Category: students

When I was in high school, my teachers were Wikipedia skeptics. We were often lectured about how it was unreliable because you can’t trust something anyone can edit.

Well, I guess I’m anyone now.

In the decade (plus) since high school, Wikipedia has become a valuable resource for me. While I visit the site regularly in search of information, I can’t say I’ve ever considered becoming an editor. If not for this class, I don’t think I would have.

While it often made me nervous, this experience was a positive one.

Training

My introduction to the Wikipedia editing process began with a series of training activities. As I started to discover more about how Wikipedia operates, I was intimidated. Wikipedia editors have their own language and practices. I felt a bit like an anthropologist going out into the field for participant observation. I wanted to be accepted into the community, but I had a lot to learn before I could get to that point.

The training activities that involved actual practice were the ones I found most helpful. Practicing drafting in my sandbox and leaving messages on talk pages made it easier when it came time to do those things for real.

Choosing an Article

After I got the hang of the basics, it was time to choose an article to edit. I quickly decided that I wanted to find something related to streaming television. That’s the topic I chose for my blog and it’s one I know a lot about. I also know that it’s regularly covered in reliable sources. Finding good, credible information would not be hard.

When I struggled to think of something specific, I turned to the Article Finder for inspiration. As soon as I saw binge-watching in the results,I knew that would be the one. It’s a topic I have a lot of personal experience with.

The article is listed as a Start-Class article, so it has plenty of room for improvement. Looking at the article itself, I noticed that a lot of the research and information referenced is a bit on the older side. I figured I would be able to add something more current.

Once that decision was made, I started to do some research. I remembered reading about how Hulu was introducing a new ad format for binge-watchers late last year and decided to build on that. I found some good information about the effects binge-watching has on advertising and thought I could turn that into a new section of the Wikipedia article.

Talk Page

Next, it was time to propose my plan to the other editors. This meant that a visit to the binge-watching talk page was in order. Again, I was intimidated by this. I felt good about my ideas, but I was afraid of rejection. People can be very mean online and I feared the worst. Thankfully, there hadn’t been any activity on the talk page in three years, so the odds of that happening were small. Still, I put this off for days.

Finally, with the deadline approaching, I put myself out there and asked for feedback the night before the assignment was due. That was not my smartest decision, but I blame it on nerves.

After that moment of courage, I went to bed. In the morning, I checked and found no responses. I waited until late in the afternoon to see if anyone would chime in. Then, assuming feedback wasn’t coming, I decided to go ahead and make my changes.

Drafting and Making Edits

So that I wouldn’t screw anything up, I started by drafting my planned additions in my sandbox. Overall, it went smoothly. I had to tinker with one of the citations because I kept getting an error message regarding the publication date, but I was able to figure it out.

I should note that while I was waiting for a response to my plans, I decided I would also add some new information to the existing section of the article the covers cultural impacts. That watching entire seasons of television in less than 24 hours has become the norm for a lot of people is worthy of note, I think.

Once I felt good about my draft, I started moving it over to the article. This ended up being much easier than I thought it would be. To be honest, I don’t know why I thought it would be hard. It’s really just copying and pasting.

First, I added the new section about binge-watching’s impact on advertising. It has multiple components–a new header, two paragraphs, and three new references–but I thought it would be fine to move it all at once. It was. I used the source editor and everything made it over intact.

Then, I added an edit summary. Looking back, I think my edit summaries might have been too vague. I should have been more descriptive.

Finally, I used the preview to make sure everything looked right and then I published the changes.

After taking a moment to bask in the glory of having made my first real edit, I repeated the process for my next edit.

It was just as easy the second time around.

I thought I should also include a screenshot of my additions to the References section. Numbers 18, 21, 22, and 23 are mine. I think I used a good mix of research and media coverage from reliable sources.

Endings and Beginnings

As I write this, my edits haven’t been changed or removed. We’ll have to see if that sticks. Either way, I like what I’ve contributed. At times, I had to push myself out of my comfort zone for this one, but I’m glad I did it.

While I went into this assignment assuming that stepping into the role of Wikipedia editor would be a one-time thing, there are more changes I’d like to make. The entire article needs a lot of work. As a newbie, I was hesitant to come in and overhaul it. I didn’t want to step on any toes. But now that I feel emboldened, I might just stick around.

