### How Ad’s Follow You Around The Internet”
The problem with third party cookies is that it tracks your online data across different websites, in some cases, all websites and once the data is collected there is no way of getting it back. The video, “How Ad’s Follow You Around The Internet” put a lot of things into perspective as my responsibility as an online user to be more knowledgeable of features like cookies on a website.
Cookies can store details like your location, shopping carts, email addresses, time spent on a website, and any clicks you make on a website. Third party cookies enable companies to band together to track and monitor everything we do online. Third party cookies collaborated with other websites to make better, more accurate information on you to give you ads (personalized ads). First party cookies are generally the more helpful and basic cookies such as remembering your login information or saving your passwords.
Through this process, advertisers can design and deliver personalized ads that seem to follow users wherever they go online. The video emphasizes that it's not just a marketing tactic but also a system of surveillance that users aren’t typically made aware of or privy to. After watching and listening to the video I became more aware of the value of my personal data and also the importance of managing and paying attention to my privacy settings. Understanding how cookies operate encourages me to be a little more cautious and intentional about what I share online and which permissions I grant to websites.

### “How GPT models work: accessible to everyone”

The world of AI and generative language models can be confusing for the average folk. However, with Bea Stollnitz help, we are able to get a better grasp of how exactly these language models work. “The very basic idea is the following: they take tokens as input, and produce one token as output.” (Stollnitz, 2023). Generative models use a sequence of tokens and produce one token at a time. Now, you may be wondering what a token is. A token is a chunk of text, usually common short words often mapped one token. Longer or rare words map to multiple tokens. Creating tokens helps language models understand a process text in a manageable way. After tokenization, the model uses a sliding window pattern (given n tokens in, it predicts one token out) then that token becomes part of the next input, and so on, until a stopping condition.
Historically, older language models (HMMs, n-grams, RNNs) struggled with long or complex text. A big change to the generative AI space came when transformers were introduced in 2017. This solved these issues by using attention, which helps the model focus on important parts of the text. This made it possible for models like GPT-3.5, ChatGPT, and GPT-4 to understand context much better. The current generative AI models a lot of people use today. GPT-3.5 mainly completes text, ChatGPT is trained to follow instructions and hold conversations, and GPT-4 is the most advanced, handling both tasks with stronger reasoning and language abilities. I think this is all interesting to understand as someone who does not immerse themselves in the logistics of generative AI, but Stollnitz helped me to get a better understanding of it all.

### “This Is Why Some People Think Google’s Results Are “Racist”

“A 2013 study by Latanya Sweeney, a professor at Harvard University, found that advert results appeared to “expose ‘racial bias in society’”. (Rutherford and White). This article was not that surprising as a black woman living in America. Because I experience racism and microaggressions daily, it was not surprising to see how apparent it is shown through things as simple as Google searches. The article tells us that the stereotypes portrayed in Google say more about society and how far we have progressed more than the site itself. Many believe that the search engine, Google, seemed to reinforce Eurocentric beauty standards.
This whole investigation into racial bias in search engines began when Johana Burai, a graphic designer from Sweden began to research pictures of hands a couple years ago and only white hands showed up. In the same light, searched for black hands or, “African hands” and “found they tended to come with added subtext, such as a white hand reaching out to offer help, or the hands working in the earth.” (Rutherford and White). This led her to create the “World White Web”, which seeks to stop the search engine only showing images of white hands by encouraging people to link to and share images of nonwhite hands, in a bid to push them up Google’s results. Media bias also fed into search engines with three young black criminals showing up when people search up “three black teenagers” compared to white teenagers. Search engines have changed drastically since the 2010’s which could indicate that society is getting more progressive and is changing, however, remember these mistakes can help us all avoid repeating them in the future.

### "Our Language Is Evolving, 'Because Internet'"
I never thought the study of linguistics would translate all the way down to the internet as well. In, “Our language is evolving, “because of the internet”, Audie Cornish emphasizes the changing landscape of online linguistics and trends online as well. Her take on linguism in the internet is that, “The old rules are about using language to demonstrate intellectual superiority, and the new rules are about using language to create connection between people”.
It is also important to understand that different trends and verbiage on the internet is received differently depending on the age groups. For example, there is a clear difference in how different age groups use the term, “LOL”. Older generations see “LOL” as actually laughing out loud whereas younger generations see it as a giggle or a point of irony. Cornish also mentions how she loves stylistic verbal incoherence on the internet. Stylistic verbal incoherence is a linguistic phenomenon where speakers or writers deliberately use fragmented or non-standard language to express emotional states or create a specific effect. I agree to this point as well, I think this term is most expressed in social media comment sections, especially in recent years on platforms like TikTok. Cornish also mentions a term that has been more popular really since 2020, in my opinion, which is called, “keysmashing”. I have known of this phenomenon but didn’t know there was an actual term for this until reading the article. Keysmashing, “is when you mash your fingers against a keyboard to, you know, convey this incoherent emotion.” (Cornish, 2019). It is important to understand even languages on the internet because it helps you gain a better understanding of other languages and how people communicate within one another.

### "Now in College, Luddite Teens Still Don’t Want Your Likes"
Many times my friends and I find ourselves longing for a simpler time. When we didn’t depend on phones and social media to connect and control our daily lives. Coming across the article, “Luddite Teens Still Don’t Want Your Likes” was very interesting to see how there are teens who are actually dedicated to that “phone-free” lifestyle. The Luddite Club is a story the author of the article, Alex Vadukul wrote that told of how, “a group of teenage tech skeptics from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn and a few other schools in the city gathered on weekends in Prospect Park to enjoy some time together away from the machine.”. The article tracks how some of the original Luddite members are doing (some are now in college/are older) trying to navigate a less digital lifestyle. One of the members, Lola Shub, a current university student, stepped away from the club mainly out of convenience. “I started using a smartphone again pretty much the day I started college - I kind of had to. It’s really hard to navigate the world without one. But there’s been something nice about it, if I’m going to be honest.” Shub mentioned. She emphasizes smartphone use is all about moderation and not getting too used to constantly using a phone.
The Luddite movement has since spread, now having branches in high schools across America and the UK which also highlights the pressure the upcoming youth has for less of a dependency on phones.