Encrypted Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Private: A Look at WhatsApp Privacy Concerns

Encrypted Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Private: A Look at WhatsApp Privacy Concerns

By Karen McInnes on June 10, 2022 | Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Guest Post by Karen McInnes

What’s up with WhatsApp?

You may have noticed increased news coverage on WhatsApp, this post will break down some of the privacy concerns being discussed. This all started in 2014, when WhatsApp was bought by Facebook. Two years later, WhatsApp began sharing user data with Facebook, unless users specifically chose to opt out of data sharing. However, as of February 2021, users can’t opt out from data sharing.[1] This is an issue for those of us concerned about privacy; the new policy collects data including information about your activity, device information (like model, iOS, and browser information) as well as information provided by other app users such as your phone number or groups you are in.[2]

WhatsApp: What data is linked to you?

While WhatsApp does not share the content of your messages with Facebook, it does share significant information about you, including your phone number, name, IP address (which indicates your location), payment information and transaction history from WhatsApp purchases with its family company.[3] According to WhatsApp’s privacy policy, under the section “What You and We Share,” other information associated with your account including your profile photo, user bio may also be shared with Facebook and Third-Party Service Providers.[9]

What makes Signal different?

Signal is funded by a 501 registered non-profit in the US, rather than advertising, which means it has no motivation to collect or sell your data.[4] Like WhatsApp, Signal offers a free service for voice, video and text that offers end to end encryption (a process of encoding messages for a more secure delivery). Unlike WhatsApp, Signal’s source code has been publicly available (open source), allowing the developers to gain feedback on how to make it stronger.[5] Signal’s encryption protocol is so strong that Forbes Magazine’s cybersecurity contributor, Zak Doffman, states it is “the nearest thing we have to industry standard”[6], and has been adopted by several other messaging services, including WhatsApp.[10]

Signal: What data is linked to you?

Signal does not collect data that is linked to your identity. Signal requires a phone number and a user created PIN. Your phone number and contacts are not stored or shared on Signal.[4] The PIN is used as a way to recover your account. If you were to lose or change your device, it is not used in connection to your chat history.[7] Requiring a PIN is a way to make sure other people can’t register your phone number (a security risk known as “sim jacking”).[8] Each platform-based conversation between Signal users has a safety number that can be checked at any time which allows users to confirm encryption.[7] All Signal information is stored locally on your device. If you lose your phone or get a new one, you will have to manually transfer your messages.[8] While this may seem like an inconvenience at first, this also means that your chat history is not stored in the cloud.[6] Your chat history is stored on your device and nowhere else.

Privacy Matters

Both services offer free voice, video and text using Signal’s encryption protocol. So then, what’s the difference between them? Privacy and funding. WhatsApp collects, shares and sells user data. Signal does not. If you’re taking the extra step to use an encrypted messenger, why not use one that protects your privacy?

Questions to consider

Have you read the privacy policy (or App Store privacy label for iPhone users) for the apps on your phone?

What personal data do you expect to share by using apps?

What data are you not okay with sharing?

References

[1] Duffy, C. (2021, January 13). Why messaging app signal is surging in popularity right now. CNN. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/12/tech/signal-growth-whatsapp-confusion/index.html.

[2] Doffman, Z. (2021, January 6). WhatsApp beaten by Apple’s new iMessage Privacy Update. Forbes. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/01/03/whatsapp-beaten-by-apples-new-imessage-update-for-iphone-users/?sh=e89c0436234c.

[3] BBC. (2021, January 17). WhatsApp changes: Signal messaging platform restored after surge prompts outage. BBC News. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55684595.

[4] Eddy, M. (n.d.). Signal Private Messenger Review. PCMAG. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/signal-private-messager.

[5] McCall, V., & Smith, B. (2021, October 19). What is signal? how the popular encrypted messaging app keeps your texts private. Business Insider. Retrieved January 9, 2022, from https://www.businessinsider.com/signal-app

[6] Doffman, Z. (2021, January 25). WhatsApp backlash-stop using signal or telegram until you change these 4 critical settings. Forbes. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/01/23/stop-using-signal-and-telegram-until-you-change-settings-after-whatsapp-and-imessage-privacy-backlash/?sh=143329cf3040.

[7] Signal Pin – Signal Support. (n.d.). Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059792-Signal-PIN.

[8] Nguyen, N. (2020, June 14). Signal: The Pros and cons of a truly private chat app. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/signal-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-truly-private-chat-app-11592127002.

[9] Privacy policy. WhatsApp.com. (2021). Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/updates/privacy-policy/?lang=en.

[10] Marlinspike, M. (2016, April 5). WhatsApp’s Signal Protocol Integration is now complete. Signal Messenger. Retrieved January 7, 2022, from https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

Written By: Karen McInnes, UBC, School of Information (Guest Contributor)

Edited By: Brittany Dzioba, Alex Kuskowski, & Eden Solarik

Featured Image: Photo by Tushar Mahajan on Unsplash

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Fake News is BS: Here’s What You Might Want to Know

By Sydney Brogden on May 18, 2022 | Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Guest Post by Sydney Brogden

What do fake news, clickbait, misinformation, and yellow journalism all have in common? They all fit under the broader umbrella of bullshit (BS). BS is communication that demonstrates little or no concern for truth, evidence, or established…knowledge” [1]. This implies that BS-ing is more about the impression the communication creates than about the content of the communication. BS-ing can be intentional or unintentional, and may involve embellishing or exaggerating one’s knowledge, competence, or skill [1]. For example, the statement “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena” may seem profound at first glance, but it is actually a string of words generated by a computer with no meaning. Someone might share a statement like this on Twitter to impress their followers with their profound thoughts, regardless of whether the statement means anything; the impression is deemed more important than the accuracy. The difference between lying and BS-ing is that when a person lies, they know that what they are saying is not true and intend to deceive, which may not always be the case when BS-ing [2].

Fake news is “fabricated information that mimics news media content in form, but not in organizational process or intent” [3]. Ideally, news media is intended to accurately inform users on current events. Fake news can be considered BS due to a lack of concern with truth or accuracy in the content; fake news is spread with the intention of influencing an impression rather than to strictly communicate truth.

Note: This graphic is the editor’s illustration of the terms in this article.

What do we know so far?

As issues related to BS have progressed, researchers have become interested in the psychological mechanisms that lead people to fall victim to BS, as well as what kinds of strategies and interventions might be effective in limiting its spread. Empirical research is a key component in determining how to combat BS; the insights provided by research assist in forming an understanding of what steps may be most effective in fighting it. Therefore, research findings should be taken into consideration when implementing strategies and evaluating how effective they are [3]. The research findings can contribute to the building and implementing of effective strategies to combat BS. The keys to detecting BS (and therefore the ability to disbelieve it) are self-regulatory resources and context [2]. Self-regulatory resources are the psychological resources that we use to manage and control our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviours [2]. As a person becomes tired or experiences mental load these resources become diminished, and an individual is less likely to detect BS or refrain from BS-ing [2]. For example, if a trusted friend shares some information via social media, a follower may be more likely to accept it as true based on the relationship of trust without further review. In contexts where a person has limited self regulatory resources and feels socially obligated to provide an opinion, they are more likely to BS, even if they know nothing about the subject1. Relatedly, people tend to BS relatively less when they know there will be a social expectation to explain themselves [2].

What’s happening now?

Imagine you have completed a long day of work or school and you are scrolling through Twitter in the evening for entertainment. You come across the Tweet above that was posted by a friend you know well. There are a few different ways you might interact with the content, which could be influenced by the mental resources you have available at the time (which could be limited after your long day) and what a normal Tweet by this friend looks like. For example, you might read the Tweet and scroll past if without any further consideration of what it means or why your friend posted it – you are too tired to care and do not notice anything strange about it. Similarly, you might read the Tweet and get confused by its content but assume that the meaning is too profound for you to grasp; this could be especially likely if the trusted friend normally posts similar content. However, this quote is computer generated BS that is devoid of actual meaning (as mentioned earlier). Considering the meaning of the Tweet in a more active, cognitively effortful way would reveal that it makes no sense at all. The tricky part is realizing that further consideration is needed, but nobody can be expected to detect every instance of BS they come across. One example of a promising method for combatting BS is “Birdwatch”, an intervention recently released by Twitter [4]. In “Birdwatch”, community users flag questionable content and provide context notes to encourage further engagement and consideration. There are three reasons this intervention shows promise in ways that align with the current research:

  • Scalability: it is too expensive to pay individual fact checkers, and there cannot be enough fact checkers to address all the BS – but politically balanced groups of laypeople can provide similar judgements [6]
  • Chain reactions: when individuals are primed to consider accuracy, they are less likely to share BS content, leading to their followers interacting with more accurate content, and so on [5]
  • The approach is proactive, rather than reactive [5]

What does it mean?