After having read all the information as well as complications with the media laws, I am slightly overwhelmed. I do not make personal content such as videos, photos or blogs so these things have never crossed my mind. Although, this lecture really made me want to become more familiar with the laws that affect media; I feel a majority of us mindlessly use the internet without thinking about what we post on platforms or without even reading the terms of service, which is rather concerning.

I am still guilty of not reading the terms of service and I am aware that there are some sites where it might be more urgent to read them than others. Some for example, being Hit Record and Pinterest. I tend to use Pinterest a lot, but I do not post my own content, I just re-pin a ton. Every once in a while I will get an email from them saying something along the lines of, “Sorry we had to delete one of your pins due to copyright laws”.

I never really care for when this happens because I pin various content, but this lecture made me wonder about what is really going on there and why it has happened so much. I decided to search up some more information on how Pinterest really works when it comes to copyright. I found this interesting article touching on just that, and I think the title speaks for itself, “Is Pinterest a Copyright Infringement Masterpiece?“. I find the way it works very confusing because I see multiples of the same photos and content on there, making it incredibly hard to know if you are pinning from the actual owner of the pin.

On top of my concern and confusion over copyright laws, another issue I have become more aware of is defamation. It is confounding to think how easily people can be persecuted when speaking their mind publicly. This is most concerning when it comes to journalist who might write a negative headline about someone. The story might be extremely important, but will not matter because the person that was being talked about is powerful and has the money to shut them down. It makes no sense when we have the right to speak our mind.

Although, I do appreciate these laws being a positive thing when it comes to people writing false information about someone that makes them look bad. It would be horrible if people had no right to shut trollers down just because they have the right to say whatever they want. I found this article by NPR insightful because it explains the measures people can take to fight against people who are writing negative, fake stories about them.

When the lecture video mentioned free speech and how our laws can differ from the laws in other countries it made me feel extremely grateful. I recently watched the documentary, American Factory. There was a part where a Chinese man was telling the new coworkers (also Chinese) that things were going to be very different when working in the U.S. and that they were free to say whatever they wanted. He mentioned that they could even talk bad about their president if they wanted and they would not be persecuted for it. It just made me realize how grateful I am to know that we can express the way we feel even if it is about a person in a powerful position.

As for how I use the media, I am not sure if there is much I would change about the way I use it. I rarely post or create content; I tend to just read or scroll through platforms. Something I do want to improve on is taking the time to understand my rights as a media user and sharer and overall, just learning about my privacy online and how to efficiently use the internet and media in a safe and efficient way.

 

When I realized just how much information that Google and Facebook were taking from me and saving and selling to companies, I decided to take my security into my own hands and do something about it. I started by deleting my FaceBook account. FaceBook tracks and has access to my phone, computer, photos, browsing history, current location, etc. I no longer have a FaceBook account because of this, and I am happy with my decision.

“Facebook vs Google” by theglobalpanorama is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

According to this article, FaceBook admits that it collects content, communications, and other information. This information includes photographs, videos, accounts, hashtags, and groups we are connected to. It notes what posts, videos, and other content that we view and even collects our payment information, including credit or debit card number, billing, and shipping info. The social network tracks us on our mobile phones if we give permission, meaning the social network knows where we are, even with the app closed. It also leaves “cookie” data on our devices for tracking “to create personalized products that are unique and relevant to us.” 

“duckduckgo” by laboratoriolinux is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I deleted Google as my web browser, and I am now using DuckDuckGo as my default browser. I deleted Google because I learned that according to this article, the data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos, videos, music, search history, browsing history, etc.  Google even somehow has information that I have deleted. How is this even possible?

“google error” by Gábor Farkas is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

When I learned that this information storage was happening, I wanted to find out exactly what information Google had saved on me.  Do you know that Google actually offers you an option to download all of the data that they have stored on you? It is called Google Takeout. If you would like to get a list of all of the information that Google has stored on you, click on this link to see your data: google.com/takeout. I decided to download the information that Google has stored on me, and I received the following message, “This process can take a long time (possibly hours or days) to complete. You’ll receive an email when your export is done.” It is terrifying to know that they have so much information on me that it could take several days to complete the download process. 

