Category Archives: Assignment 3

I sometimes feel like I am online much more than I should be.  For instance, I probably spend a total of two to three hours on YouTube per day alone.  “Two to three hours?!  What on earth are you doing on there?”  Well, when you’re subscribed to 145 different channels, you have quite a playlist to get through on a semi-daily basis.  These subscriptions of mine can range from style gurus to chefs to acoustic performers to comedians.  No matter who I’m subscribed to, they are all different in their own way and I enjoy viewing their content.

It’s strange of me that a lot of people don’t use YouTube for the same reasons I do.  Many of my friends just consider YouTube a place where they can find viral videos, footage of people injuring themselves while skateboarding, or a multitude of cute videos of animals.  But as soon as I mention that I’m a fan of a certain v-logger or something to that effect, I get weird looks as if I’m one of “those” people who mindlessly watch “random” people talk about their lives on the Internet.

So how do the rest of you use YouTube? Do you actually subscribe to your favorite channels and comment on videos (like I do)?  Do you just watch music videos?  And, regardless of how you use it, do you think YouTube is an effective tool for social communication on the Internet?

(To be completely honest, I just spend too much time every day watching this guy sing covers of popular songs.)

Google, creator of the popular Android operating system, is looking to expand into an “ewallet” service. It makes perfect sense. You have your whole life on your phone – your contacts, e-mail, social media. You can shop and browse online with various services. There are even apps to allow you to coordinate your bills and look at your bank statements on your phone. But why not bundle more into that phone and allow you to purchase things in-store with your phone as a digital credit system? A profit can be made on these transactions, while offering the phone a competitive feature over other options.

This has the potential to greatly increase the data collected about an individual. While this data would normally be stored by a credit card or bank, this begins to aggregate personal spending habits with other information recorded through social media, e-mail or other services. Together, patterns between spending habits and common words or activities online can be worked out, with great potential for earnings through targeted advertising.

Seems as though losing your phone could be far worse than losing your wallet once was.

this article discusses the fine that disney was just placed with for gathering information on children through their websites without parental consent.  i mean its one thing to gather information from adults, but from kids? why would a website want all of a child’s information? its uncomforting since disney is suppose to be family friendly and very reliable and trustworthy.  for it to violate online laws is very peculiar and i think its fair they got fined for it. 3 million dollars is alot, but it sets a precedent for any other childrens website to want to ask for a kids information.  it can also be argued that parents need to regulate what children do online more often.  parental controls help regulate websites but then parents should be around to see what kids do on regulated websites.  for any website, even a disney based one.

I was recently web browsing through random online news that deals with online privacy and came upon an interesting website created by someone who is not a supporter of corporate media. The website is interestingly called FUsocialmedia.com; quite creative. It was apparently started by an online social media entrepreneur and the site is now taking over his life. So much so that his wife (or x-wife) started her own tweets about how much she hates social media because it took over her life and her marriage. She even has her own Twitter account following… http://twitter.com/#!/fusocialmedia and is not a fan!

The website’s latest post discusses how Google, Twitter, Skype and Facebook recently came together to oppose a privacy bill. The privacy bill was introduced by a California State Senator and would force sites to explain privacy settings in a very clear cut way without confusion. The senator believes that social media companies trick people into sharing too much private information. The bill is called Social Networking Privacy Act SB 242 (http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0201-0250/sb_242_bill_20110502_amended_sen_v98.html) and would require a notice before users hand over their personal information to a site. According to this recent news article, the bill would also grant parents the right to request photos or text be removed from any of their children’s social networking pages within 48 hours. A $10,000 fine would be issued for each violation.

To any online media user this bill sounds very logical and makes common sense, but not to social media giants. Google, Twitter, Skype and Facebook claim that this bill would damage business for the California technology sector by raising costs and heavily limiting growth potential of social networking sites, as well as violate the Constitution based on freedom of speech rights.

If you ask me, these social media giants are trying to protect themselves from something that should have already been approved into action.

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My friend sent me this video, and immediately it was something I knew I had to share. So a brief summary is, this man speaking to the audience, Eli Pariser, is talking about how the Internet, is filtering our searches based on what it thinks we want to see. And how this is bad for us as individuals, because we’re only being fed what we know or might be related to us. Nothing new, or challenging is being exposed to us.

Watching this clip, reminded me of all the discussions that have been going on in our class.The ads on our Facebook wall, emails, and automatic search generators are all being filtered. Pariser said something that was a bit frightening. He explained that search engines like Google, not only uses our old searches to formulate a filter for us, but they also factor in, the type of computer we’re on, what browser we’re using, where’re we’re located, and so on. He said there was 57 signals that they use to tailor our search results. He showed a diagram of how we’re in this circle, surrounded by these sites we use, Google, Facebook, Netflix, New York Times, etc, and how they’re the ones controlling the information that is revealed to us.

I liked his illustration of how the tailored results are like information junk food and the information that we aren’t receiving are like information vegetables. The “healthy way” is we should be getting a balance of information that is relevant to us, and also the things that are “important, uncomfortable, challenging, other points of view.” But with the way the Interest is generating our searches are feeding us only junk food.

This site was included in the description of the clip. It’s a Q&A with the speaker. And included in it are “10 ways to turn off the filter bubble.”
http://on.ted.com/PariserQA