As strategies and research come together, combatting BS and therefore fake news could become more effective. In the meantime, BS will still sneak through the current interventions, which means it will continue to be up to individual users to evaluate the content they interact with. This is difficult, as we all have limited self-regulatory resources and may not always detect BS, even if we try. To help with this, consider the following:

Questions to Consider

What other types of strategies do you think might be helpful in combatting BS?

How does the fast-paced nature of social media and the internet contribute to the spread of BS?

Further Resources

References

[1] Petrocelli, J. V. (2018). Antecedents of bullshitting. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 249–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.03.004

[2] Petrocelli, J. V., Watson, H. F., & Hirt, E. R. (2020). Self-regulatory aspects of bullshitting and bullshit detection. Social Psychology, 51(4), 239–253. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000412; PDF available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341055056_Self-Regulatory_Aspects_of_Bullshitting_and_Bullshit_Detection

[3] Bago, B., Rand, D. G., & Pennycook, G. (2020). Fake news, fast and slow: Deliberation reduces belief in false (but not true) news headlines. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(8), 1608–1613. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000729; PDF available at https://gordonpennycook.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/bago-rand-pennycook-2020.pdf

[4] Coleman, K. (2021, January 25). Introducing Birdwatch, a community-based approach to misinformation. Twitter. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-birdwatch-a-community-based-approach-to-misinformation

[5] Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature, 592(7855), 590–595. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2 – Pre-print version available at https://psyarxiv.com/v8ruj pre-print doi https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/v8ruj

[6] Allen, J., Arechar, A. A., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Scaling up fact-checking using the wisdom of crowds. Science Advances, 7(36), eabf4393. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf4393

[7] MacKenzie, M. (2017). Fake News—Person Reading Fake News Article [Photo]. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikemacmarketing/36588153031/

Written By: Sydney Brogden, UBC, School of Information (Guest Contributor)

Edited By: Brittany Dzioba, Alex Kuskowski, & Eden Solarik

Featured Image: Photo by visuals on Unsplash

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The Surveillance Economy: How Amazon Uses Your Alexa Data to Drive Profits

By Jill Pineau on May 13, 2022 | Tagged with , , , ,

The Surveillance Economy: How Amazon Uses Your Alexa Data to Drive Profits

Guest Post by Jill Pineau

Voice AI assistants collect massive amounts of highly personal user data. Of the corporations that sell these devices – including Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon – Amazon’s data harvesting is arguably the most concerning, as the company itself is deeply unethical [8]. 

Amazon treats customers as “a free research and development database” to continually improve the artificial intelligence (AI) technology behind their popular voice assistant, Alexa [10]. Individuals who elect to use Alexa through the Amazon Echo speaker, and other smart devices from Amazon, become a resource, “as their voice commands are collected, analyzed and retained for the purpose of building an ever-larger corpus of human voices and instructions” [5]. Amazon keeps a recording of every interaction with your Alexa-powered device – unless you deliberately and consistently delete them – and employs human contractors to analyze a small percentage of all recordings, which often contain enough information to identify the user [10]. Amazon justifies mass data harvesting as a means of improving Alexa’s comprehension for the benefit of all users [2]. Alexa ingests this data to build a more complete model of an individual user’s preferences, habits and desires [5]. However, Amazon’s collection of user data through Alexa is less related to technological advancement than opportunities for strategic customer surveillance.

Deceptive Practices

Companies like Amazon want users to believe that their unethical practices are an inevitable expression of the technologies they employ [12]. There is a growing public anxiety around AI devices capable of making human-like decisions [3] as this could perpetuate the so-called “rise of machines” [12]. Furthering this idea, AI is often animated as a human figure – an annoyingly friendly customer service agent in a chatbot or a professional but feminine personal assistant. Voice AI assistants are strategically designed to offer illusory entertainment, making deception a central component of the technology [11]. In conversation, we imagine friendship and in friendship, we tend to overshare [13]. Despite appearances, it remains that AI-powered devices are not inherently intelligent or decisive, but gain intelligence by ingesting massive amounts of human data [3].

By personifying the AI device as Alexa, Amazon succeeds in shifting public concern to the technology itself, momentarily taking the focus off of their bad privacy policies. Media writing fixates on Alexa as a device that is constantly listening, even when she is not awake [10] or describes Alexa as interacting with other services to increase her own surveillance and control [4]. However, simple AI remains under the control of its creators. Amazon has confirmed that Alexa is not black box technology, and is continually and meticulously developed by in-house scientists [1]. Common fears around AI are somewhat unwarranted; it is the larger machines, the corporations capable of creating advanced technology to increase their power and profit, that are altering the digital landscape.

The Push for Personalization

Amazon markets personalized services with Alexa as offering users a more meaningful experience [12]. A recent article featured on Amazon.com reads: “Learn how Alexa can help simplify your life” [9]. 

  • Alexa can send communications to your friends and family on your behalf.
  • Alexa can suggest what to cook for dinner, or what shows to watch.
  • Alexa can grocery shop for you (exclusively at Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods)[9]. 

However, Karen Yeung explains that “contemporary personalization practices rely critically on the mass surveillance of individuals across populations on a continual and highly granular basis” [12]. The data a corporation can generate from mass personalization efforts “fosters and exacerbates [an] asymmetry of power,” allowing for veiled exploitation and manipulation of the customer [12]. This practice is known as surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism uses the data of human experiences – our voices, personalities and emotions – for service improvement, but also to predict products for users based on their actions [13]. Amazon’s Alexa, operating through the Echo family, is far more invasive than other smart technology because of its integration into the home and other personal devices. An interconnected set-up turns Amazon into “a gateway that every online interaction has to pass through, collecting data on each one” [4]. This creates the opportunity for users to receive “highly personalized advertisements” and suggestions exclusive to Amazon’s products and services [6]. 

Why does this matter?

Data harvesting through Alexa, made possible by Amazon’s “poetry of personalization,” contributes to a surveillance that seeks to limit your everyday choices [13]. The competitive market has made it so that customers are not just being tracked by companies, but nudged towards outcomes that are profitable for large corporations [13]. As Shoshana Zuboff  writes in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: “It is no longer enough to automate how information flows about us; the goal now is to automate us” [13]. Giving a powerful corporation like Amazon this level of authority over your data perpetuates a cycle of dystopian control: “The Machine proceeds – but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die” [7]. A digital era defined by capitalism is upon us, but we can choose not to buy into it.

Points to Consider

Amazon markets Alexa as a tool to “help simplify your life” by making daily tasks more efficient. Why is so much value placed on efficiency here? Why is the convenience of having a digital assistant at odds with the reassurance of ethical privacy policies? Why can’t users have both?

Is boycotting Amazon’s Alexa (and voice AI assistants from other large corporations) the only way to avoid engaging in these surveillance capitalist practices? Is there a way to reorient ourselves towards “the good digital life” [12] while still using today’s flawed technology?

References

[1] Alexa enters the “age of self.” (2021, June 2). Amazon Science. https://www.amazon.science/blog/alexa-enters-the-age-of-self 

[2] Alexa Privacy – Learn how Alexa works. (n.d.). Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=19149155011 

[3] Bathaee, Y. (2018). The Artificial Intelligence Black Box and the failure of Intent and Causation. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, 31(2), 890-938. https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v31/The-Artificial-Intelligence-Black-Box-and-the-Failure-of-Intent-and-Causation-Yavar-Bathaee.pdf 

[4] Benjamin, G. (2020, January 20). Amazon Echo’s privacy issues go way beyond voice recordings. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/amazon-echos-privacy-issues-go-way-beyond-voice-recordings-130016 

[5] Crawford, K., & Joler, V. Anatomy of an AI System. (n.d.). Anatomy of an AI System. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://anatomyof.ai/ 

[6] Delgado, J. (2020). Alexa, is Amazon a Surveillance Capitalist? Privacy Issues and Other Concerns Regarding the Surveillance Capitalist Economic Logic. [Master’s thesis, uOttawa Faculty of Social Sciences]. https://ruor.uottawa.ca/bitstream/10393/40932/1/PANIAGUA DELGADO, Jenniffer 20205.pdf 

[7] Forester, E.M. (1968). The Machine Stops. In The Collected Tales of E.M. Forester. The Modern Library. https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf 

[8] How ethical is Amazon.com Inc? (2018, May 13). Ethical Consumer. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/company-profile/amazoncom-inc 

[9] Learn how Alexa can help simplify your life. (2021, September 08). US About Amazon. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/learn-how-alexa-can-help-simplify-your-life 

[10] Lynskey, D. (2019, October 09). Alexa, are you invading my privacy? – the dark side of our voice assistants. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/09/alexa-are-you-invading-my-privacy-the-dark-side-of-our-voice-assistants 

[11] Natale, S. (2021). Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190080365.001.0001 

[12] Yeung, K. (2018). Five fears about mass predictive personalisation in an age of surveillance capitalism. International Data Privacy Law, Forthcoming. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3266800 

[13] Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs. https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S38C7586098

Written By: Jill Pineau, UBC, School of Information

Edited By: Britt Dzioba & Lucas Wright

Featured Image: Watching over you by Robert Couse-Baker, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

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The Rise of the Digital Worker: How Digital Labour Platforms are Changing the Future of Work

By Olenna Hardie on April 29, 2022 | Tagged with , , ,

The Rise of the Digital Worker: How Digital Labour Platforms are Changing the Future of Work

Guest Post by Olenna Hardie

Imagine you’re browsing the internet, looking for a job, and an ad catches your eye: Be your own boss! Choose your hours! Work from anywhere! You click through and end up on a site that lists all sorts of small gigs like data entry and copywriting. You can find a task, complete it, and get paid—all online. You’ve just stumbled across a digital labour platform.