If finding out this information disturbs you, please be sure to do your own research on social media platforms and search engines to find out what data they are taking from you and storing.  Please also be sure to read, “How to Manage Your Privacy Settings On Social Media.” This article outlines how to manage your social media privacy settings on social networks.  The networks highlighted include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.

After reading and watching all the material for this week’s module, it is very obvious that the law can have an immense amount of power when it comes to affecting the media. Some may say it’s too much power.

Even before taking this course, I was well aware of many of the issues that were mentioned in this module. Specifically network neutrality is a topic that has fairly recently been in the front of many daily internet users minds, including my own. Had you asked me or any common person who regularly used the internet five years ago what net neutrality was and why it’s important, I doubt any of us would have been able to speak to it at all, but within the past two to three years the concept of net neutrality and what that means was brought into a new light.

A specific topic that concerns me (and that I still have a hard time wrapping my head around) is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or the DMCA. The span of the DMCA is remarkable and unbelievable. The John Deere tractors discussed in this module was something unbeknownst to me, but I have long been intrigued and concerned with how the DMCA works and what it encompasses.

Some background on me, I’ve worked at Barnes & Noble for upwards of 7 years. I love books and I love reading. I’ve been a huge advocate of reading any way you can and while I do love the convenience of digital books, or ebooks, if you know anything about the DMCA and purchasing ebooks, you’d know that despite spending your money to own an ebook, you technically do not actually own the ebook. I want my customers to know that digital reading is a wonderful option, but I also want them to be aware that because of how the DMCA works in regards to digital content like ebooks, it’s very possible that one day they may not be able to access items they have purchased. How likely is that to happen? I would assume fairly unlikely, but I want to keep my customers informed never the less.

Another concern that I have is regarding copyright. This does not affect me so much as it affects many of the content creators that I closely follow. If you’re familiar with YouTube, I’m sure you’ve heard some YouTuber mention that they or someone they know have received a copyright strike on their channel for whatever reason. In the lecture it was mentioned that things get taken down from YouTube all the time due to content infringing upon copyrighted stuff, but that power is abused by Hollywood and the music industry, despite the fact that whoever issued the takedown notice doesn’t truly own the content. Some people make a living off of YouTube, but within the past few years, with videos being taken down left and right due to copyright infringement, many of my favorite YouTubers have left the platform because they can no longer make the money they once did and they were tired of their content being limited at times when it made no sense.

The way media is affected by the law is astounding and it’s not hard to imagine a future where the law enforcement gets out of hand. It reminds me a lot of an aspect in short story I read recently. The story was titled “City of Silence” and it was written by a Chinese author named Ma Boyong. A huge part of this story was the idea that laws around language and media had gotten so strict that only certain words were allowed to be used online and in person. So many words and concepts had been banned that it was easier for the government to issue a list of acceptable words for people to use instead of a list of unacceptable words. People have to go through an arduous process in order to gain access to the web and the only sites on there are forums where the language is just as limited.

The whole story seems far-fetched but who knows, maybe it’s not so far off from what we’ll be experiencing in the future.

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Wikipedia is something that I have grown up with and been told that it is not the most reliable source of information out there.

I found the training modules to be very insightful and provided me with the details behind this amazing website. Wikipedia is more than just a place for people to post whatever they want without fact checking anything. It has extensive rules and regulations to help prevent people from posting wrong or inaccurate information on the site.

After spending a lot of time looking through Wikipedia for articles that needed some extra information, I decided to work on the entry for my high school. Montoursville Area High School was in the process of renovations while I was attending there and (of course) was not finished until after I had graduated in 2017. The page contains a wide variety of information about the school including statistics on academics, sports, and other various clubs. The information about the renovation was very short and looked like it had not been updated since before the renovation was completed. I saw this as an opportunity to do some of my own research to add some beneficial information to this section.

After finding the information that I needed, I followed the instructions and went to the “talk” section. I actually did not hear anything back for this, possibly because it is not a popular page, thus does not concern the editors like something more controversial would. When I did not hear anything back, I decided to go ahead and make my edits.

This is a screenshot of what was there initially.

