Our Privacy in a Digital World

After learning about modern surveillance and how technology collects our personal information, I think privacy is becoming harder to protect. One thing that stood out to me is how much information can be collected from things we do every day without necessarily thinking about it. For example, automatic license plate readers can record where vehicles have been, while cell towers can track the location of our phones. Even our social media activity can create a digital record of us that can stay around for a long time.

These issues can affect me, my friends, and my family because so much of our everyday lives involve technology. Something as simple as posting a picture, filling out a form online, or using a social media platform can provide information about us. The idea that a picture posted online could potentially be used to identify someone or connect them to other records is concerning. The second TED Talk compared modern technology to tattoos because things we put online can be difficult to erase. Something that seems harmless at the time could potentially come back to affect us later.

I think the government should be more careful about how it collects and uses people's information. The first TED Talk showed how surveillance technology has become increasingly connected to law enforcement and government agencies. At the same time, companies collect large amounts of information through data mining, tracking, and behavioral marketing. There should be more awareness of how this information is being collected and what happens to it after we provide it.

As individuals, we also need to be more careful about what information we give away. We should think before posting pictures or personal information online and pay closer attention to what we agree to when using websites and apps. The talks showed that false promises and marketing can encourage people to give up their own data without fully understanding what they are giving away. Ultimately, protecting our privacy starts with recognizing how valuable our information is and being more careful about what we choose to put online.

YouTube: How a Failed Dating Site Rewired Communication

YouTube founders (left to right) Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim

The domain “YouTube” was registered on February 14, 2005, by three former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The date is fitting for the company because YouTube wasn't originally meant to be a video-sharing site at all. It was pitched as a video dating service called "Tune In, Hook Up," where users would upload short clips describing what they were looking for in a partner.

The dating concept flopped almost immediately. According to co-founder Jawed Karim, the real spark came from something different. In 2004, he and his co-founders struggled to find video online of two major news moments; Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction," and the Indian Ocean tsunami. There was simply no easy place on the internet to upload and share video. That gap was the problem they set out to solve.

So they pivoted, and on April 23, 2005, Karim uploaded the platform's first video: a 19-second clip called "Me at the zoo," filmed at the San Diego Zoo. It's still on YouTube today, with over 430 million views. The site opened to the public in beta that same month and officially launched in December 2005. Just eleven months later, in October 2006, Google acquired YouTube in a shocking deal for $1.65 billion in stock, an almost unheard-of valuation for a company barely a year old.

YouTube solved a real problem: it gave anyone with a camera the ability to broadcast to a global audience, no TV network or studio required. That's arguably its biggest impact, it decentralized mass media. It created what we now call the "creator economy." A kid named Jimmy Donaldson was making videos in his bedroom in 2012, and now commands a $100 million deal with Amazon while still spending tens of millions of dollars of his own money, and has produced the biggest cash-prize competition show in television history as MrBeast.

But that same openness created serious problems. YouTube has faced repeated advertiser boycotts — most notably the 2017 "Adpocalypse," when brands like AT&T and Verizon pulled their ads after discovering they were running next to extremist content. That triggered aggressive demonetization policies to be put on creators, which made many creators feel punished, even more so than those posting said extremist content.

Researchers have also found real harms in the recommendation algorithm itself. A 2021 Mozilla Foundation study found that 71% of videos users flagged as harmful had been actively recommended by YouTube's own algorithm, raising serious questions about platforms optimizing for engagement over accuracy or safety.

In twenty years, YouTube went from a failed dating site to the world's second-most-visited website, trailing only Google itself. Three guys who couldn't find a video of a Super Bowl halftime show incident ended up building the place where a whole generation of media now lives or dies by an algorithm none of us can see. That's the trade-off at the heart of this technology: it gave everyone a microphone, but it’s never told us who's controlling the volume. Thank you.

____________________________________________________

AI DISCLOSURE: This post was a collaboration using Claude. I took detailed notes while researching the history of YouTube. I then asked Claude to write a short blog about the history and impact of YouTube, while including my personal findings and talking points. I then went through and made changes to the grammar and wording of some sentences, while also adding in my some of my own opinions. After reviewing the text, I added links to related sources, as well as appropriate images and captions.

The Eight Values of Freedom of Expression

Freedom of expression is very important for a country. If a nation doesn't allow it's citizens to express themselves, then they have no culture, and nobody will be happy. Restricting how people can express themselves can lead to an unhappy population, which often leads to violence and uprising, so to mitigate this risk, governments must allow their citizens the freedom to express themselves. There are eight theories within freedom of expression that scholars use to defend and endorse freedom of expression, each one offering a new and different point of view on why it is so necessary.

John Milton

1.  Marketplace of Ideas

Also known as "the discovery of truth", John Milton argued that there shouldn't be a required license to print or publish.

Alexander Meiklejohn 

2. Participation in Self Government

Alexander Meiklejohn argued that if people are restricted in what they can say or publish, then citizens can't make informed and educated decisions when voting.

Baruch Spinoza

3. Stable Change

Also called the "safety valve", it was argued by Baruch Spinoza that allowing angry and upset citizens to vent their frustrations and speak their minds will make them more stable and less likely to act out violently or disruptively.

C. Edwin Baker

4. Individual Self-Fulfillment

Also known as "self actualization", free speech allows individuals to express themselves and fin an identity, which C. Edwin Baker says is a core piece of human dignity and autonomy.

Vince Blasi

5. Check on Governmental Power

Also called the "watchdog rule", Vince Blasi is a notable voice in arguing that free press is how citizens learn about corruption and other abuses of power within the government, and without this knowledge they cannot make educated decisions when voting.

Lee Bollinger

6. Promote Tolerance

Lee Bollinger said that if upsetting or harmful free speech is protected, then society becomes more tolerant to it other issues, however we learn how hate speech is harmful by allowing then condemning it.

Jack Balkin

7. Promote Innovation

Jack Balkin argued that communities that value and protect free speech evolve into a more energized and creative society when citizens can use those freedoms to fulfill themselves. 

Steve Shiffrin

8. Protect Dissent

Steve Shiffrin argued that the First Amendment serves as a guard against mob rule by protection unpopular, minority viewpoints; everyone has the right to disagree with the government and other people, and they should express it if they do.

The one of these eight values of freedom of expression that I believe to be the most relevant in today's society is participation in self government. In the age of social media, more people now have a platform to voice their opinions and speak their minds, no matter who they are. Now that individuals have platforms to speak, not only TV shows and news stations, we get to hear the voices of the little guy who might know something or is irrelevant enough to investigate issues more freely than a reporter. With this, people are more frequently exposing abuses of power, which then the abusers attempt to silence them. An example of this that we can see today is something that I've talked about before, the "Stop Nick Shirley Act" in California, an attempt to silence reporters exposing fraudulent activity and abuses of power. If citizens are not allowed to speak up when they find instances and acts of government inadequacies involving abuse of power and fraud, then people can't make informed decisions at the ballot box, and those in power can keep abusing their power to help themselves and hurt citizens. 

It seems today that the marketplace of ideas is larger and offers more freedom than ever before, 

Nick Shirley

with countless social media platforms and the ability to speak freely in public. Although they do restrict hate speech and inappropriate content, people are free to post and discuss just about any topic you could think of. This freedom of expression leads to more things being said and published that lead to instances of governments and companies attempting to silence and restrict people.

___________________________________________________________________________________

AI DISCLOSURE

AI was not used in the writing of this blog post.