Category: students

Before this week’s module I had known a little bit about law and media due to some of my other courses, but it was mostly focused on privacy and third-party websites.  After finishing the readings this week, my eyes are opened to a different perspective of laws that are affecting media use as well as some abuse of these laws.

The readings focused mostly on copyright, privacy, and defamation, and it seems like the issue is not so much the creation of laws, but that these laws are not being enforced or in the case of copyright takedowns, being abused.

Copyright takedowns worry me in the sense that copyright holders can abuse their ownership.  Any little thing they determine to be copyright can be followed with a notice for takedown, and if the case gets taken to court, it’s a situation of who has the means to afford legal representation, which in most cases is very expensive. I’m not advocating the use of copyrighted material, but learned that this system of takedowns can be abused, which is scary and unfair to the many journalists and writers out there.

While copyright takedowns worry me, I find defamation claims to be less troublesome. I’m an avid believer of not spreading false claims, talking maliciously about someone,  or spreading rumors about anyone or anything unless there is further evidence to support it, so online should be no different. I believe that a person has the right to freedom of speech, and can write about whatever they’d like online, but if making claims about a topic, positive or negative, it should be followed by solid evidence that supports it. As long as there is supporting evidence, I don’t see how anyone could win a defamation case. With that being said, if I’m going to become an avid blogger or journalist, I would be sure, like the reading suggests, to stay up to date on ways to avoid legal risks just be extra safe.

Another topic that was covered this week was net neutrality, something that I was concerned about when it first became threatened in 2017.  I tried to educate my friends and family on why it would be a bad decision to repeal net neutrality, but it seemed that a lot of people didn’t understand what it was, or didn’t care enough to  pay attention. Unfortunately the fight to keep the law was repealed and net neutrality was no more.  Even though our net neutrality repeal hasn’t led to extreme circumstances like in some other countries, it still concerns me that if internet service providers really wanted to limit access to certain things, they could. It seems like an easy way to censor the public from certain sites and services that should be available to everyone, and in my opinion that’s dangerous territory.

I’ve always been a user of media, but until this past year I was not aware of what kind of laws could affect my media use and what I do online.  I was becoming more aware on the issue of privacy, but this week’s readings really opened my eyes to specific laws and issues that are currently happening.  I feel that I’m definitely going to change the way I use media after learning more about the laws that are affecting it, such as learning that leaving a comment could lead to a copyright lawsuit, or ways to make sure you’re safe from defamation lawsuits when sharing an opinion online. Overall, this module taught me to be more careful with what I post, the importance of privacy and privacy settings, and my rights and risks when using the Internet.

Technology, Media and the Law

Technology and media corporations have been increasingly trying to limit what consumers can do with their products. When you purchase a physical movie DVD, music compact disc (CD), or book, you have the option of loaning it to a friend or donating it to a secondhand store. The movie studios, music labels, and publishers have no way to recoup the money they would have made from the sale in a secondhand store or the money lost when your friend borrows the item rather than purchasing it for themselves. When you purchase any of these items digitally it is illegal to share or sell them to others. Nobody would call you a pirate for passing along a physical copy to a friend, but if you did the same thing with a digital copy you are breaking the law.

The same is true for hardware. Companies such as Keurig, who tried to add digital rights management (DRM) to its coffee pods to make it impossible to use pods from other vendors, had to backpedal this policy when it received backlash from consumers. If a product is too limited in scope it will have a short future. In addition, a product that does not catch on with enough consumers will fail (e.g., the Betamax). Part of innovation in technology is letting “hackers” find ways to make it work for their needs. I love my iPad, but it is not the best platform for certain things, such as editing and saving files. I will always need a computer as well as a tablet or smartphone because those devices have limited capabilities.

Another issue with hardware is lack of software updates on older devices. Users of older Sonos speaker systems were recently told that they would no longer receive software updates. Apple users have contended with this issue for years; I still have a first-generation iPad collecting dust because Apple no longer supports it. Computer users are familiar with the concept of operating systems becoming obsolete (Windows 7 is the most recent Microsoft casualty.)  Compatibility and security are the main concerns with operating systems. External devices behave like hardware but also contain software and are prone to these issues as well. I own an iWatch and will be sad when it reaches its end of life. I’m not sure I will purchase another because I don’t use it for much outside of checking time and the weather.

As the Internet of Things becomes more widespread, we will be encountering these issues more often. My parents owned a console television and stereo that lasted forever. They did not need to worry about software obsolescence or whether they could hook up auxiliary equipment legally. They also did not get to enjoy the wonders of wirelessly casting streaming movies or music to an entertainment system or answering the phone through a watch. We live in amazing times, which could be even more amazing if the companies who develop and sell the products would keep the users’ autonomy in mind.