The section that I decided to edit, which is the last paragraph in the screenshot, had a slight typo to begin with. This was just a minor double space in between two words so I fixed that error as well as the sentence “The project is expected to be completed in 2017”. I updated it to say “The project has since been completed in 2017”. I also added some new information (last sentence) pertaining to the new classrooms that were added to the school. I found this to be very important information regarding the renovation so I was shocked to find that there was no mention of it in the article.

Since the information that I found was in pdf format found on the website, I was a little bit concerned when it came to making the citation for the facts that I found. Wikipedia made it fairly easy for me to just fill in the blanks as best as I could to automatically generate the citation for me. I found this to be very helpful and took some of the stress away before making my final touches.

Here is a screenshot of the updated version that I made edits to.

I am shocked that I have not heard a single word from Wikipedia regarding my edits. I have been checking the page frequently to see if there have been any changes to what I posted and there has been nothing. Based on the training modules and readings from the course, I expected my edits to be taken down immediately. I am glad they have not and I hope that means that I did everything correctly (or maybe I did everything wrong I’m not quite sure). None the less, they are still up and available to the public!

Overall, I really enjoyed the experience that I had with this assignment. I have always wondered exactly how to make edits on Wikipedia. I now know so much more than just how to make edits. I have learned about the background of Wikipedia, how it runs, and the great lengths it goes to in order to provide the most accurate information possible.

I won’t lie, I was quite intimidated at first. I was not sure how I was going to be able to find an article that 1, I knew a lot about and 2, was lacking some information that I could provide to it. Kristy’s blog post gave me a lot of inspiration for my topic of choice. Coming from a very small town, I knew that my high school couldn’t have that much information or edits made to it and I was correct! I am grateful that I was able to find something to add beneficial information too and not just some meaningless edits.

I can now say that I have learned something new and potentially beneficial for my life. I find that I get bored in some courses by just doing the same type of quizzes and homework assignments week after week, but this offered me a real challenge and a way to implement the learning material in a more hands on way. I plan to be more active on this site now that I have the knowledge to be successful with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montoursville_Area_High_School

 

 

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Becoming a Wikipedia Contributor 

The following assignment has taught me a lot of things about Wikipedia. I am glad that I now know how to be an active contributor to pages on the website as well. Wikipedia provides multiple fantastic sources that help makes the learning process of how to become of contributer or add edits to pages fairly simple to comprehend. I found this brochure on editing in Wikipedia extremely helpful when beginning the process for this assignment.

I believe that I found the most trouble with locating a page that I could edit or contribute to that would add improvement to the original content. After a heavy amount of time browsing through various different pages, I had finally found where I could improve the Wikipedia page on Celina, Texas.

Choosing a page to Improve

Within the past five years or so, I had spent a lot of time in this small city right outside of the DFW metroplex helping my dad open up his very first Texas Barbecue restaurant, Tender Smokehouse. During this process, I had come to gain quite a lot of knowledge about the city of Celina and had come more aware that majority of people from the DFW area were not aware this city was even there! Now that my family has successfully opened two different concepts in the Celina Town Square, the area has gained more traffic. Many people have attributed this growth to my dad, but he will humbly decline this idea when asked.

The last updated population of Celina, Texas used information of the 2010 U.S. Census and after further investigation, I found there was an updated population in the 2017 U.S. Census which presented a substantial amount of growth for the city. That is when I decided that updating the population using this information would add improvement to the page and show evidence of growth within the town of Celina.

Taking the steps

As we were instructed for this assignment, I began by adding a note page in the talk section of the Celina, Texas Wikipedia. I expressed the change I wanted to change about updating the population to inquire if anyone would have an objection. So far, I have not had any replies or concerns but that could of course change at any moment. This could also be due to a small amount of traffic that comes across this specific page as well, with the evidence I found that there was only one other talk section added on this page prior to my comment.

(screenshot of my comment in the Talk section, taken by myself.)

After waiting some time for potential concerns of people or responses, I went ahead and made the changes I mentioned earlier about the population. I used a very similar sentence structure to the one that originally on the page. The original sentence had referenced the 2010 census stating a population of 6,028. Then proceeded to explain that the population had increased from the 2000 census giving where the page then provided the exact amount it had increased by.