What are Digital Labour Platforms?

Digital labour platforms offer web-based gig work like photo tagging, transcription, translation, content moderation, and survey participation. Most of the jobs on these sites are small units of work called microtasks. Some of the most popular platforms are Clickworker, Microworker, and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. 

Who Makes up the Digital Workforce?

The digital workforce uses digital labour platforms, so they differ from digital nomads [12] and people who work more conventional jobs from home [2]. Tens of millions of workers have sought work on digital labour platforms [10]. According to a 2017 estimation, the largest share of digital workers is in India, followed by Bangladesh, the United States, and Pakistan [13]. The majority of workers are under 35 years old and have pursued some higher education [11]. People may seek digital work because they face unemployment locally [6][16], need to supplement other income [1], or prefer a flexible schedule due to factors like childcare [10].

What are the Issues with Digital Labour?

Labour Precarity

Digital workers tend to be brutally underpaid. Mechanical Turk pays as little as one cent for some tasks [8], and average hourly pay across all major platforms ranges from USD 2.00 USD to USD 6.00 [1]. Some platforms even pay workers with gift cards [16]. Workers also spend an average of 20 minutes per hour doing unpaid work such as searching for jobs or performing qualification tests [1]. Digital workers are classified as independent contractors or freelancers rather than as employees. This classification means that digital workers don’t qualify for labour standards protections like minimum wage, sick leave, or unemployment insurance. Digital workers also lack access to employer-based health insurance, paid parental leave, and employer pension contributions [14].

Algorithmic Management Systems

Algorithmic management systems moderate work on digital labour platforms, accepting and rejecting completed tasks. Nine out of ten workers have had their work rejected by algorithmic management without explanation, leaving them unpaid and often without recourse [11]. Algorithmic management systems also distribute tasks based on metrics like client feedback and algorithmic evaluation of completed tasks. Algorithmic filtering suppresses access to gigs for users with poor metrics [15]. In response, workers perform lower-paid tasks or even work for free to try to improve their ratings. Some systems also require that workers install productivity monitoring apps on their devices [10]. This measure contributes to the constant surveillance of workers [9].

Blurred Ethical Boundaries

Digital workers rarely know what larger project their work contributes to or who they’re working for [4]. Very often, digital labour helps develop, train, and support artificial intelligence (AI) [7]. Sometimes such labour is used for morally dubious projects. For instance, a Pentagon project used digital labour to improve drone-targeting AI technology. In this case, workers labelled objects in photos, unaware that their work was being used to train contentious warfare technology [3].

Barriers to Labour Organizing

Digital workers face barriers to demanding better working conditions and higher wages. Workers are dispersed worldwide and often lack the means to communicate with one another, so unionizing is a challenge. In some countries, collective bargaining is illegal altogether [10]. As well, the competitive nature of the platforms may stifle worker solidarity [6]. These obstacles to labour organizing, combined with a lack of labour law protections, makes workers extremely vulnerable to the poor working conditions of digital work. 

Why Should I Care?

Digital work is often cheerfully marketed as an opportunity to start a flexible, entrepreneurial side hustle. Yet, it’s incredibly precarious work lacking regulation or labour protections. The digital labour market is expected to grow enormously in the coming decades [5]. If this is the future of work—where labour rights and working conditions are essentially determined by a digital labour platform’s Terms and Conditions agreement—we should be worried.

Questions to Consider

Have you ever considered seeking work on a digital labour platform? Would you in the future? What changes can you imagine that would improve the conditions of this emerging global workforce?

References

[1] Berg, J. (2020). Digital Labour Platforms Impact Working Conditions. Here’s How. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/digital-labour-platforms-working-conditions/

[2] Choudhury, P. (Raj). (2020, November 1). Our Work-from-Anywhere Future. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/11/our-work-from-anywhere-future

[3] Fang, L. (2019, February 4). Google Hired Gig Economy Workers to Improve Artificial Intelligence in Controversial Drone-Targeting Project. The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/2019/02/04/google-ai-project-maven-figure-eight/

[4] Fussell, S. (2019, April 15). Behind Every Robot Is a Human. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/amazon-workers-eavesdrop-amazon-echo-clips/587110/

[5] Graham, M. (2016, May 25). Digital work marketplaces impose a new balance of power. New Internationalist. https://newint.org/blog/2016/05/25/digital-work-marketplaces-impose-a-new-balance-of-power

[6] Gray, M. L., & Suri, S. (2016). Spike in Online Gig Work: Flash in the Pan or Future of Employment? Data & Society. https://points.datasociety.net/spike-in-online-gig-work-c2e316016620

[7] Gray, M. L., & Suri, S. (2017, January 9). The Humans Working Behind the AI Curtain. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-humans-working-behind-the-ai-curtain

[8] Hall, M. (2017). The Ghost of the Mechanical Turk. Jacobin. https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/middle-east-digital-labor-microwork-gaza-refugees-amazon

[9] Huws, U. (2016). Logged In. https://jacobinmag.com/2016/01/huws-sharing-economy-crowdsource-precarity-uber-workers/

[10] International Labour Organization. (2021). The role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work [Full report] [Report]. International Labour Organization. http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/weso/2021/WCMS_771749/lang–en/index.htm

[11] International Labour Organization. (2018). Digital labour platforms and the future of work: Towards decent work in the online world [Report]. http://www.ilo.org/global/publications/books/WCMS_645337/lang–en/index.htm

[12] Lufkin, B. (2021, June 15). Is the great digital-nomad workforce actually coming? https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210615-is-the-great-digital-nomad-workforce-actually-coming

[13] Lehdonvirta, V. (2017). Where are online workers located? The international division of digital gig work. The iLabour Project. https://ilabour.oii.ox.ac.uk/where-are-online-workers-located-the-international-division-of-digital-gig-work/

[14] Molla, R. (2021, September 3). A huge number of Americans just became gig workers and we’re not ready. Vox. https://www.vox.com/recode/22651953/americans-gig-independent-workers-benefits-vacation-health-care-inequality

[15] Rani, U. (2021, July 20). The role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work. RLS Geneva. https://rosalux-geneva.org/world-employment-and-social-outlook-2021-the-role-of-digital-labour-platforms-in-transforming-the-world-of-work/

[16] Semuels, A. (2018, January 23). The Internet Is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/amazon-mechanical-turk/551192/ 

Written By: Olenna Hardie, UBC, School of Information

Edited By: Brittanny Dzioba & Kathleen Scheaffer

Featured Image: Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-white-shirt-showing-frustration-3807738/

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Green Hosting: One Small Step Towards a Sustainable Future

By Nora Varga on April 15, 2022 | Tagged with , , , ,

Green Hosting: One Small Step Towards a Sustainable Future

Guest Post by Nora Varga

The Internet as a Polluter

Did you know that the internet is a major polluter? According to the Web Neutral Project, the internet produces about 2% of global CO2 emissions annually – the same amount as the aviation industry. And if the internet was a country, it would be the 6th largest consumer of electricity on the planet [1]. These are alarming numbers. But how does the internet pollute?

Energy-Hungry Data Centers

All of the data that we access though the internet is stored on servers either somewhere in Canada, or outside of the country. Our emails, our Instagram accounts, and the websites we visit are all stored in large data centers. In these data centers, servers are stacked on top of each other in racks, and they are powered up and running all the time [2]. Not only do these servers use a lot of electricity, but they also generate a ton of heat, so they need to be cooled continuously. When we are “online”, our data travels from the data center to our device and back, which also consumes a lot of energy.

