Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 28
Posts 1 - 10

How silicon valley is erasing your individuality

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 10.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, privacy, threat
Summary | Google and other major tech companies are trying to increase their monopoly and reach every area of our lives. It seems that those companies can now do anything; they are all competing to become the best personal assistants. Thanks to artificial intelligence softwares, they want to be constantly by our sides and never leave us. Major tech companies believe we are all "social" beings. Therefore, they try to create "social" platforms where we can all collaborate. They think that by bringing us together, they will make a better world. When it comes to individuality and free will, tech companies know what they're doing. They have algorithms that tell us/suggest what to buy, what to read, or what to do. The dominance and monopoly of big tech companies can be dangerous; it can lead to conformism and privacy issues.
Image Description | N/A

Slain teen's mother urges Congress to amend Web law

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 20.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | law, pornography, threat, youth
Summary | The mom of a 16-year old teenage girl who's been murdered testified about her daughter. Desiree Robinson was 16 and was on Backpage.com. The alleged killer used Backpage.com to find young girls with whom he could have sex. The pictures that Desiree posted online were the reason that led to her death. Senator Rob Portman introduced a new bill that will end immunity for websites that host prostitution-related advertising. Online sex trafficking is a serious issue and we need to do something to fight it.
Image Description | N/A

Violent thriller won't have many clicking 'like'

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 22.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, Facebook, social media, threat
Summary | The movie "Friend Request" is about the danger of social media and Facebook anxiety. The movie is unlikely to be popular though. In the movie, Laura is a popular college student and has a lot of Facebook friends. When Laura unfriends Marina, a shy student who posts a lot of gothic animations, Marina kills herself. The movie plot is a good idea, especially in the age of social media, but the movie fails to develop its characters.
Image Description | N/A

Antiabortion group accuses Twitter of blocking its ads, censoring images

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 23.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, social media, Twitter
Summary | Twitter has been accused of blocking antiabortion ads and asking to remove "sensitive content" from its social network platform. The antiabortion group (Live Action) claims that Twitter does not respect its policy to host "unfiltered debate". Other major tech companies such as Facebook or Google have been accused of crossing the line by censoring content and blocking posts from their platforms. According to Live Action, everyone should be able to share their ideas and opinion.
Image Description | N/A

For this company, online surveillance leads to profit in Washington’s suburbs

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 10.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, privacy, social media, threat
Summary | Babel Street is a startup that uses online surveillance; they try to get private information from online platforms in order to catch cybercriminals. For instance, police departments might use the service provided by the company in their investigations and scan posts online. Experts try to track dangerous criminals while analyzing posts in more than 200 languages, including the emoji language. Emoji has actually been a challenge for analysts. Another challenge the company faces is to make sure sure it doesn't violate people's privacy.
Image Description | Photograph of a man standing in a news room in front of several TVs, and two other people.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Test your millennial knowledge with this mindless, fun game

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 6.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, game
Summary | In the new app/game called "guess the emoji", users need to guess the meaning of emojis. Although the game is mindless and perhaps stupid, it is still fun.
Image Description | N/A

Fed up with daughter's negativity

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 27.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, email, Facebook
Summary | A woman seeks counsel about what to do with her grown-up daughter. The daughter is in a fight with the parents (which the parents do not understand) and is emailing them hateful tirades and making disrespectful posts about them on Facebook. It has gotten so insufferable that they have deleted their accounts on Facebook after the daughter has unfriended the father.
Image Description | N/A

YouTube battles ISIS with a redirect strategy

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 25.7.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | marketing, politics, threat, YouTube
Summary | YouTube is redirecting people who search for extremist materials to videos that show the pain terrorism causes in order to act against new people getting radicalized. While this may be a useful strategy, it is problematic that this move was incited by companies. YouTube had been struggling with advertisers pulling their ads from controversial videos.
Image Description | N/A

The limits of instant activism

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 28.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | politics, social media
Summary | A new book titled "Twitter and Tear Gas" by Zeynep Tufekci is coming out. It discusses the infuence of social media on protest culture. The author has been present in many recent protest movement: Occupy Wall Street, the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, the Tahrir Square protests, and many more. In her book, she concludes that social media help mobilize many people very quickly, as the anti-Trump marches have shown. However, this ease with which people are mobilized to attend a protest make the ties within the protest community looser making it difficult for the movements to overcome issues later on in the process.
Image Description | Image of the March on Washington in 1963.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), text

Facebook lets streams of depravity flow freely

Hyperlink

Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 19.4.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, Facebook, fake news, law, pornography, privacy, threat
Summary | Facebook is facing many criticisms about its poor enforcement of basic standards of content on the platform. Multiple violent live streams have been uploaded to Facebook in the past in it always took Facebook too long to take them down. Their algorithm to weed out pornography has backfired when they censored a historic photograph of a napalm victim from the Vietnam War because it registered as child pornography. After much denial, Facebook are finally taking steps against fake news spreading on their platform. All this may be called censorship but without moderation there can be no free speech because bullies dominate the discourse.
Image Description | N/A

Page 1 of 3
Back | Next