Adding The Edits

After ensuring the information I found was factual and I had the correct sources, I went ahead and added the changes and updated the population of Celina, Texas according to the 2017 Census.

(screenshot of updated population edited via myself, screenshot by myself)

As you can see in the picture I added above, I also added the difference or growth between the updated 2017 population and the original 2010 population that was there prior to my edits. After I double-checked the information was 100 percent correct, I proceeded to add the citations to the new 2017 census.

I did find some difficulty with this and moving around the original sources, such as moving the Information of the population in Celina, Texas to the second half of the sentence. This is where I want to add an extra emphasis on how helpful the Wikipedia resources were during the process of this assignment.

Overall Experience and Take Away

Once I proceeded to add in my citations and publish my edits, it was simply updated and my improvements were then posted on the page. Although the entire process and practices to learn how t correctly make edits on wikipedia may be a lot of information for one to process, I am satisfied and excited that I can now say I have the knowledge and have officially contributed and improved a wikipedia page. I hope to continue to use this in the future and hope to eventually start adding entire pages of information on wikipedia rather than just adding edits.

I also want to add that prior to this assignment I always held a generalized idea that wikipedia could not be a source used for credibility, but I was very wrong in this assumption. I just think it is important to check other contributors sources and references before if you are skeptical. Otherwise, this can be a great source with a very wide range of information and research on multiple topics. I highly recommend to those that enjoy writing and journalism to go through the training and process of learning how to correctly contribute to Wikipedia.

Intimidated would be an understatement. Wikipedia is something I turn to when I am looking for answers from somebody who is smarter than me, not somewhere I go to spread my knowledge. I would be lying if I said my fear of getting reprimanded by more experienced users didn’t cause me to procrastinate a bit, but by the time I did finally make my addition to the world of Wiki I was feeling almost empowered.

I first began my Wikipedia journey by going through a few topics I am knowledgable on such as plant based eating and indoor gardening, and I found that I was bombarded with large amounts of expertly pieced together information. I was intimidated to take on editing an article that was so well established and thought out, so I decided to go a bit smaller for my contribution. I ended up searching my hometown Racine, Wisconsin to see if there was anything of importance that others have missed.

The section that immediately stuck out to me was the section discussing Racine’s prom – A prom that has been referred to as the worlds best prom, and has become an event that puts our city on the map. While the Wikipedia article covered how big Racine’s prom is and how well known it has become, there was no mention whatsoever of the special education prom that always follows it the day after, so I found my “in”.

Although I had plenty to say about the special education prom and even the idea to expand on which schools are listed as attendees, I decided to present my proposed edit as just the main basic facts about Racine’s special ed prom in addition to my reference link. I felt that if I jumped in and made too many proposed changes at once I increased my room for error, and did not want to take the chance of having all of my information rejected due to maybe one or two mistakes. After previewing my proposal about one hundred times and adjusting my formatting just as many, I finally decided to share my ideas with the community.

Adding if the reference link in particular was incredibly nerve wracking for me, as the way sources are linked on Wikipedia is incredibly specific. I studied the steps on how to add citations over and over again, and even attempted to directly copy the way another user added their’s, but I was still nervous that I did it incorrectly and that my information would be invalidated because of so.

Much to my surprise, my addition wasn’t immediately removed and no one came to chastise me for any mistakes. I hit publish, and the world did not blow up. The Racine Wikipedia page had last been edited about a week and a half prior to my proposed contribution, but it appeared that no one was jumping to either approve or deny my suggestion. It was actually rather refreshing to see that people weren’t jumping to disprove me or invalidate me, and that Wikipedia is not always such a cut-throat place.

Following the idea that “no news is good news”, I decided to take the initiative to edit the Racine, Wisconsin Wikipedia page to include information about the annual A Night To Remember special education prom. I stuck to just the barebones facts – Including when the prom takes place, when it began, and who can attend it. I felt both nervous and excited publishing my first addition, but most of all I felt confident that the information I shared is relevant and deserving of a place in this article.

While I am not sure if my edit will stay where it is, I am proud of all of the wonderful things that our city’s special education prom brings to our community and I am glad that I can shed some light on it. Even if my edit is eventually rejected or changed, I hope that mention of the special education prom remains on Racine’ Wikipedia in some shape or form.

