Colleen A. Reilly’s “Critical Digital Literacies and Online Surveillance ” discusses the importance of digital literacy for students. Specifically the awareness of surveillance within the electronic world. Majority of our education ever since Covid, and perhaps even before, have been technology based. We have an online presence, and so do our students. Schools have opted to google classroom, microsoft outlook, and class dojo. All which could seemingly be tracked by companies. Reilly suggests that instructors should take a note of this surveillance and help their students be more vigilant. Although, some students say that they are not aware about the severity of websites tracking everything. Thus, bringing up the same argument Daniel Solove mentioned in his journal entry “I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy. Solove discusses the argument of “I’ve got nothing to hide” which is also moderately mentioned in Colleen A. Reilly’s reading. Student’s believe that they’re less likely to worry about this website tracking because they simply do not have anything to hide.
Information Collected
Honestly I was so surprised in reading this information collected by Reilly. It was mentioned that advertisers literally bid user’s profiles so they can show off their ad. Talk about creepy. Information will continue to be collected without any of our knowledge, because of behavioral advertising. Nevertheless, at the end of the day we know websites track everything we do. We know all of this happens, yet we’re still using websites such as Google. My job is very high in security when it comes to internet safety. Yet, we use google classroom and microsoft outlook. Pretty contradictory, if I say so myself . Reilly does mention URL servers that do not track the information of users that many students can use. From my understanding lightbeam protects from trackers whereas Ghostery shows if the tracking was blocked or not. I’m glad there are platforms to protect students from being tracked but also bringing awareness to this situation. The first step is awareness, students have to be more vigilant when it comes to these things because they are frequently online.
Digital replacements?
Now on to the next article, Kashir Hill’s ” I cut the “big five tech giants from my life. It was well”. Hill mentions the struggles of individuals who have cut out certain digital aspects of their life. They wanted a change, and wanted to feel more protected. But some people struggled as they adapted to this new lifestyle. Hill called it “Like an alcoholic going through 12 steps”, probably the best analogy I have heard in awhile. An individual mentioned how he had to drive to work in silence because rented his car entertainment system was run by Microsoft. He did not want to enter all of his information to listen to music so he drove in silence. Going through everyone’s experience was quite eye opening. It made me think about if I could ever find a digital replacement. Could you?
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