Big Tech Promises Action

Fortunately, there are some promising initiatives out there. In the EU, 63 data center operators and 22 trade associations have signed the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, promising that they will make data centers climate neutral by 2030 [3]. The “Big Five” tech giants – Meta, Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft – have also made commitments to reduce their carbon footprint in the next couple of decades [4], [5]. All these initiatives are encouraging, but we are still far from a climate neutral future.

Simple Steps to Take Right Now

While big corporations have the most influence to start a paradigm shift, we can also help on the individual level by using the internet a bit more responsibly. As Digital Tattoo contributor Sasha Krieger points out in her blog post, we can help by simply watching less Netflix or YouTube, since streaming media is one of the most energy-consuming online activity [6]. According to the Web Neutral Project, “streaming one hour of Netflix a week requires more electricity, annually, than the yearly output of two new refrigerators” [1]. Other studies found that video streaming accounts for about 60% of all data flow in the world [7]. If all of us consumed a little bit less online video, we would already be making a difference.

Both dirty energy and clean energy are sent to data centres and green hosting centers invest this money back into green energy sources

Hosting company purchases renewable energy certificates from a clean energy provider

Green Web Hosting

Many of us will launch a website at some point in our lives, either for personal or for professional reasons. If we do so, we can help the environment by choosing green hosting. Green hosting companies lower the ecological costs of website hosting by various means. They might power their data centers with renewable energy sources, implement energy efficient algorithms and cooling systems, or offset their energy use by purchasing renewable energy certificates [8]. When a company buys renewable energy certificates, a clean energy supplier first calculates the data center’s power consumption. Then the hosting company purchases at least the same amount of clean energy from the supplier which is fed back into the grid [9].

When choosing a hosting company, you should also consider whether or not your website will be hosted within the country. Once your data leaves Canada, it is subject to the laws and regulations of the country it is located in [10]. It is unlikely that this is going to cause you any trouble, especially if you are not storing other people’s information. But to keep things simple, it is a good idea to choose a local data center.

Below are three green hosting companies, some of which you might have heard of. Besides being green and having data centers in Canada, all three meet the industry standards of regular website hosting companies. There are also other options available and you are encouraged to do your own research before you choose a company.

GreenGeeks HostPapa Web Hosting Canada
Why is it Green? • Offsets its power usage with 300% clean energy

• Plants one tree for each new hosting account

 • Offsets its power usage with 100% clean energy • Powered by renewable energy (hydroelectricity)

• Uses eco-friendly cooling with outside air and water
Services • Web hosting

• VPS hosting

• Reseller Hosting

 • Web hosting

• VPS hosting

• Reseller hosting

 • Web hosting

• VPS hosting

• Reseller hosting

• Dedicated servers
Website Building • Easy-to-use website builder

• WordPress support

• WooCommerce support

 • Easy-to-use website builder with e-commerce support

• WordPress support

• Web design service

 • Easy-to-use website builder

• WordPress support
Data Center Locations Global, including Canada Global, including Canada Canada
Number of Websites Hosted [11] 600,000+ 500,000+ 130,000+
Pricing starting at (as of December 19, 2021) $3.80 per month $3.95 per month $3.89 per month

Discussion

Have you ever launched a website? Were you previously aware of green hosting as an option? Feel free to share your thoughts below!

References

[1] Web Neutral Project, “The Problem: How the Internet Pollutes,” Web Neutral Project, 2021. https://webneutralproject.com/the-problem (accessed Oct. 03, 2021).

[2] “Green Web Hosting – Going Green With GreenGeeks®.” https://www.greengeeks.com/going-green (accessed Oct. 27, 2021).

[3] “Signatories – Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact.” https://www.climateneutraldatacentre.net/signatories/ (accessed Oct. 27, 2021).

[4] “ClickClean,” Click Clean. https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/clickclean/ (accessed Oct. 27, 2021).

[5] L. Paddison, “Big tech’s pro-climate rhetoric is not matched by policy action, report finds,” The Guardian, Sep. 20, 2021. Accessed: Dec. 17, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/20/big-tech-climate-change

[6] S. Krieger, “Guest Post: What is Your Digital Environmental Footprint?,” Digital Tattoo, Apr. 20, 2021. https://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/2021/04/20/guest-post-what-is-your-digital-environmental-footprint/ (accessed Sep. 28, 2021).

[7] “‘Climate crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video’ : Our new report,” The Shift Project, Jul. 10, 2019. https://theshiftproject.org/en/article/unsustainable-use-online-video/ (accessed Dec. 17, 2021).

[8] M.-A. Karyotakis and N. Antonopoulos, “Web Communication: A Content Analysis of Green Hosting Companies,” Sustainability, vol. 13, no. 2, Art. no. 2, Jan. 2021, doi: 10.3390/su13020495.

[9] M. Williams, “Best green web hosting of 2021,” TechRadar, Jun. 25, 2021. https://www.techradar.com/web-hosting/best-green-web-hosting (accessed Oct. 03, 2021).

[10] S. C. Canada, “When Your Data Must Stay In Canada |,” Server Cloud Canada, Oct. 17, 2017. https://www.servercloudcanada.com/2017/10/privacy-law-canada/ (accessed Oct. 23, 2021).

[11] S. Gant, “Best Web Hosting in Canada – Here Are 4 Options (2021),” Tech Daily, Oct. 02, 2021. https://techdaily.ca/web-hosting-canada (accessed Oct. 23, 2021).

[12] “Web Hosting Canada | Canadian Web Hosting, Domain Names & Servers,” Web Hosting Canada. https://whc.ca (accessed Oct. 27, 2021).

[13] “Canadian Web Hosting | Web Hosting Canada | HostPapa.” https://www.hostpapa.ca/ (accessed Oct. 27, 2021).

[14] “GreenGeeks: Web Hosting Canada – Fast, Scalable & Eco-friendly.” https://www.greengeeks.ca/ (accessed Dec. 19, 2021).

Written by: Nora Varga, UBC, School of Information

Edited by: Brittanny Dzioba & Alex Kuskowski

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Don’t Fall Down the Rabbit Hole: The Importance of YouTube Privacy

By Ying Chen on April 1, 2022 | Tagged with , , , ,

Don’t Fall Down the Rabbit Hole:

The Importance of YouTube Privacy

Guest Post by Ying Chen

In 2019, Digital Tattoo covered a news story on how YouTube updated its algorithm to make extremist content harder to find after growing criticism that the platform was leading its users towards misleading content, conspiracy theories and radical thought [1]. Though it may seem that YouTube is improving its algorithm and taking control of extremist views, there are still privacy implications to YouTube’s recommendation system.  

A Brief Guide to YouTube’s Recommendation System 

YouTube quickly turned into a platform for the commercial monetization of videos from a site that started out sharing user-generated materials [2]. YouTube’s recommendation system is then designed to retrieve, rank and recommend videos based on the videos’ number of likes, watch time or channel subscribers to facilitate its growing business [3]. Ultimately, YouTube profits off of user engagement – the higher the engagement rates, the more the platform gains in ad revenue.  

Many studies have shown YouTube promoting videos of “controversy and dissent” through its recommendation system to boost views [3]. According to YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, the platform’s recommendation system is responsible for over 70 percent of the time that users spend on it [4]. This also leads to “YouTube’s Rabbit Hole,” where watching a 3-minute video transpires into a 3 hour binge-watch on the platform and possibly into darker corners of the web that contain misinformation [5].   

Privacy Implications of YouTube’s Recommendation System  

YouTube has been collecting users’ data including ratings, comments, watch and search history, page views, location and device information to improve its recommendation system [6, 7]. Even though the algorithm is thus able to keep users on the platform with highly-personalized video recommendations, several issues related to users’ privacy arise:  

  • Users are not fully aware of all the data being collected [6, 7] 
  • Users underestimate the power of the data collected and the system’s learning patterns [7] 
  • Personalization data may come from unwanted data collection or even data shared from another recommendation system [8]  
  • Users may learn about another’s personal information if they share the same account or device, thus contributing to the invasion of privacy themselves [8] 

Bloomberg revealed in 2019 that YouTube’s management was “so focused on maximizing usage statistics that they looked the other way when employees raised concerns about the company’s recommendation system” [9]. Furthermore, in 2020, a crowd-sourced study called “YouTube Regrets” showed that YouTube’s recommendation system generally directs users to videos with higher potentials of going viral, even if the videos contain potentially harmful content [10]. In extreme cases, some users are even “pulled into a far-right universe, watching thousands of videos filled with conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism” [5].  

What Can Users Do? 

