This weeks learning materials was eye opening to say the least. I guess the fact that I have heard about such topics as copyright, defamation, net neutrality, censorship etc. but didn’t think too much of it until this module goes to show how much I choose to actually research and learn more about vs. other topics in my day to day life.
A particular statement mentioned in our Mediactive textbook, “As the Electronic Frontier Foundation says, “New technologies are radically advancing our freedoms, but they are also enabling unparalleled invasions of privacy.” This exact phrase describes perfectly what is affecting our privacy in media now and only will continue to do so, technology. The more advanced and broad technology gets within our digital media world, the more the law can possibly have control, but also means all of us need to stay informed frequently.
An important fact that I learned of myself and how I view law and the media in this module, was through our module conversation, we had a topic question of choice that mentioned have we read privacy policies and terms from our social media and other technology. I answered no, because its true, typically there is too much to read, big words that are not understandable and I would always think that those rules and regulations perhaps were created for those that don’t like to follow “the rules”. Now, I actually want to go and try to read what I am actually agreeing to on the net and in a day to day basis of the technology I invest my time in.
As learned in this module, we often think that the word private means secret, but in reality it only means that something isn’t actually public as the Medium article mentioned. Its important that I get to choose what privacy essentials are important to me as an individual, and well, we are all different. The government seems to think that we are all the same in the sense of what should or shouldn’t be private to a whole population. However, as Medium also mentions, we should be able to choose so that we can fight for the type of privacy’s we want and need.
Fact of the matter, currently I feel there is minimal to no privacy for citizens in the media world, and it only seems to be taking a turn for the worse if action isn’t taken in a different direction. What is most complicated is if all this is truly driven by the government, how can we the citizens get to that level and fight for what we believe should be? I think that’s where people, including myself, get stuck and have no clue how to attempt to make changes where necessary. Although, we can start by learning in depth all our terms of use and privacy in media, along with truly learning media literacy, and perhaps those are steps to take in the media privacy challenge we are currently trying to diminish drastically.
Through this weeks learning tools, I also was surprised to find out that duckduckgo was even an actual thing. My first time using it was during this weeks module just to test it out, and I actually like what it is and how it works. I feel that the majority of invasion of our media and day to day privacy is due to web servers we use. If those servers remember majority of what we type, search, say, upload, delete, etc. then there is truly no privacy from the start. In the duckduckgo scenario, you at least can have peace of mind of no ads, no tracking or targeting of any sort. Sounds like a starting solution to a real privacy problem that has barely just begun.
