. In theory, Amazon-generated ads may prove even more “clickable” for shoppers than Google’s because they may be better targeted. Like Google, Amazon collects a huge amount of data about its users. But unlike Google, Amazon has a long history of what shoppers have bought. That information could be used by Amazon to make its ads more relevant than Google’s. In return, Google has made the ad experience more Amazon-like, introducing features like five-star customer reviews and expanding Google Express, its same-day delivery service. By fetching products at bricks and mortar stores, Google can slowly build up a shopping history on potentially millions of its users. Google has even invested in drone delivery, just as Amazon has. James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research, examined the budding rivalry between Amazon and Google and believes that Google has the advantage in the fight against Amazon, simply based on it having a much broader reach globally and tremendous financial resources. This growing competition will undeniably continue for years to come.
Andrea Ng, a 16 years old girl from Richmond, BC, uploaded a selfie she took while getting ready with her friends for a high school dance to Facebook. She didn’t think much of the photo at the time and had forgotten all about it until three years later, when it came back to haunt her. The whole ordeal started in May 2013 when Andrea’s friend sent her a link to a Facebook account that was using her name and the selfie, except the photo had been photoshopped to make it look like she was topless. And to make matters worse, the impostor was on a mission to add as many of her friends and family as possible. She called the police, but they said they couldn’t do anything about it. Andrea states, “I had high hopes that my local police department would take my case seriously and help me stop whoever it is that is trying to sabotage me. No action was taken. ‘Nothing could be done’ they said, over and over again.” A week later, Facebook took down the account. Andrea thought her worst nightmare was over. Sadly it wasn’t. On February 1, 2015, Andrea received a devastating message from a friend saying the photo had resurfaced on Tumblr and has been reblogged over 1,000 times. She reported the photo and thankfully Tumblr took it down. Her relief this time was short lived. On April 19, Andrea received a call from her boyfriend while she was at work telling her the topless photo had made its way onto Twitter. Her stalker had created a Twitter account with her name and was following her colleagues and the companies she had been applying to for internships. Andrea was in full panic mode and contacted the police once again. She explained everything to the officer and had high expectations they would help her because it was an ongoing situation. Surprisingly, the officer told her there was nothing she can do. The officer said she felt the person doing this to Andrea was not from Vancouver, even though Andrea said she had a strong feeling it was someone from Vancouver and to be more specific it was someone she knew. Andrea asked the officer, “What about Amanda Todd (a 15 year old girl who had committed suicide after being cyberbullied), the police were able to track her harasser all the way to Europe.” The police officer said, “Well, I have confidence that you would not harm yourself because of this situation, and unless this situation becomes more serious I will then put more resources towards this case.” Once again the police were useless. On April 23, Twitter suspended the account.
After consistently being let down by the police, Andrea decided to take matters into her own hands. She created a blog titled “Cyber Bullying – My Story” detailing her entire experience. She wanted to tell the world the truth about her photo. She states, “Now, the person can no longer spread the image, because the truth is out there, they would just look dumb. I had to say something about it. Then, maybe, this person can no longer hurt me.” She was right because her stalker has finally stopped circulating the photo. Andrea explains, “I feel like I’m in control of my life, that this person can no longer hurt my feelings.” She also says she would still like to find out who the person is, but hasn’t heard anything further from the police. In an interview with Vice, Andrea says she has heard from many other women who are also being cyberstalked, and even though she says she hasn’t received help from police, she still tells others to call them. She states, “Maybe the more cases they get, the more they will see how serious and widespread this issue is and deal with it. In the meantime, if people need help, they can contact me. I’ve got their back.” Andrea tells Vancity Buzz that by sharing her story on her blog, she wants people to take something away from her five year long ordeal. “The only thing I can really say is be smart about using social media. Social media is a love/hate relationship, and I would have never thought I would be a victim of cyberbullying.”
“We believe that everyone should have the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. In order to protect the experience and safety of people who use Twitter, there are some limitations on the type of content and behavior that we allow. All users must adhere to the policies set forth in the Twitter Rules. Failure to do so may result in the temporary locking and/or permanent suspension of account(s)… We believe in freedom of expression and in speaking truth to power, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we do not tolerate behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.” (The Twitter Rules)
Over the past year, Twitter has been making changes to help make its users safer. On July 20, 2015, Twitter introduced a new Safety Center with the motto, “We’re committed on building a safer Twitter.” Twitter posted a blog post explaining the new site has a number of resources “for anyone to learn about online safety, on Twitter and beyond.” This resource is a result of their work with online safety experts who continuously help them to promote good digital citizenship. Twitter says they are excited to make this knowledge easily accessible to everyone via this new site. The Safety Center is organized around Twitter’s tools and policies to address your safety. It basically works as a hub to educate you on the best practices while online, including guides and links, such as how to report a violation. The site has important sections dedicated to teens and families. The family portion helps parents get a better understanding of what Twitter is and tips on how to talk to their teen about online safety.