Overall, I found contributing to Wikipedia to be a slightly intimidating experience. It was difficult to convince myself to jump into it, but once I began to familiarize myself with the tools and layout of the site I quickly became more confident in my abilities. I wish I would have maybe attacked this project a bit sooner in order to add even more to Racine’s wikipedia page, but just because this assignment is complete does not mean that my work on Wikipedia has to be. I look forward to continuing to learn more about how Wikipedia functions and how I can continue to be a part of it. Whether or not my addition will stay is something I am unsure of, but for the time being it is definitely a cool feeling to have my contributions published on my hometown’s Wikipedia page.

 

 

After reading the materials provided for this discussion and gaining more knowledge about how the law affects media, I now realize it plays a lot more influential role than I had first thought.

Shifts in the Media Environment and Laws

In the media environment that we are growing into as of today, I believe that there seems to be many of our rights losing the value of what we had with them in the past. For example, Europe has now added laws that information created about other must have consent by who it is about or the content can be deleted. Fortunately, this is not the case in the United States, but I do believe rules regarding similar situations are taking away the true value of journalism and the purpose to inform the public on current events.

I think if laws similar to the one I mentioned above were to be enforced in the United States then it would result in a significant amount of information to be hidden from the public and strengthen the distrust between media and public consumers.

Privacy

Furthermore the heavy influence and loss of basic rights is also relevant on the topic of privacy. This topic has been heavily covered over the course of the class and has given a substantial amount of evidence that allows me to assume that our privacy rights are slowly beginning to diminish and lose all its value. However, it can be argued that we are seeing this for good reasoning such as invasion of privacy in order to protect the security of our country.

Privacy violations have also been a topic of discussion within the workplace and when it is reasonable for an employer to invade privacy on its employees. It is understandable if it is the light of the best thing for the company as a whole but should always be justified before doing so. If employers fail to do this, it will also grow tension and distrust in the relationship between their employees.

Censorship

Censorship within media has also drastically shifted in recent years. I don’t necessarily believe this is a good shift that I refer to. For example, a youtube video of citizens exposing live news feed to spread knowledge on what is happening in a specific country was taken down by Youtube because of graphic content. Although there is justification with youtube not wanted to have such content on their platform, it is taking away the rights of those to freedom of speech. In addition, it is taking away the ability for those to spread knowledge on the current events that are happening and emphasizes my prediction that more and more content will begin to become hidden or undercover.

Modifying Media Usage

Although I don’t believe any of these shifts will affect my current media usage, these ideas have created a stronger emphasis on things I should be more aware of. Some of my social media platforms have been changed to private accounts in recent years and I will remain keeping those accounts private in light of potential employers running into them.

As a student of communication and journalism, I find it extremely important that I do not lose my rights to freedom of speech and that we do not allow journalism as a tool to lose its role or value because of such laws discussed above.

The law is a very tricky topic on how it should dictate the content on the internet and in the media. I believe with traditional media like movies, and television it’s a lot more cut and dry, but when it comes to the Internet that’s where its gets less black and white and pretty muddy. One rising issue is copyright enforcement. Now that the everyday person that has a cellphone with a camera is able to upload content to the Internet, there is a lot more room for copyright enforcement and copyright takedowns. Usually on these video sharing websites, like YouTube, you have copyright claims being run by a system that isn’t being filtered by a human being. With these systems being run this way it leaves room for more error.

If we look at the article by Cory Doctorow, he gives examples of this very thing occurring. A couple of these examples would be Nasa getting blocked from posting its own Mars rover footage, classical pianists are being blocked from posting their own performances, and entire academic conferences lose their presenters audio because the hall they rented played music at the lunch break. We also learn this from Mediactive that “if a site user posted the material, the site host can avoid legal trouble by complying with the takedown notice. If whoever posted it challenges the notice, saying the material is not infringing, the content goes back up, and the copyright holder is then required to litigate if he or she wants to force the issue”. (p135)

I believe that this issue also goes hand in hand with censorship. From Doctorow we also learn that “the companies usually do not take a stand to defend user speech, and many users are too afraid to stand up for their own speech because they face bankruptcy if a court disagrees with their assessment of the law” which censors users content from what they can and cannot post, knowing that they won’t contest it.