 

 

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The Wikipedia article I decided to edit is Hull Zero Three, which is a novel by the science fiction author Greg Bear that was published in 2010. I first encountered the article after listening to the audiobook one night before bed. I wasn’t familiar with this book until I stumbled across the audiobook on YouTube. I had previously read several books by the author and enjoyed them, so I was excited to listen to this audiobook and find out what it was about.

Unfortunately, I fell asleep and lost my place. What I was able to hear was very confusing, so before deciding whether to start over I wanted to check Wikipedia to get an idea of the plot. The article was very short and mainly gave information about the critical response, which was mixed. I noticed that the article was lacking a proper plot synopsis, so I went in search of the information from other sources.

The article I found related to Hull Zero Three is a review by Gary K. Wolfe, published in November 2010 in Locus magazine (a trade magazine for science fiction, fantasy, and horror fiction.) The magazine publishes reviews and announcements for upcoming novels, magazines, and conventions. The article offers the plot synopsis (without any major spoilers) and seemed like the best reference for what I needed.

My first step was to post to the talk page of the Wikipedia article, describing my proposed edits and the source. I used the source editor to draft my message and let the other editors know my intention to edit the plot synopsis for this page.

I waited to see if I would get any replies on the Talk page. When I did not see any after two days, I posted the following plot synopsis for the novel:

I will wait again to see if my edits are deleted. My sense is that this page is not watched very closely anymore due to the topic and the age of the novel. It has been ten years since the novel was published and is not one of the author’s more popular works.

After posting my edit, I noticed that there was a message at the bottom of the page that says the article is a stub with a link to a page with guidelines on writing about novels on Wikipedia. I clicked on the link, and read through a manual of style for editing novel pages. I closely read the information about plot, which is the section I had added to the article.

What I read is that Wikipedia recommends 3-4 paragraphs to summarize the plot of a full-length novel. After reading the guidelines, however, I noticed that it also says this:

It also says that the novel itself is the primary source for the plot, unless there are explanatory details in which case you should use a secondary source. Armed with this new information, I set about rewriting my plot synopsis to add more detail including spoilers that I had avoided previously. Next, I returned to my article to apply the changes:

I decided to keep my secondary source as a reference because it really informed my original plot summary. I will now wait to see if I receive any feedback from other editors or if someone decides to delete what I have written.

After waiting 2 days to see if there was any feedback or if another editor deleted my edits, I saw that nothing was changed. My conclusion is that this article is not being monitored closely, and if any deletions or messages occur it will likely not be for a while. I have my account set to receive notifications for this page. If someone decides to delete the plot synopsis, I will ask for their feedback on what I wrote so that I can be better prepared if I decide to revise the article again.

Overall this was a very enjoyable assignment; I even bragged to a friend about getting the chance to edit Wikipedia. I found the training modules to be clear and simple and editing the actual article and talk pages was not complicated. The most difficult part was figuring out which article to edit since there are so many. What do I know a lot about? In general, I think I am expert in most things (not really) but when it came to really thinking about what I know well enough to actually contribute to a Wikipedia page, I felt like a newborn baby who doesn’t know anything. It was daunting to put my writing on a page that could be viewed by potentially hundreds or thousands of people. It gave me a deeper appreciation of Wikipedia editors who have written the articles that I have been reading for years.

During the weeks of the assignment, WIRED Magazine posted an article on Wikipedia:

Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet

I hope that this article inspires internet entrepreneurs to create more crowdsourced sites that focus on providing information rather than making a profit.

 

 

 

I always knew that Wikipedia could be edited by anyone, but I never realized just how easy it was to do it yourself. 

Personally, I’ve always thought of Wikipedia as a website that needed to catch up with the times. It’s been around for as long as I can remember, more specifically since 2001, and the website’s aesthetics definitely still match the early 2000’s era. 

Surprisingly though, I found the editing process to be extremely user friendly. 

The page I chose to edit was one about Pflugerville, Texas. 

I grew up in Pflugerville. It’s a small town just north of Austin, the state’s capitol, and is home to roughly 64,431 people, according to the 2018 census. Their Wikipedia page to me seemed a little scattered. Some of the information on it seemed to be repeated in more than one area and you could tell that some of the sections had obviously received more attention by editors than others. 

I was pleased to see that there was a wide variety of information present about the city. Pflugerville has a lot of history behind it, and when first looking into the page, that was something that was important to me to be represented. You could also get a pretty good idea of where Pflugerville is at now, as well as some fun facts. 

