TikTok is owned by a company in China named ByteDance and this company has been banned in some countries due to privacy issues (Kelly). This app has numerous ways to change your settings to make your account as private or not private as you wish. The biggest concern with TikTok’s access to our personal data is if China ultimately is gaining access to that information.

The app uses the amount of time you spend on a video, your interactions with certain videos, who you message, and they produce advertisements they think you wish to see (Kelly). We can physically shut down the app from collecting all data about us, however, we can simplify it and make it a bit more narrow. Avoid allowing TikTok access to your contacts. Having access to your contacts can give this app information about people you are close with. You can also limit ad personalization which limits the ability of people to target you (Kelly).

No matter what this company has ways to track what you are doing on the app, but there are many ways we can try and limit this. Blocking these social media apps from doing so will be very beneficial in keeping your information and the people information you connect with safer. What changes will you make to ensure the safety of your information?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/24/tiktok-privacy-settings/

Last year, the IRS announced the use of facial recognition software, ID.me. The user must submit a video or selfie in order to  verify their identity using this service. Initially, the creators of ID.me claimed the service used one to one matching, where they matched an image of the face to the same face. However, they have stepped down from this claim after the CEO admitted that they use a much larger database to match faces.

During 2021, Many individuals who used the software in order to apply for benefits ended up loosing out on those benefits due to issues with the software. The IRS states that the use of this service is to “ensure criminals do not have access to taxpayer accounts”, however many disagree with the IRS having access to a large database of every taxpayer’s face. This service has already sparked complaints from The American Civil Liberties Union, digital rights advocates, and politicians.

According to a Bloomberg report, the IRS is looking for an alternative to this controversial software. The IRS did not cite a reason for this, however due to all the backlash, it is not hard to imagine why. Will the alternative that the IRS produces be a step in the right direction, or will it just worsen the issues?

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/29/22907853/irs-idme-facial-recognition-alternatives-privacy-concerns

Neil Young has been in the spotlight as of recently due to his request to have his music stripped from Spotify due to misinformation on the Covid-19 vaccine coming from one of its most popular podcasters, Joe Rogan. Although Spotify was willing to remove the music with no problem, after a spur of famous allies joined his side and Spotify’s market cap fell by almost 2 billion dollars, the company decided to put out some new rules on fake news. However, Neil Young has been giving Spotify the business for a long time.

As a classic musician, Young’s biggest issue with Spotify has always been its shoddy audio quality. Most music used to be recorded in analog and although there was less compartmentalization and a smaller library, the sound quality was spectacular in comparison to the digitally recorded music we have now. Neil Young had developed  Pono, a music service that was dedicated to giving back the rich studio sound of a music recording by focussing on uncompressed digital audio. Although the company fell under, Neil Young and Amazon Music have had a fruitful relationship expanding on his dream of returning to high-quality music formats.

The unfortunate truth when it comes to platforms like Spotify and Apple Music is that so much of the original music file losses data because they use Lossy compression techniques that delete much of the content of the files in order for consumers to more conveniently access it. Spotify is also guilty of other music crimes such as how much it pays its artists per stream and the type of mining going on in that site that make them a good chunk of its money while leaving underground artists in the dust. Neil Young was right to leave when he did.

Sources:

Neil Young – Wikipedia

Pono (digital music service) – Wikipedia

Neil Young quit Spotify because of Joe Rogan. These artists followed his lead (yahoo.com)

The Dark Side Of Spotify – YouTube

Does social media make your life better?

Some people get confident by Social Media, sharing their life and positivity influence people better way.

Some people find a new friend on Social Media and have fun in communication.

Social Media gave us the freedom of speech, sharing our own thoughts, or emotions, sometimes give a big impact on individuals.

However, there is a lot of risk in Social media.

It is usually happening in teenagers who are not good at taking information and understanding the information.

Some people share inappropriate information, aggressive way of talking, violent and sexual content.

Or exposing their own personal information and losing their privacy.

It is hard to keep our minds clear to get the information and share the positive behavior.

