# Reading Responses Set 1 (5 out of 5) 10/21 - Gender, communication, and contribution Why is it that hackers don't want their industry to become diverse? Earlier this semester, we tackled the idea of why people are so mean online. The idea that they can hide behind a persona or an anonymous presence makes it easier for them to attack people without real fear of retribution. But these open-source editors are so worried about their activity being "demasculinized", as Naomi Slater puts it in "The Open Source Identity Crisis" when that simply isn't the case. I understand the effect that they believe it has on their identity, but that merely exists in their own concept of identity rather reality. Women are very involved in tech and that has increased over the past few years, but these hackers don't see it that way because their minds are stuck in an outdated idea of the makeup of the tech industry. The concept of identity manifests itself in many ways. One of the most important is how you perceive your own identity. The reason these hackers are so resistant to women getting involved in the tech industry is because they view the industry as male when that's not the case anymore. If they simply accept that fact, they wouldn't feel that their identity is being attacked. In reality, there's no good reason for hackers and open-source editors to not want more women to get involved. No matter what Megan Moltemi and Adam Rogers say in "The Actual Science of James Damore's Google Memo", I refuse to accept any "scientific" reason as to why the tech industry shouldn't be diverse. 10/13 - Exam review Multiple Choice 1. Which of the following is NOT one of the types of mis/disinformation? A) Satire B) Misleading information C) Fabricated content D) False context 2. Which of the following is NOT one of Ostrom's institutions of collective action? A) Rules B) Boundaries C) Rough guidelines D) Graduated sanctions Short Essay Questions Describe how you would go about verifying that a source is reliable. What was Boyd's concern? Do you agree/disagree? <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> ANSWERS B C Many acceptable answers, but the Berkeley guide from the reading offers a good guideline: Authority, Purpose, Publication and Format, Relevance, Date of Publication, Documentation Boyd's concern was that if you encourage skepticism, people will be skeptical of true information. With agree/disagree, answers will vary (I agree, personally) 10/11 - Haters Everyone uses slang in their lives - it can help cut down on time when trying to share a thought, and it's a way to seem cool to other people and incorporate new phrases into your lexicon. But slang can also have a downside in that it can be used for delivering hateful or mean messages. And how is that picked up by AI? Shannon Bond's NPR piece "Facebook is now revealing how often users see bullying or harassing posts" from late 2021 explains that Facebook and Instagram's filters for hate speech don't always remove the issue at hand, and a lot slips through the filters. Notably, internal Facebook research found that the site struggles to "police hate speech and calls for violence, especially in non-English speaking countries". Every language develops its own slang over time. Even different countries that speak the same language can develop completely different phrases that end up becoming part of that country's vernacular. So could that be the reasoning behind why Facebook struggles to control hate speech in non-English speaking countries? With the country founded by Americans and based in California, its likely that a large percentage of their employees only speak English. That would include those setting up hate speech filters. It's very likely that one of the reasons that Facebook struggles with establishing proper filters for hate speech in non-English speaking countries is because the people who set the filters may not be entirely familiar with the vernacular of the country, and may also not be able to react quickly enough to curb the spread of a new slang term that is being used to spew hate speech across the internet. 9/27 - Learning If the process of learning was easily understood, everyone would do it all the time. The fact that it's a challenge to learn new things is what separates those who are willing to put in the effort. In Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, and Mark McDaniel's piece "make it stick: The Science of Successful Learning", the authors say that "For the most part, we are going about learning in the wrong ways, and we are giving poor advice to those who are coming up behind us." In essence, this creates a chain of passing on poor learning habits due to ease. Someone has to break that chain. But where does that break in the chain happen? Does the elementary school teacher instill the learning methods backed up by empirical research at a young age, or do they get a break considering the difficulty of teaching and monitoring kids? Does it fall to the high school teacher, who sees a class full of students who, yes, can understand new concepts better, but are stuck in their ways and more concerned about grades than actually learning? Does it fall to colleges and graduate programs to try and take people who have spent their whole lives learning in certain ways, only to now tell them it isn't actually the most productive way of learning? Someone has to break the chain in order for the ideas Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel put forward to actually come into effect. The logical answer would be for proper, researched learning habits to be taught at a young age. But some kids pick things up faster than others, and that could leave kids behind. Maybe the reason these "wrong ways" of learning are being passed on is because they just have to be the transport system for other knowledge, and even the wrong ways can still be productive and allow people to learn. 9/20 - How the web works Navigating to a website seems like a simple task at face value. And because of developments, the processes have become so streamlined that it's still a simple task. But at its core, traversing the internet is a mathematical wonder. As Hartley Brody describes in "How HTTPS Secures Connections: What Every Web Dev Should Know", the encryption and decryption of keys is fundamental to how websites establish a secure connection. Though a public key is shared frequently, the private keys of a web server and the client aren't, and both keys are necessary for a secure connection. I found it interesting to read about how these private keys are shared, and the mathematical formulas it takes to share them even when a connection is not secure. While reading about the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, I considered that perhaps these exchanges would be exploitable for someone with nefarious intentions. The two sides share a root and a prime number that they include in the exchange, as well as a mixture of their private key. But wouldn't a snooper be able to determine what that mixture was easily with access to the root and the prime? And with enough trial and error, wouldn't they be able to eventually figure out the shared secret since they have all the other information? It would likely take some time, and perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems to me that eventually, the connection would no longer be secure.
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Reading Responses Set 2