Accuracy is really important to me, and I did notice that not only were some of the embedded links not working, but some of the information present in the “education” section wasn’t completely accurate. I also wanted to add on at least one bit of extra information to the page’s “in popular culture” section since this is something I have an interest in and I felt like the section was underdeveloped. 

As the Wiki Education training suggests, I first left my suggestions for changes to be made on the Pflugerville, Texas talk page. There wasn’t a ton of activity on the page, and it looks like the last edit was made in September, 2019. As you can see from the screenshot, I shared exactly what changes I was planning on making, but went ahead and made them right away. I know that it was suggested to wait for a response, but the changes I was making weren’t super significant and one was fixing a factual error. 

It’s been a day since I posted my changes and I haven’t received any feedback, so it seems that all of my edits have been accepted. 

As I mentioned earlier, I was surprised by just how easy it was to edit an article. Going into the process one thing I was worried about was citations. I’ve never been great at creating citations and consistently have to research how to do them properly when I have to use them, so I was pleased when I learned that Wikipedia can generate them automatically for use just by using a website URL. 

They also make linking to other Wikipedia articles, which are the only type of in text citations they want you to use, really easy. I didn’t even have to leave the page I was editing to copy and paste the URL, it automatically looked up the Wikipedia page that coincided with the text I had highlighted.     

Using citations and external links are a key way to assure accuracy and to be able to fact check quickly. Doing so makes your article more credible and especially on a platform like Wikipedia where anyone can edit it, fact checking information is extremely important. 

Although you can see the edits I made on the Pflugerville Wikipedia page itself, I thought I would insert screenshots here just in case they do get deleted in the future.

Recently, they also added in the Internet Archive, which makes fact checking sources cited from books quick and easy as long as the page number is listed in the citation. Before this addition, the only way to fact check cited books was to go out and find a copy yourself. Now, there’s options to preview the pages mentioned or even to borrow the book from Wikipedia’s Internet Archive digital library for up to two weeks. Since Wikipedia relies so heavily on its use of citations to assure accuracy, I think that this addition is crucial. 

While I’m unsure if I’ll continue to edit Wikipedia pages in my free time, knowing that the option is there is reassuring. Wikipedia is always seen as such an untrustworthy site, and I like the idea of being able to correct misinformation quickly and easily if I do see it. 

In the future, I could see myself using Wikipedia as a jumping off point to lead me to other sources or even utilizing the talk page to see what kinds of conversations are happening around a certain topic. Throughout this experience, I learned that Wikipedia as a whole has a lot more to offer than being just a user contribution based encyclopedia, and I can see myself using some aspects of the platform as tools for fact checking information.

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I won’t lie, I was not too fond of this assignment from the very beginning. I had a really tough time figuring out which article I wanted to work on. I have never done something like this and I felt a bit of weight on my shoulders since Wikipedia is a public forum and lots of people turn to it for credible information.

My main issue when it came to picking an article was that I did not want to step over someones previous work, especially if it looked like they put a lot of time and effort into it. Still, there was a bit of me that was looking forward to collaborating with people that share the same interests as me.

Finally, I was listening to my favorite podcast, My Favorite Murder and I thought, this is it. It is a true crime comedy podcast -which sounds like they should not go together, but the comedic relief is much needed with some of these stories. I also owe it to them for teaching me to stop running alone at night and making sure I lock my doors.

So, I went on their main article and it did not seem to have too much, but it was still very developed. There are also people who keep up with it frequently to update the episodes list. Here they write brief summaries for each just incase listeners wanted to go back and listen to a certain episode. Since there was not much room for editing, I was stuck once again. Then, I came across the article about their book, Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered and noticed that there was lots of room for development.

I do not recall ever seeing a Wikipedia article for a book before, so I looked some up just to get a sense of what it could look like. I searched two books I had laying around, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, and Coming of Age in Mississippi . Both of these are very developed and did give me some ideas on what I could add to my article.

I noticed the last time this article was edited was least year in June, so I was not too surprised when I did not get a reply to my first comment about what I would be editing. This made me less nervous since I felt more free to make the edits I wanted. Although, I felt this still had a downside, since it would have been nice to experience a collaboration or have someone to correct my mistakes and give me feedback. Up until I finished editing, I still did not get a reply.

The first thing I added was a “chapters” section since I noticed the articles I used for reference had either a plot summary or summary of parts/chapters of the book. Still, this book is very different from the ones I used as references because it is a double memoir of the hosts and has touches of self help, so I chose to not summarize each chapter as I felt it would give too much away.