Technology websites such as Beebom [11] suggest practical ways of supporting healthy YouTube engagement, including: 

  • Using web browser extensions such as “YouTube Rabbit Hole” to limit your interactions with the platform’s content
  • Setting break and bedtime reminders 
  • Using app timers to limit your time on YouTube  
  • Eliminating triggers by re-evaluating your channel subscriptions and whether a channel’s video deserves your immediate attention

Points to Consider 

Evaluating YouTube’s treatment of your data is also crucial. As Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [12] declared back in 1981, the Fair Information Practices (FIPS) ensures the safe treatment of personal data online by establishing 8 categories to determine data security:  

  • Collection Limitation 
  • Data Quality  
  • Purpose Specification  
  • Use Limitation
  • Security Safeguards 
  • Openness 
  • Individual Participation 
  • Accountability  

 Discussion

How would you measure YouTube’s 8 FIPS categories? Does the platform violate any of them? What protocols do you think YouTube should implement to tackle this issue? How about your own intentions when sharing personal data on the platform? Feel free to discuss below! 

References

[1] Hill, E. (2019, February 5). In the News: YouTube updates algorithm to make extremist  content harder to find. Digital Tattoo. https://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/2019/02/05/in-the-news-youtube-updates-algorithm-to-make-extremist-content-harder-to-find/ 

[2] Cooper, P. (2021, June 21). How Does the YouTube Algorithm Work in 2021? The  Complete Guide. Hootsuite. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-the-youtube-algorithm-works/ 

[3] Rieder, B., Matamoros-Fernández, A., & Coromina, Ò. (2018). From ranking algorithms  to ‘ranking cultures’: Investigating the modulation of visibility in YouTube search  results. Convergence, 24(1), 50–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517736982 

[4] Solsman, J. E. (n.d.). Ever get caught in an unexpected hourlong YouTube binge? Thank  YouTube AI for that. CNET. Retrieved November 30, 2021, from  https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-ces-2018-neal-mohan/ 

[5] Roose, K. (2019, June 8). The Making of a YouTube Radical. The New York Times.  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html 

[6] Haselton, T. (2017, December 6). How to find out what Google knows about you and  limit the data it collects. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/20/what-does-google-know-about-me.html 

[7] Zhang, B., Wang, N., & Jin, H. (2014). Privacy Concerns in Online Recommender  Systems: Influences of Control and User Data Input. 159–173. Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security, Menlo Park, CA, United States. https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups2014/proceedings/presentation/zhang 

[8] Friedman, A., Knijnenburg, B. P., Vanhecke, K., Martens, L., & Berkovsky, S. (2015).  Privacy Aspects of Recommender Systems. F. Ricci, L. Rokach, & B. Shapira (Eds.),  Recommender Systems Handbook, 649–688. Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7637-6_19 [Note: This source is not open access] 

[9] Bergen, M. (2019, April 2). YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic  Videos Run Rampant. Bloomberg.com. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube-executives-ignored-warnings-letting-toxic-videos-run-rampant 

[10] Nguyen, J. (2021, July 25). YouTube is more likely to serve problematic videos than useful ones, study (and common sense) finds. Mashable. https://mashable.com/article/youtube-algorithm-problematic-content-mozilla-study 

[11] B, S. (2021, January 19). How to Stop Wasting Time on YouTube. Beebom. https://beebom.com/stop-wasting-time-on-youtube/ 

[12] Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (n.d.) OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data. Retrieved December 28, 2021, from https://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/oecdguidelinesontheprotectionofprivacyandtransborderflowsofpersonaldata.htm#part5 

Written By: Ying Chen, UBC, School of Information

Edited By: Brittanny Dzioba & Alex Kuskowski

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by Esther Vargas under CC BY-SA 2.0 (from Flickr) 

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Building Your Digital Avatar Using LinkedIn

By Maitreyi Bodkhe on March 25, 2022 | Tagged with , , , ,

Building Your Digital Avatar Using LinkedIn

Guest Post by Maitreyi Bodkhe

After more than a year of Zoom school and professors encouraging everyone to turn on their cameras, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering my social media usage and digital identity. One of my favorite pandemic activities has been creating quirky Zoom backgrounds for team meetings. This was fun until I walked into an interview with an Elon Musk meme as my background. I hope this blog post helps you avoid such career blunders and encourages you to scrutinize your digital Avatar, which you can leverage for wider job opportunities.  

We constantly share snippets of our life online. Almost everything that you have ever posted, shared, commented or liked is floating out there somewhere in the `Meta`verse! If you have never Googled yourself, now is the time. What pops up on the first page of results? (I hope it’s not your old Dubsmash video on YouTube.) As you go through your time at university, and take on volunteer positions, part-time jobs, co-op positions and eventually full-time jobs, it is likely that potential employers will Google you. As you build your digital identity, it is important that your Google search results leave a good impression.

As an upper year student, I’ve spent a lot of time creating a brief reflection of my entire identity, or as I refer to it, my digital Avatar: my LinkedIn Profile. Using LinkedIn, I was able to secure an internship at one of the largest tech companies, and a full-time job at a well-known consulting firm, more than a year before graduating. From connecting with mentors to researching future employers, LinkedIn has been an important part of my professional journey. Just like Facebook rebranded to ‘Meta’ – let’s revamp your LinkedIn profile and leverage that network!

Linkedin allows recording your name in your voice for 10 seconds. Great feature to help people who may not know the correct pronunciation of your name.

My tech internship recruiter actually checked my LinkedIn before the interview and appreciated the audio clip.

Connections

You need to find, approach and connect with folks you already know, folks you would like to know and folks you should know. Pro Tip – add Santa Ono on LinkedIn and magically most of the UBC network turns into 2nd connections. As you build your network, I recommend reaching out to alumni who graduated 2-3 years ago. They have experience within the industry and also still relate to student life. Establishing mentor-mentee relationships is less awkward if you have lots to talk about (like your favorite UBC cafe and that notorious ECON final). With the pandemic, traditional coffee chats have turned into Zoom meetings so have fun connecting with those in Toronto and London (just remember to calculate time-zones accurately when sending meeting invites).

Personalized connection requests don’t have to be cold. Ensure that the digital Avatar reflects your true personality and a genuine interest in learning about the industry. I usually scan a LinkedIn profile to look for common interests, current or previous jobs, mutual connections or university courses taken, etc. Next, while writing a personalized note for the connection request, I reference a fact from the profile. Personally, LinkedIn has also helped me make new friends in cities I moved to for summer internships.

Managing Endorsements

Be proactive in managing your endorsements list in the Skills section of your profile – you can choose which skills to show, and which to hide. Make sure you emphasize the skills most important for your job search! Endorsements from your coworkers and managers add immense credibility to your profile.

Pick someone who you work with closely and can vouch for your professional or academic qualifications. An endorsement for advanced econometrics, from your friend who studies Psychology, can look questionable.

Skills Assessment

The online test allows you to demonstrate the level of your skills, and display a Verified Skills badge on your profile. Displaying the results of your assessments is entirely voluntary, and you can retake the tests as often as you like before showing that you’ve passed. A wide range of skills assessments are available including AWS, C++, Java, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, QuickBooks, WordPress etc.

Review a job description that you are interested in to identify skills your LinkedIn page should highlight. Recruiters often use skills keywords to filter candidates, so demonstrate your industry specific knowledge.

Profile and Background Photo

These are the most visual elements at the top of your profile page. It will help your page stand out and engage attention. Many UBC departments have a LinkedIn headshots event at the start of the term, do check it out.

Remember: Don’t be shy- LinkedIn is an appropriate place to show off your achievements, experience, courses, and GPA. Let the world know! A thoughtful LinkedIn presence can skyrocket your career and professional relationships. Make the most of available resources and pursue the job-search with confidence. Gen Z is a social media pro, LinkedIn doesn’t have to be intimidating.

Supplemental Resources

UBC’s Digital Tattoo Project has great resources including an Academic and Professional Life Self-Assessment Quiz to evaluate your digital identity in the job market. The Digital Tattoo Project took to the streets to find out what UBC students know about ‘cyber-vetting’, or online vetting–when potential employers vet people’s online presence or “internet reputation” on social network services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

UBC’s Centre for Student Involvement & Careers has great resources to build your Linkedin profile, and their advisors can also help review the specifics of your profile. Connect with an advisor or co-op office in your faculty to identify do’s and not-to-do’s for the industry.

Vancouver Public Library: The VPL helps job searchers navigate the “hidden job market”, a term that applies to the 80% of job vacancies which do not get posted and can only be accessed through personal connections.

Ten Thousand Coffees: Create a free profile on The UBC Hub to join the mentoring platform, and receive monthly mentor matches specific to your area of interest. It will help you gain insight on global job markets and industries, receive feedback on job search materials and online profiles, or conduct informational interviews.

LinkedIn Alumni Tool: A free tool that lets you explore the alumni networks from more than 23,000 colleges and universities worldwide. It allows you to filter through major, company, job function, geographic location, connections, and LinkedIn skills.