11/8 - Manipulated Manipulated content can deter a social media feed from its normal look and feel — and often not in a good way. Social media can generate manipulated content in a multitude of ways. One of the most common ways it manifests itself is through promoted content. Promoted content can interrupt a normal social media feed by flashing a message from a company or product, typically an advertisement. Promoted content has benefits compared to typical web page ads. As Joseph Reagle detailed in Reading the Comments Chapter 3: "Manipulated: Which Ice Cube is the Best?", "One Web analytics company concluded that the [Sponsored Stories] ads cost roughly 20 percent less per click and per Facebook fan and were clicked on 46 percent more than standard Facebook ads." The implementation of Sponsored Stories and their effectiveness shows why companies choose to use promoted content to their advantage. But promoted content is not the only way content can be manipulated. Another way is through the social media sites changing their algorithms. When Instagram changed their algorithm, it led to a rise in "Instagram Pods" to help people supports others' content. As Caroline Forsey writes in "Everything You Need to Know About Instagram Pods, the New Way Influencers Are Gaming the Algorithm", "It's mutually beneficial for everyone in the group, since it operates on a like-for-like or comment-for-comment basis."

12/6/2022
Privacy Footprint

My privacy footprint is much different than others — as a journalist, googling my own name brings up articles, staff pages, and social profiles that showcase my work. I discovered today that I even have a knowledge panel on the side. Sure, it has outdated information, but it is still cool to have that available. There's also a carousel of recent articles I've written, which is nice to know that if someone does search my name they can easily find some of my work. I did a Spokeo search of my phone number, which shows my location as near my hometown. That makes sense logically, as my area code is within that area even when I'm at school. Similar with social media, my Twitter is a professional account that is public for a reason. So it is not in my interest at all to be private, and the ads don't really affect me much even when they're personalized. I don't have TikTok, and I don't use Facebook enough to be concerned about it tracking me. I can't even remember the last time I had a conversation on Facebook Messenger, so even though the piece by Rich Haridy shows that Facebook was listening to audio conversations, that wouldn't actually affect me.

11/22/2022
**Mike's Home Page**

Wiki Tutorial Response Web Search & Evaluation Link Filtering Email Link Ad Blocking

11/22/2022
Ad Blocking

A site before the use of an ad blocker: With an ad blocker: I've used an ad blocker for years and it's effectiveness can't be overstated. Personally, I hate the idea of targeted advertising. I get unnerved when I see a site advertising something similar to what I bought or looked at in the past week. I've managed to avoid the "banner blindness" phenomenon because just seeing a targeted ad makes me uncomfortable, and it's become something I'm always aware of when not using an ad blocker. Companies using third-party cookies makes targeted ads even easier. As mentioned in "Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful", advertisers can buy cheaper ads from sites that share cookies with bigger sites, allowing them to continue their targeted ads across multiple sites. In addition, if ad blockers allow Acceptable Ads to sneak through it creates an uneven playing field for advertising based on the size and wealth of the company. There's a reason Senator Ron Wyden brought the practice to the attention of the senate for potential "anti-competitive" practices. It could allow big companies to pay blockers to have their ads still show, but small companies would not have enough money to do so. In the interest of a free market, Acceptable Ads are a terrible practice.

11/15/2022
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