Another instance of censorship causing an issue was on YouTube last August. Five channels [GlitterBombTV QueerKidStuff, WattstheSafeword, ChaseRoss, and BriaAndChrissy] on the platform took a stand against being discriminated against for posting non-explicit LGBTQ+ content. The claim is that YouTube has been denying ads, removing or hiding videos with tags like “gay, transgender, or bisexual” even though these videos contain no mature content. Even though YouTube claims to abide by freedom of expression and freedom of opportunity, these five channels are suing because its effecting their revenue, viewership, and advertisement ability. With Bria and Chrissy being a plaintiff in the lawsuit, they are also claiming that their videos are not being sent to subscription boxes, thumbnails are being removed, and that they also are being age-gated and age-restricted, all for being a lesbian couple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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So this assignment for school did not go as expected. I searched for days, endlessly it seemed like. Last Saturday per usual I read my assignments in class. This week’s assignment edits something on Wikipedia obviously something we can edit from our knowledge. So I started out simple, a video game I like League of Legends I’ve don’t extensive research on this game for another class. Immediately I was rejected, well locked out, this post was uneditable by anyone that wasn’t a professional in the field.

Ok, so next on the adventure they great search. Endless hours, long nights, lots and lots of pages:

Ouran High Host Club

Hartnell Community College

Sacramento State University

Arizona State University

Chainmail

Renaissance Faires

And many many more. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t edit a single post, how? It didn’t seem possible I am a semester away from finishing my B.A. in Digital Photography with a double A.A. in studio arts and digital arts, I have been in school constantly for the since the age of 4. It wasn’t my lack of education, quite frankly it was quite the opposite. All I have done in school, I am a recluse, my only hobbies are watching Netflix and cook, I don’t watch the news, so throughout out all of my years with a large background in creative thinking and research I had never had a stump like this.

I say all of this for an understanding of perspective because as a sat here today I knew I could not due to this assignment, my knowledge for the first time had failed me and I had no clue what to due. So skillful I try to calculate whether I would fail my class or not if I skipped it. When my saver arrived, per usual it was my husband, he who opted out of finishing his certificate to join the military and has yet to return back to school could do the assignment.

I wanted to be honest with this, partly because I only understand half of what he told me to type, but also it says something. I’m sure there are other students that could answer this assignment no problem, and I am defidently not the studious person but it reflects. Education can’t teach you everything, something at is very important for students to understand. Who then is qualified to edit these pages? I’m not sure I have an answer to that yet.

Aside from my questioning of today’s education, the topic that my husband helped teach me about was airsoft, although he doesn’t play often he researches it quite a bit. he explained the new way the guns could shoot bullets, honestly, I love his but not the best at explaining things, so he helped my post this.

Although before any of that I had to figure out how to post it in the first place, Wikipedia has a tutorial that may have been the easiest part. Although as stated that you just type what you want to say, I was hesitant with all of the coding that I was seeing.  Although based off of the sample I was fairly confident that there would be a notification or removal if done wrong.

It was then accepted, I have changed history. Kinda, it feels like it though especially in this day and age Wikipedia is what I’ve always known as the truth. Yes, you should do more research than Wikipedia but many students use it as a reference guide or even there the whole essay if they want it to not count because of plagiarism.

There is surprisingly a lot of information on airsoft but here is the part that I wrote,” Although with the newfound popularity with HPA guns the debate has been opened that barrel’s with a larger diameter (up to 6.13mm) could provide a more accurate shot. Due to the higher volume of air surrounding the pellet, it negates the chance of the pellet coming into contact with the barrel throwing the trajectory of the pellet off similar to a musket, in how the bullet slams about before leaving the barrel.”

Unfortunately, because of the struggles, I faced there wasn’t enough sufficient time to complete the assignment properly. There may or may not be commentary or it being taken down altogether in the future. With all of the information that circulates on the internet, it’s hard to have new knowledge on any topic that you aren’t personally familiar with, which is amazing that this kind of knowledge is accessible to us but how much are we actually taking away and learning from all this information?