Next, I added that there is an audiobook where the hosts narrate along with actor and comedian Paul Giamatti. Here I added a hyperlink to Giamatti’s name that led to a Wikipedia article about him and I also cited the audiobook. Then, I noticed that the right side section with the cover of the book and lists of author, publisher, and other information was missing some information that I found. So, I went along and added the language since My Favorite Murder has fans world wide, I thought I could just add in the main language. The genre also only had that it was a memoir, but this book is very humurous and the authors are comedians so I added humor under it.

There was also an option to add the audiobook narrators so I plugged that in again. I did not see the hyperlink options there so I decided to keep what I initially wrote about the audiobook in the first section since I was able to hyperlink Giamatti and the reference. Then I went ahead and added more to the “chapters” section and actually switched it from “chapters” to “structure”. Here, I added the intro and conclusion titles as well as a sentence explaining how both authors split each chapter into two to give their own memoirs (since double memoirs are not too popular).

Lastly, since a lot of people are into their podcast and book because of their interest in true crime, I felt it important to add the true crime stories, and serial killers that are mentioned. I listed all of them and hyperlinked them to their corresponding Wikipedia article. I liked how all of these articles were well developed, this way people who may not have listened to the podcast can search up the stories and information on their own. I actually think this was my favorite edit because it was unique to the book as well as most informative in the article.

After these edits and additions I did not feel as negatively about this assignment. It did take me a long time to actually get started since I was having trouble choosing and did not like the idea of editing an article; once I started, I felt my confidence go up the more I edited it. I also had fun with the article I chose, because I was able to add two sections. Still, I would have liked it if someone had edited it along with me and commented on the sections I added. I highly doubt I will ever do this again, I honestly still find it scary but I appreciate the experience and think it is pretty cool to say I have edited a Wikipedia page.

 

Privacy. This is the biggest issue we all face no matter how connected we are Goggle knows all about you. This creates questions that are fundamental to answer and are seemly impossible. How much privacy should we have?

Well, we should start off by what is privacy?

 

It seems simple enough we be able to be apart from others and not have anyone intrude that. This is the difficulty with the internet whatever you do although it seems private it’s not you are on the internet, on google or amazon website owned by other people, you own devices you have given other people access to. For the most part, you are forced into this with contracts and agreements that are a hundred pages long and if you don’t agree well your phone won’t turn on. This is a big dilemma how do i retain privacy and do what i want to?

This is a split issue, on one hand the law protects you, kinda.

The first type of privacy is defensive privacy, which protects against transient financial loss resulting from information collection or theft.  This is protected by the law, it is legal for someone to steal your money, property, identity and so on. This is tricky though because this is a result of hacking when we’re talking online, which is a global network which means your hacker may not be able to be prosecuted. In addition because of the amount of privacy we do have it’s hard to know who the hacker is, so do we need more or less privacy?

Both? Neither? Something needs to change but this again is a particular subject where they may be no right answer. If there is an increase in privacy like many people want we could having increasing issues with hackings, identity theft, anonymous accounts made just to hurt others, and so much more. This is an issue that is steadily increasing, “Hackers stole nearly 447 million consumer records containing sensitive personal information last year, according to the 2018 End-of-Year Data Breach Report from the Identity Theft Resource Center. ” Where does this end? Less privacy, probably. As a consumer with no background in an education on comupters, government, or cyberspace its hard to think on any example where we can have privacy and protection online.

In one of my previous classes, an article really struck me on this subject. Protection or Privacy? Neither coding. “Our choice is not between ‘”regulation” and “no regulation.”‘ The code regulates. It implements values, or not. It enables freedoms, or disables them. It protects privacy, or promotes monitoring. People choose how the code does these things. People write the code. Thus the choice is not whether people will decide how cyberspace regulates. People–coders–will. The only choice is whether we collectively will have a role in their choice–and thus in determining how these values regulate–or whether collectively we will allow the coders to select our values for us.”

This is quite a bit to digest but the short point is that coding as the ability to be used for good or bad if we choose we can have coders implement privacy and protection. But if we do nothing this privacy will be bought out as we have seen so far.

 

While I unfortunately did not have an opportunity to use my grandmother problem theory on anyone this week, I can think of a time where I used it around one year ago.

A coworker of mine posted an image on Facebook, the image depicted the iPhone notes page with a couple paragraphs stating that if she did not post it to her profile, Facebook would delete it. It went around as a scam and I saw a few other people who I know post it as well. These scams come and go like waves. One month you see it the next you don’t. I decided that I would leave a comment stating that this is not a true statement and a confirmed scam to which she responded stating that she did not care and would leave it up just in case. I decided not to press further and let her believe that Facebook would somehow hack her account and delete it all while still keeping her information for themselves.