LinkedIn Learning: As a UBC student, you have full access to the LinkedIn Learning tool. In this tool, you can find short courses and individual videos to help you develop employable skills and learn about career options. When you complete a course on LinkedIn Learning, you’ll have the opportunity to add a course certificate to your LinkedIn profile.

Written By: Maitreyi Bodkhe, UBC Economics Undergraduate

Edited By: Britt Dzioba & Alex Kuskowski

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Where Should We Take Open Access Next?: Moving Forward By Centering an Ethics of Care

By Amber Gallant on March 18, 2022 | Tagged with , ,

Where Should We Take Open Access Next?: Moving Forward By Centering an Ethics of Care

Guest Post by Amber Gallant

What is Open Access (OA)?

In 2002, a small group of scholars met to discuss the unaffordability of scholarly publishing and explore alternate avenues to make research freely accessible. The declaration they drafted, the Budapest Open Access Initiative, promised to empower authors and readers of academic research, and to “unite humanity in a common intellectual conversation” [1]. The open access (OA) movement has spawned myriad digital initiatives over the past twenty years, including OA journals, repositories, and textbooks.  

Access as a Cornerstone

OA is meant to be an avenue of accessibility to scholarly research. One of the core principles of the movement is unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly work, giving readers “the extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature” [1] for their own research or simply for the sake of inquiry. OA therefore removes accessibility barriers such as the unaffordability of research articles.  

For undergraduate students who contend with rising tuition fees and cost of living, OA removes significant price burdens. Open Textbooks Now advocates for the 26% of BC students who opt out of courses due to the high cost of textbooks. The conversation around OA textbooks is important when 40% of BC students are experiencing food insecurity under financial strain.” [3]. OA can also help undergraduates enter scholarly conversation for the first time. UBC hosts over 30 OA journals on its website as part of the UBC Library Open Publishing Program [4], many of which are student journals allowing undergraduates to participate in scholarly publishing. 

Initiatives Do Not Equal Widespread Adoption

These initiatives have increased awareness of OA, but adoption of OA is lagging behind. Even during the pandemic, only 25% of instructors teaching introductory courses, and 15% of instructors teaching any course, used open educational resources (OER) as required material [5]. Furthermore, few professors self-archive their scholarly work in their institution’s local OA repository, despite university or grant regulations that require this self-archiving, a practice known as mandated deposit. Academic librarians have enthusiastically built repositories to house the work of faculty and students, and universities have invested time and infrastructure- but they are missing OA contributors and end users of repositories and open-access journals [6].  

One reason for this slow adoption could be that current OA practices such as mandated deposit confuse would-be contributors who do not know exactly how to complete the self-archiving process. They also create questions around data ownership that go unanswered. Ask yourself, do you know where to find and how to contribute to your institution’s repository? Are the instructions clear? Do you know who to ask if you have questions about copyright or confidentiality? As a contributor, how do you know what your rights to your work are, and where self-archiving fits into your online scholarly profile? 

OA and Power Structures

The questions of data ownership, rights, and self-archiving practice reveal the social structures of power that OA can unintentionally reinforce. Leaving them unanswered creates the expectation of contribution without reciprocal explanation as to exactly how work will be used or retained. Contributors get left behind in this conversation, which is a problem when we consider how focusing only on immediate, unfettered access “depoliticizes the ways social systems of power are embedded in technology practices” [8]. 

Once you put something out there, it is part of your digital identity. OA makes those materials freely available for use. It is an admirable philosophy in theory, but in practice, an insistence on openness without boundaries can create unease among contributors. This is a problem for minority communities who may be pressured to share cultural information freely. Many Indigenous communities seek to preserve their cultural heritage through digitization. Insisting on complete openness in the digital preservation process, however, separates cultural knowledge from its natural settings and systems for the profit of others [9]. This practice disrespects the community’s own data protocols by ignoring the right of the community to govern its own knowledge according to cultural custom. 

Moving OA Forward 

How does OA fit into the world of an individual or a community? How can we respect the knowledge being shared? Organizations like the Global Indigenous Data Authority answer these questions. Where OA has relied on FAIR, consisting of:  

Findability 

Accessibility 

Interoperability 

Reusability 

GIDA adds CARE, guiding the creation of Indigenous data according to: 

Collective Benefit 

Authority to Control 

Responsibility 

Ethics 

 These principles are people and purpose-oriented [10], grounded in Indigenous worldviews and meant for Indigenous communities.  

Within the academy, librarian Cara Bradley looks at the ethics of care work as a potential path for open access to be more community-centred going forward. She examines how the four tenets of care work- attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness- can be taken up by OA practitioners and initiatives [11]. This approach is mirrored in the work of the Radical Open Access Collective, who rejects one-size-fits-all openness in favor of collaboration and mutual reliance [12].  

What these organizations and practitioners have in common is their view of OA as a process of relationality that allows us to imagine how OA fits into our lives rather than how we fit into OA. They define reciprocity, in an OA context, as a community-centred practice that respects both the knowledge being shared and the communities sharing it. They advocate for thinking critically about and answering questions around data ownership, governance, and self-archiving practice. This model of OA serves not only the academy, but the communities OA comes into contact with. 

CARE, FAIR, and Contributor Rights 

Open access should rely on reciprocity. We should understand our rights to self-archived works. We should know where our contributed work will fit into our online scholarly identities and our digital identities at large. Most crucially, we should feel confident and safe in defining the parameters of our contributions. The next twenty years of the open access movement are taking shape; they should build upon reciprocity and respect as fundamental values.  

How to Get Involved in the Future of OA 

  1. Check out Digital Tattoo’s resources on Open Education, as well as this DT blog post on Indigenous Knowledge & Open Educational Resources for a more in-depth look at Indigenous data protocols and data sovereignty.  
  1. Sign the Open Textbooks Now petition.  
  1. Pay attention to the terms of agreement or licenses where you choose to publish your scholarly work. 

Questions to Consider 

  1. What are the terms of agreement when self-archiving or depositing your work in an OA repository? Here’s cIRcle’s License 3.0 as an example – how do you feel about the terms of use and your rights as a contributor to cIRcle? 
  1. What does “reciprocity” in the context of OA mean to you? Open advocate Paul Stacey discusses reciprocity in terms of “forming partnerships around the haves and the needs” . Do you agree with this idea? What can be added? 

References 

  1. Chan, L., et al (2002). Read The Declaration. The Budapest Open Access Initiative. https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/  
  2. British Columbia Federation of Students (n.d.). Open Textbooks Now! The British Columbia Federation of Students. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.wearebcstudents.ca/open_textbooks_now  
  3. Bhat, P. (2020, December 7). How B.C. universities are fighting food insecurity. Canada’s National Observer. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/12/07/news/bc-universities- campus-food-insecurity  
  4. Moorhouse, A. (2021). UBC Library launches Open Publishing Program to support UBC faculty, staff, and student-led open journals and texts. UBC Library. https://about.library.ubc.ca/2021/10/25/ubc-library-launches-open- publishing-program-to-support-ubc-faculty-staff-and-student-led-open-journals-and- texts/  
  5. Lederman, D (2021, March 18). Awareness of Open Access Grows, but Adoption Doesn’t. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2021/03/18/pandemic-didnt-speed-adoption-open-educational-resources-outlook 
  6. Doro, N. (2021). “The IR is a Nice Thing But…”: Attitudes and Perceptions of the Institutional Repository. Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship, 7, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.33137/cjal-rcbu.v7.32145  
  7. UBC Library (n.d.). cIRcle UBC. cIRcle UBC. Retrieved December 29, 2021, from https://circle.ubc.ca/  
  8. Noble, Safiya U. (2012). Searching for Black Girls: Old Traditions in New Media. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.] IDEALS @ Illinois. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/42315  
  9. Christen, K. A. (2012). Does Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness. International Journal of Communication, 6(0), 24.  
  10. GIDA (n.d.). Care Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. Global Indigenous Data Authority. Retrieved October 29, 2021, from https://www.gida-global.org/care  
  11. Bradley, C. (2021). The Role of Institutional Repositories in the Dissemination and Impact of Community-Based Research. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 16(3), 18–31. https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip29972  
  12. Radical Open Access Collective (n.d.) Philosophy. The Radical Open Access Collective. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from http://radicaloa.disruptivemedia.org.uk/philosophy/  
  13. Digital Tattoo (n.d.). Open Education. Digital Tattoo.  
  14. Dzioba, B. (2021, November 19). Sovereignty and Tradition: Indigenous Knowledge & Open Educational Resources. Digital Tattoo. https://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/2021/11/05/sovereignty-and-tradition-indigenous-knowledge-open-educational-resources/  
  15. UBC Library. (n.d.). CIRcle License. cIRcle UBC. Retrieved November 28, 2021, from https://circle.ubc.ca/submissions/license-form/  
  16. Public Knowledge Project (n.d.). Education and Training. The Public Knowledge Project. Retrieved December 29, 2021, from https://pkp.sfu.ca/education-and-training/  
  17. Summers, Samantha (2019, April 19). In Conversation with Open Education Advocate Paul Stacey. Digital Tattoo. https://digitaltattoo.ubc.ca/2019/04/19/in-conversation-withopen-education-advocate-paul-stacey/ 