The portion dedicated to teens has three sections. The first is called “Get Your Stuff in Order”, where it breaks down the privacy and security settings so you can take control of your experience. The second section is called, “Think Before you Share”. This section reminds teens that everything you post on the Internet reflects back onto you. It also informs teens what can and cannot be shared and provides a link where you can file a report if someone refuses to delete a tweet that contains sensitive information about you. The third section is called, “Bullying and Harassment”. This is a very important section for teens. Cyber bullying has become a scary epidemic. DoSomething.org provides startling statistics about cyber bullying. It reports 70% of students report seeing frequent bullying online. 81% of young people think bullying online is easier to get away with than bullying in person. Only 1 in 10 victims will inform a parent or trusted adult of their abuse. Bullying victims are 2 to 9 times more likely to consider committing suicide. This section on Safety Check reminds teens of the golden rule, “treat others, as you’d like to be treated”. It also provides tips like “think before you tweet”, “everyone has an opinion” and information about “muting” or “blocking” a bothersome account. At the end of every section, Twitter reminds you that they are “here to help” and urges you to file a report if you think an account violates their rules. It is very impressive to see a social media platform go in depth to educate teens and inform parents about online safety. It’s important for teens to be aware of the signs of cyber bullying and know what to do in the event that they become a victim.
In 2015, The Belgian Privacy Commission brought a case against Facebook accusing the company of violating European privacy law by collecting data of non-users without asking for consent or adequately explaining how the data would be used. An article from the Wall Street Journal states Facebook has previously acknowledged that it collects data on non-users Internet browsing through a “datr cookie” that it places within an individual’s web browser if they have visited the Facebook website. The cookie, which can live in the user’s browser for up to two years, reports back to Facebook whenever that browser accesses a web page with an active social plug-in, such as a “like” button. In November a ruling was made that Facebook indeed violated European privacy law and in response Belgian Facebook users must now sign in to see any content. The change means that if you don’t have a Facebook account, you can’t view Belgian Facebook pages, including public profiles like those of local businesses. The court found it was “not fair and lawful” to process the personal data of users who had not explicitly granted the company permission, by signing up to its terms of service. For actual Facebook members, the court deemed these users have given their consent to be tracked through social plug-ins when signing up to site and that consequently this didn’t pose a problem.
There is quite a difference in the way the US and Europe view privacy laws. European privacy laws are much more tougher than in the US. In the US, Facebook can place cookies without asking for permission, but in Europe, companies must get user permission to plant tracking software. It’s one thing to track users who agree to the terms and conditions that outline this issue but to track a non-user, who simply visited a public profile page, fan page or business page is an invasion of privacy. It’s concerning that this isn’t a bigger issue in the US. If Facebook continues to do this, the company should at least provide a pop-up window notifying non-users and give them the option to agree or disagree. Europe is definitely on the right track when it comes to their citizens privacy rights. It’s something that the US should really consider. People should be more aware and have more control in the way their data is being tracked.
Contrary to what many people believe, the Zika virus is not a new virus. It was first discovered in Uganda in 1947. We haven’t heard much about it because there hasn’t been a large outbreak of it in North America. However, in 2015, the virus reached epidemic levels in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. It’s usually not a life-threatening virus. Typically, it’s transmitted by mosquitoes and causes mild viral illness, fever, and rash. It does, however, have significant implications for pregnant women, causing severe birth defects. According to CNN, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have confirmed 147 cases in the U.S., including nine cases among pregnant women. In an article from The American Resident Project, OB/GYN, Dr. Danielle Jones explains, the difference between Zika and other viruses is that it is not mentioned in medical school and specialty textbooks. The Zika virus has gone viral, both literally and figuratively. On Twitter, users complained that the virus could crimp travel plans, particularly for spring break. Without social media, many of us in the U.S. would not know anything about the virus.
The CDC has been extremely active on social media, posting multiple times a day informing users about the disease. With the help of social media and its users, the CDC has the ability to get the most up-to-date information to people across the world. The CDC has not only posted information but has also addressed and answered questions and concerns from users directly, both on their Facebook and Twitter. Awareness of this disease has spread rapidly but we must always double check information with a credible source when we come across new information that is not linked to something reliable.
JillianBerardi 