So there is a lot of good things about a better life, but there is still a lot of people who get tired of Social media and get affected emotionally.

https://raisingchildren.net.au/teens/entertainment-technology/digital-life/social-media#:~:text=Social%20media%3A%20risks,-Social%20media%20can&text=uploading%20inappropriate%20content%2C%20like%20embarrassing,much%20targeted%20advertising%20and%20marketing

As we learned watching the Social Dilemma and in class discussion there are many issues with social media. Specifically, how easy it is for people to join together in groups and spread information. In class, we touched on “Pizza Gate”, a conspiracy theory about people in Hollywood being involved in a child sex trafficking situation. These groups of conspiracy theorists are potentially harmful to those on social media seeing these things.

Lately, TikTok has been dealing with a conspiracy group denying the occurrence of the Holocaust. Unesco reported, “17% of content related to the Holocaust… either denied or distorted the events” (BBC, 2022). TikTok acknowledged this is especially problematic because their app is used by younger generations who are impressionable. The spread of this false information could be potentially harmful. There has already been a spike in anti-Semitic posts on all social media platforms since the start of the pandemic (BBC, 2022). These conspiracy groups are just adding to it.

To combat this issue TikTok is working to send all users searching Holocaust related information to accurate information. These users will also be given the abouttheholocaust.org link, which will direct them to more detailed accurate information about these events.

Seeing TikTok make an effort to combat this issue feels reassuring after what we learned in class. Many social media platforms are not doing all that they can to help lessen hate, because the clicks make them more money. But it seems like TikTok is doing good work with these efforts.

Holocaust Memorial Day: TikTok launches plan to fight Holocaust denial – BBC News

Apple’s products are becoming more and more popular with consumers, mostly the popularity of the iPhone. If we randomly choose 10 people, we could possibly find that 8 people have chosen iPhone. With the advancement of technology, I noticed that the frequency of iPhone upgrades has also become faster. Then here comes my question, is that necessary for us to have the latest version of the iPhone product?

To answer this question, I think the first thing that needs to be done is to define the intention of using electronic products.
For me, the main purpose of my use of my mobile phone is to make calls, to use the Internet to reach out and communicate with the world. Of course, there are also advanced features such as using iPhone to take pictures, videos.

Due to the reason that I don’t have a specific requirement for electronic products, there is no excessive requirement for the pixels of the photo. As long as my phone is not stuck, not broken, and there is no capacity shortage, I can choose to continue to use it. There is no absolute need to replace it with a new version if my need for a smartphone is only some basics. The shelf life for iPhone is pretty strong that can make it long-lasting. More to know is that we can change the battery easily now if you find out yours degrades.

However, it is understandable that many people would choose to upgrade their iPhones to the newest version for many reasons.  According to my reading from USAToday, “The new iPhone will include a new A15 chip to bring boosts in speed and performance, as well as upgrades to the camera and battery life. It also boasts new features such as Cinematic Video, which helps bring people and objects into better focus.” If the iPhone user is a tech lover, then it would definitely be necessary for him to get the new version.

As iPhone users, it is not hard for us to notice that Apple is giving us the option of recycling old apple products or trading them. I’m very supportive of this action because over-upgrading can lead to serious e-waste problems. In this way, we can better recycle used electronics and support users who want to replace them with new ones.

In conclusion, whether or not upgrading your iPhone to the newest version is all due to personal need. But also keep in mind of the environmental free.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/09/16/iphone-13-release-why-keep-your-old-apple-phone/8360451002/

Cookies were born from “magic cookies”, a term referred transferring pack of data from places to places without change the content of the pack, and cookie can be seem as repurpose version of “magic cookies”.
Cookies were invented by Lou Montulli, a web browser programmer, he came up with this idea while he was fixing an online store overload, using cookies will enable browsers showing the advertisements you might be interested, and of course cookies can do much more than that, for example, by learning your playlist preferences, your media player will optimize its daily recommendations, and once you start to play the daily recommended playlist, cookies will be more acknowledged your preference by some algorithms, so the media will push even better playlist, but cookie also ruin your experience under some situations, if you somehow skip one song that you like, and you don’t know it’s name, it may never show up in your recommendation list.
Cookie, it can be good and can be bad, but have you ever wondered, what if someone use your cookie to do something bad to you, for example, leaking your personal information, sell your brows histories, sometimes the effectiveness of cookie is scary, a minute ago you were talking to someone on the voice chat, the moment you hang up the phone, the moment your browser start to offer you the whatever object you were talking about through the phone call, isn’t it terrifying? Do we need to protect us from using cookie?
From my perspective, having awareness about the advertisement you looked on each page, and always reevaluate the website, when you were asked if you want to enable cookie for this website.