Written By: Amber Gallant, UBC, School of Information

Edited By: Brittanny Dzioba and Rie Namba 

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Period-Tracking Apps Do Not Keep Your Health Data Private

By Emma Cornelius on March 4, 2022 | Tagged with , ,

Period-Tracking Apps Do Not Keep Your Health Data Private

By Emma Cornelius

Your period-tracking app knows all about you, but it is not protecting your privacy. There is no doubt these apps can be useful. Tracking your period, emotions, ovulation, pain, and sexual activity might help you get to know yourself and understand what is going on in your body [1]. Complete with period reminders, snappy graphs of your body’s trends, and medication reminders, these apps are becoming more popular [2]. The Femtech industry, which encompasses technology focused on women’s health, is becoming more valuable (it is projected to be worth $50 billion by 2025) [3]. With this growth, it is important to analyze your relationship to these apps, and to understand what information you are giving and who you are giving it to.

According to Privacy International [4], period-related data is useful to advertisers because:

  • A pregnant customer’s data is worth $1.50USD, compared to $0.10USD for a non-pregnant person [4];
  • With access to updates on a person’s mood, advertisers can take advantage of their vulnerable state to send them targeted ads [4].

Period-Tracking Apps Are Not Private

In 2020, Glow Inc. was fined $250,000 after it was found that anybody with a user’s email address could access the data they logged [7]. Furthermore, in 2021, Flo, an app with more than 100 million users [5], settled with the US Federal Trade Commission over allegations it repeatedly shared users’ health information with third party advertisers, despite promises it would not do so [6]. These problems are not unique to period trackers. In 2018, Grindr was found to have shared users’ information, including HIV status, with two other companies [8]. Users felt that their safe space was “just another tech giant” that sold them out [9]. With technologies evolving to allow smart toilets to track our bathroom habits [10], we have to ask at what point tracking our bodies becomes surveillance.

It’s Just Period Data. Or Is It?

It is possible your period information does not feel all that personal, but here is why it might matter more than you think. In 2019, period-tracking app Ovia was found to have been marketing user’s data to employers and health insurers, allowing them to see how many workers were using the app’s fertility functions as well as when new parents planned to return to work [11]. By enabling this corporate surveillance, the period-tracking app left the door open for workplace discrimination and changes in health coverage [11]. And with one in five women between ages 18 and 49 using health-tracking apps [12], you become part of an “invisible chain reaction of data-sharing” between companies you may never know about [13].

These apps are marketed as empowering tools. But they do not always have your best interests in mind. In 2018, novelist Olivia Sudjic wrote about the FDA-approved birth control app Natural Cycles, detailing her and other women’s experiences with unwanted pregnancies after relying on the app for contraception [14]. Natural Cycles’ response was to claim that the app was aimed at a specific, ideal user who was in a relationship and thinking of conceiving in the near future, but its influencer-led social media marketing did not emphasize this [14]. Many of the app user’s lifestyles did not align with the level of consistency and effort needed to effectively use the app. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority says it is powerless to stop companies like Natural Cycles from using influencers whose lifestyles do not match with that of the ideal user, or who are outside the app’s recommended age bracket [15]. It is important to remember that what companies such as these advertise is not always reality.

Conclusion and Recommendations

After all this backlash, some apps are making changes. While Flo has admitted no wrongdoing, its privacy policy is highlighted on its website [16], and you are now prompted to agree to their privacy policy upon download, before entering any data. But whether these are genuine changes for the better or simply performative tactics is still up for debate. In a now deleted blog post from March 2020, Berlin-based app Clue announced they would stop sending usage data to Facebook. The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection is reportedly “looking closely” at whether app developers are handling sensitive health information responsibly [17]. But the question remains: do you trust your period-tracker to keep its promises?

These apps do have potential for good. Taken together, the data we’re inputting could form the basis of wide-scale medical research on menstrual health. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide if you want to use these apps. Read the privacy policies, and analyze your relationship to the app. Is it adding value to your life? 

Points to Consider

  • Have you read your period tracker’s privacy policy? How would you feel if you found out they were sharing your information?
  • Tracking your moods. functions, your body – that is work you are putting in. What are you getting in return? Is it worth it?
  • Ida Tin, founder of Clue, argues that “the benefits of living in an age of data outweigh the risks” [19]. Do you agree?

To learn about privacy resources available from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, read Samantha Summers’ post. If you’re interested in learning about targeted advertising, check out contributor Laura Moberg’s post on targeted ads and ad-blocking technologies.

References

  1. Levy, J., & Romo-Avilés, N. (2019). “A good little tool to get to know yourself a bit better”: A qualitative study on users’ experiences of app-supported menstrual tracking in Europe. BMC Public Health, 19(1), 1213. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7549-8
  2. Karasneh, R. A., Al-Azzam, S. I., Alzoubi, K. H., Muflih, S. M., & Hawamdeh, S. S. (2020). Smartphone Applications for Period Tracking: Rating and Behavioral Change among Women Users. Obstetrics and Gynecology International, 2020, e2192387. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/2192387
  3. Rosato, D. (2020, January 28). What Your Period Tracker App Knows About You. Consumer Reports. https://www.consumerreports.org/health-privacy/what-your-period-tracker-app-knows-about-you/
  4. No Body’s Business But Mine: How Menstruation Apps Are Sharing Your Data. (2019, September 9). Privacy International. http://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3196/no-bodys-business-mine-how-menstruations-apps-are-sharing-your-data
  5. Schiffer, Z. (2021, January 13). Period tracking app settles charges it lied to users about privacy. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/13/22229303/flo-period-tracking-app-privacy-health-data-facebook-google
  6. Federal Trade Commission. (2021b). United States of America Before the Federal Trade Commission in the Matter of Flo Health Inc. Federal Trade Commission. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/192-3133/flo-health-inc
  7. McShane, J. (2021, January 15). More than 100 million women use Flo, a period-tracking app. Here’s why some are deleting it. Https://Www.Thelily.Com. https://www.thelily.com/more-than-100-million-women-use-flo-a-period-tracking-app-heres-why-some-are-deleting-it/
  8. Ghorayshi, A., & Ray, S. (2018, April 2). Grindr Is Sharing The HIV Status Of Its Users With Other Companies. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/azeenghorayshi/grindr-hiv-status-privacy
  9. Moylan, B. (2018, April 4). Grindr was a safe space for gay men. Its HIV status leak betrayed us. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/grindr-gay-men-hiv-status-leak-app
  10. Saner, E. (2021, September 29). ‘Alexa, analyse my bowel movement’: Will every home soon have a smart toilet? The Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/interiors/alexa-analyse-my-bowel-movement-will-every-home-soon-have-a-smart-toilet-1.4681838
  11. Fox, S., & Spektor, F. (2021). Hormonal Advantage: Retracing Exploitative Histories of Workplace Menstrual Tracking. Catalyst : Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 7(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v7i1.34506
  12. Gupta, A. H., & Singer, N. (2021, January 28). Your App Knows You Got Your Period. Guess Who It Told? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/us/period-apps-health-technology-women-privacy.html
  13. Germain, T. (2020, January 14). Popular Apps Share Intimate Details About You With Dozens of Companies. Consumer Reports. https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/popular-apps-share-intimate-details-about-you-a1849218122/
  14.  Sudjic, O. (2018, July 21). ‘I felt colossally naive’: The backlash against the birth control app. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/21/colossally-naive-backlash-birth-control-app
  15. Hough, A., & Bryce, M. (2019). Exaggerating contraceptive efficacy: The implications of the Advertising Standards Authority action against Natural Cycles. BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, 45(1), 71–72. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsrh-2018-200209
  16. Privacy Portal. (n.d.). Flo Health. Retrieved November 5, 2021, from https://flo.health/privacy-portal
  17. Federal Trade Commission. (2021a, January 13). Developer of Popular Women’s Fertility-Tracking App Settles FTC Allegations that It Misled Consumers About the Disclosure of their Health Data. Federal Trade Commission. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/01/developer-popular-womens-fertility-tracking-app-settles-ftc
  18. Tin, I. (2019, September 19). What happens to your period tracking data. About Clue. https://helloclue.com/articles/about-clue/the-journey-of-a-single-data-point

Written By: Emma Cornelius, UBC, School of Information

Edited By: Brittanny Dzioba and Rie Namba 

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Unkweusultineg Protecting Self & Community: Indigenous Activism & Safety in the Digital World

By Taya Jardine on February 18, 2022 | Tagged with , , , , ,

Unkweusultineg Protecting Self & Community: Indigenous Activism & Safety in the Digital World

Guest Post by Taya Jardine

Introduction

We are in a new age of Indigenous uprisings across the colonized world. From international movements such as #LandBack to local movements in Indigenous Nations globally, we are at the forefront of revolution. Engaging with forms of digital activism and creating activist spaces on social media platforms have a massive part of these movements. Now, more than ever, Indigenous youth can rally together for change.

Brief History of Indigenous Digital Activism

#IdleNoMore and  #NoDAPL were some of the first iterations of Indigenous social movements utilizing social media as a tool for widespread attention and support [3]; [14]; [16]. The idea that would become #IdleNoMore began in Facebook group chat between Indigenous women concerned with the potential passing of Bill C-51 before, becoming one of the largest social movements in the history of the colony [13]; [14]. It seems that with the development of each new trauma in an Indigenous community comes a new “political” movement in response.

Benefits

As Indigenous people, we have long been excluded from participating formally in colonial politics [3]. Through digital means, we can connect with other Indigenous Peoples easier than ever before, allowing us to join together against colonial oppression. With over a million supporters “checking-in” to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, it is impossible to deny the ability of digital activism to draw attention to an otherwise underreported cause [12].  Digital activism has also allowed for movements to overcome media suppression. The #MMIWG2S movement allowed communities to rally together to support victims’ families and widely publicize information that was ignored by traditional media and investigators [15].

Risks

Increased digital presence also comes with its share of risks, including personal attacks, racist abuses and governmental threats [2]. In the case of Standing Rock, there was a fear that police were using Facebook and other social media to track protesters in order to arrest them after the fact [10]; [16]. Movements with large digital  footprints are also at an larger risk of infiltration by detractors or informants, leaks of members personal information known as doxing, and targeted suppression or surveillance of members [1]; [9].

Cybersecurity for Activists

Now that we know the potential risks of engaging with , it is important to understand that there are steps you can take to protect not only yourself but also your movement and community. Due to the popularity of Facebook as a gathering place for Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks alike, the early stage of these movements often result in a Facebook Group for those impacted and those looking to offer support. If you create a Facebook group to build support for your cause, or create a space for discussion, consider the following safety steps:

Task

Options

Recommendations 
Privacy Settings Public: anyone can see posts/comments/shares, FB users can see the names of members, admins and mods.

Private: current members can see posts/comments/shares and names of members, FB users can see the names of admins and mods.

 Private

*Also consider choosing “hidden in search” to block non-members from finding your group.

*Remember that Facebook as a company still has access to information posted in a private group.
Group Rules & Entry Questions Up to 10 Group Rules can be added using the Facebook Group admin tool bar.

Membership Questions can be added as part of the membership request process for private groups.

 Establish rules for engagement when you create the group.

* Consider rules outlining respectful engagement & prohibiting screenshots & sharing of information outside of the group.

Establish membership questions based on group specific ideals and information that is not publicly available to decrease the likelihood of infiltration & disruption.
Administrators & Moderators

(Admins & Mods)

Admin: able to change group privacy settings and appoint new admins & mods.

Mod: able to manage posts.

 FB groups must have at least one Admin and may have multiple additional Admins and Mods. Establish multiple trustworthy and reliable Admins & Mods.

To ensure the maintenance of your group, at least one admin must be using their government name for their profile.
Blocking Users Only Admins can remove or block a user from the group. Blocking users is a helpful step in protecting the security of our group.

Block users who violate group rules or outsiders who have infiltrated the group.
Content History & Control There is always the risk of FB receiving “removal requests” from governments, law enforcement or individuals.

Pause: can be done by any admin, the group will not appear in search results to non-members and no new members can join the group.

Deletion: removal of all members followed by the creator removing themselves, this is a permeant irreversible decision.

 In case your group is targeted for removal, keep a separate record of members and important discussions.

Pausing your group is a useful for short term problem management (ie. removal of posts/comments/media, removal of members, etc.).

Deletion of a page is useful if your action has come to an end, or if you feel the security of your group has been compromised beyond repair.

As movements become larger and engage regularly in on the ground activism cybersecurity needs become more complex. Developing a culture of security is the key to the safety of the organization and its members. Security culture is not just cybersecurity, it is a mutual understanding and desire to keep the community safe; this includes relationships built on communication and trust within the group while preventing rumours or miscommunications that may lead to fractures in the group [1].

For digital safety specifically, moving from Facebook to more secure forms of communication and information distribution is key to the safety of your movement and those involved. Apps like Signal offer end-to-end encryption on text and call services which can protect your communications from being intercepted or tracked [11]. It is also important to protect any sensitive data you might have related to your activist work. Simple steps include using a password manager program to generate and manage strong randomized passwords, enabling a virtual private network to hide your IP address, and switching to privacy focused browsers and search engines [4], [11].

Helpful Resources

Digital Tattoo Project has a variety of resources with more information on Anonymous Browsing, Password Managers and more.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has curated Surveillance Self-Defense, a detailed guide on ways to protect yourself from digital surveillance internationally. Sections include building a security plan, attending protests, social media use, and passwords.

Glencora Borradaile’s open access interactive text Defend Dissent addresses suppression and surveillance from a primarily American viewpoint with an introduction to Cryptography.

Discussion Questions

How might you approach building a culture of security in your activist community?

Does having conversations around cyber security in digital activism give you more confidence in engaging in more activist work online?

How do you think conversations around cybersecurity can be integrated into Indigenous activist spaces in the future?

References

[1] Borradaile, G. (2021). Defend Dissent. Oregon State University. https://open.oregonstate.education/defenddissent/

[2] Carlson, B., & Frazer, R. (2018). Yarning circles and social media activism. Media International Australia, 169(1), 43–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X18803762

[3] Duarte, M. (2017). Connected Activism: Indigenous Uses of Social Media for Shaping Political Change. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21. https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v21i0.1525

[4] Electronic Frontier Foundation. (2015, April 13). Activist or protester? Surveillance Self-Defense. https://ssd.eff.org/en/playlist/activist-or-protester

[5] Electronic Frontier Foundation. (2017, January 26). Facebook Groups: Reducing Risks. Surveillance Self-Defense. https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/facebook-groups-reducing-risks

[6] Facebook. (n.d.-a). How do I manage membership for a Facebook group I admin? | Facebook Help Center. Retrieved November 27, 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/help/214260548594688

[7] Facebook. (n.d.-b). How do I remove or block someone from a Facebook group? | Facebook Help Center. Retrieved November 27, 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/help/211909018842184/

[8] Facebook. (n.d.-c). Writing Great Rules for Your Facebook Group | Facebook Community. Retrieved November 27, 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/community/establishing-membership-and-rules/how-to-write-great-group-rules/

[9] Howe, M., & Monaghan, J. (2018). Strategic Incapacitation of Indigenous Diss Ent: Crowd Theories, Risk Management, and Settler Colonial Policing. Canadian Journal of Sociology (Online), 43(4), 325–348.            https://doi.org/10.29173/cjs29397

[10] Leverston, J. B. (2021). From Isolation to Visibility: Social Media as a Tool for Native American Activists to Generate Support for Their Social Movements [A.L.M., Harvard University]. https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37369147

[11] Shannon. (2020, June 6). Cybersecurity for Activists: How to Protect Yourself When Protesting for Change. Online Security News, Reviews, How To and Hacks. https://securitygladiators.com/cybersecurity-for-activists/

[12] Tchekmedyian, A., & Etehad, M. (2016, November 1). 2 years of opposition, 1,172 miles of pipe, 1.3 million Facebook check-ins. The numbers to know about the Standing Rock protests—Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-standing-rock-numbers-20161101-story.html

[13] Tupper, J. (2014). Social Media and the Idle No More Movement: Citizenship, Activism and Dissent in Canada [Application/pdf]. JSSE – Journal of Social Science Education, 4-2014 Civic Activism, 147 kB. https://doi.org/10.2390/JSSE-V13-I4-1354

[14] van Gelder, S. (2013, February 21). Speaking With the Founders of Idle No More. HuffPost. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/sarah-van-gelder/idle-no-more-founders_b_2708644.html

[15] Watson, K. (2018). Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: The Role of Grassroots Organizations and Social Media in Education. Canadian Woman Studies. https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/view/37772

[16] Wells, M. (2017). In Defense of Our Relatives. Studies in Arts and Humanities, 3(2), 142–160. https://doi.org/10.18193/sah.v3i2.111

Written by: Taya Jardine, UBC, School of Information

Edited by: Brittanny Dzioba & Lucas Wright

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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