https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/cookies

https://theconversation.com/radicalization-pipelines-how-targeted-advertising-on-social-media-drives-people-to-extremes-173568

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/whats-a-cookie-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-my-privacy-makeuseof-explains/

I have been wondering about this, coming from someone who used to always have her notifications on to now turning most of them off and my phone on do not disturb. Also watching The Social Dilemma made me more aware. I used to be obsessed with notifications and every time my phone lit up. I would grab it in two seconds and want to know what it was. Whether I posted a picture on Instagram, or was texting someone I always was obsessed with them. I encourage people to turn them off, because I would not want anyone else to go through what I did and feel the way I did.

In simpler words, social media notifications and in general destroyed me.

This was a quote I found in the article “The thing about social media apps is that they’re designed to hijack our attention and entice us to spend as much time as possible on them. When we get a notification, our brains release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel good. And since our brains crave dopamine, we’re wired to find fast fixes of it, like those from notifications, so we’ll unconsciously keep repeating those behaviors.” It definitely did that to me. It makes you feel good and then a little innocent pop in check turns into an hour. They also increased my stress and anxiety. I cared so much about people interacting with my posts or anything when I should not care. These companies want to ping your phone with something you will pick your phone up to and stay engaged with.

The only apps I have notifications on for are Outlook and Canvas. I was just curious!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyblaschka/2020/09/21/this-is-why-you-need-to-turn-off-social-media-notifications/?sh=77a90c5f6690

The Increasing accessibility we have to the Internet has been very beneficial for research and learning purposes, especially as students. But has it consequently impacted our cognitive abilities? Research shows that, “The average number of Google searches per day has grown from 9,800 in 1998 to over 4.7 trillion today,” (Google Annual Search Statistics, 30 Apr. 2013). This statistic reflects the increasing convenience of the Internet, as well as a possible decrease in cognitive activity. If we have, roughly, all of the answers to any question we may need to ask, why would we ever challenge ourselves to find our own answers through experience? Could this mindlessness also be impacting our memory? I have personally relied heavily on the Internet, specifically Google, to answer my questions, both personal and academic, and have noticed that I lack the skills to answer questions without the help of the internet. Similarly, retaining information seems almost obsolete when we have access to such a vast variety of information, as mentioned in the article, “If we rely on Google to store out knowledge, we may be losing an important part of our identity,” (Academic Earth, Sparrow, B, J Liu, and D M. Wegner 2011).

https://academicearth.org/electives/internet-changing-your-brain/ 

A child would be constantly remembered to have his room organized to be better looking and accessible when the moment comes. Later years after going to college, a lesson to be possibly taken that organization from organizing ideas, assignments, or daily schedule is useful to avoid clatters. Not doing so could put the student in a situation that could cause a fallback in some assignments or plans which might reflect significantly later. In many office environments, employees tend to use the network to share or organize data to use them efficiently to serve their portion of the work. And in the past two years, most of the jobs have shifted to be done remotely to help survive the pandemic that the world faced. Because of that, the usage of the network has increased significantly where they would share and exchange data; presumably, the chances of mistakes could occur would increase if it is not avoided.

Also, Data sharing not only depends on neatness and accessibility but also on how it gets moved around. Relying upon emails or massage could cause security problems if something important had been shared got leaked. Clutter and unsecured data could be prey for the hunters. Internet services provide a vast option to better organize your data from personal to business files. This could be used to share it with your family, friends, or maybe with your clients. Google Workspace or Microsoft OneDrive are options to use for personal information or for the work environment. However, the bigger expansion of the usage the more complicated it can be to manage data. There might be two individuals using two different services, like iCloud and Windows, making it hard sometimes to exchange information.

On the other hand, many services give you full control of your data from picking how files could be shared, putting passwords on some files, and organizing them accordingly. Services like Egnyte or SecureDocs provide these options with great security behind them and with a cost per user. Going forward with the process the employee will not favor sharing the wrong file to the client that could later go into a bigger issue than it is, or important data getting leaked.

Reference:

https://www.theverge.com/22867623/file-share-secure-work-from-home-how-to-cloud