Since then I have seen the same coworker fall for a few more scams, especially those that say they will somehow use her pictures or information if she does not share or re-post the image. I have decided to not interact with her anymore, as others have left similar comment telling her it is fake and she still responds that she does not care, she is still doing it.

If I were to do something differently I would maybe direct her to an article that reliably explains what a phishing scam is, considering she has fallen for them on multiple occasions.

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Wikipedia is such an interesting and fun tool to use when used properly. Wikipedia is also something that can be a bit controversial because of the ability for anyone to be able to correct, add, and take away information from an article that was written. Wikipedia brings many people together to create and share ideas about any and everything that can be talked about in the world; from music to major events that happened in the world. This opportunity to correct an article that was written by someone else was a little uncomfortable for a couple of reasons but it was a good experience.

Editing an article that was created by someone brought me to an uneasy place for some reason. It was not the fact that I was placing incorrect information to the article but it was merely the fact that I did not want to mess with someone’s hard work. I worked on an article that discussed Beyoncé’s, The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour. The article talked about the process of the entire tour from the costumes to the advertisement and to the amount of revenue that was brought in from the world tour. The article was very well written with just a couple of misspellings and maybe some rewriting of some sentences. The article also talked about people who were involved during the tour as well as the major events that happened around the tour.

My experience with editing this article was not a horrible one but it did put into perspective what kind of access people had with this type of technology and it made me a little uncomfortable to change much. This is because I did not want to step on anyone’s toes per se but luckily there was training for the Wikipedia changes and how to edit an article. I appreciate the training being accessible and showing how to avoid the tragedies a bad edit on Wikipedia. The process is fairly easy and fairly self-explanatory. I really appreciate that there was a source to help you choose an article to edit so that you would not have to go to another site to actually copy and paste something to edit. This cuts out some tendencies for plagiarism and copyright issues.

The process works for an article that has many issues and wrong information. This allows for more corrections and additions for the article. The citing tool is very simple to use as well. It helps those who do not really know how to cite websites easily and does the work for you for the most part. The visual arrangement for the editing site can be a little confusing for a first time user because I for sure had trouble trying to find some of the links and buttons such as “edit”; do not judge me. Wikipedia has a format that just confuses me a little and that is okay, as I mentioned earlier, the process is fairly easy and fairly self-explained to use the system and edits.

Another key part of the editing process is having the original writer confirm and sign off on the editing that will be done by you.   I think that that is a great way to get permission from the creator to have that ability to change what is already created. It gives the creator a chance to make sure that their work is not done in vain and to allow the creator or deny the additions to the article. The only downside to this is that the creator may not always respond to that request. The creator may not have been logged into their account in such a long time and may have not seen that article since it was created. This is why I say that I feel a little skeptical of the whole editing someone else’s article because what if someone does not get the proper permission to change something? Anyone can just create a change and make something incomplete or provide the wrong information to the article. I guess you would place this information on the web and hope that people will be respected enough to provide factual and strong information.

Overall, the entire process was something to learn from and it is amazing. Learning that you can change people’s information from the comfort of your own home and have an impact on the world is something to think about. This process was insightful to see how trustworthy and untrustworthy information on the internet can be. This teaches me to be truthfully media literate when it comes to researching information on the internet for anything and to fact check everything that I would consider to use as information to digest.

 

I’ve been excited to present this assignment. It took a long time for me to land on a topic that I wanted to write about. I spent hours looking through the categories page, stubs page, and the WikiProject directory. I reassigned myself different pages a handful of times.

I’ve been focusing my blog posts about image in the music industry, so it was fitting to write about music festival I stumbled upon called: Electric Love.

The first thing I noticed was that the article was fairly sparse in information. The entire page consisted of a lead section, an information box, and a picture of the festival inside of the information box.

Furthermore, there was no rating on the importance scale or quality scale – I realized this presented an opportunity to make significant additions and perhaps affect it’s importance and quality!

The lead section is a good summary and describes the event well, which is sufficient according to our training material, so I didn’t feel a need to change anything there. It did include a few named headliners, so I decided to create a section expanding on these artists.

 

Before I get into my edits, I wanted to shed some light on the talk page, which I found to be a bit off-putting. Because the name “Electric Love” isn’t just a music festival, it also shares the name with:

• a song by an artist named Børns
• an album by a British electronica group called Dirty Vegas
• a VHS released in 1987 by a band called The Cult

So as you can imagine, this can become a pretty tricky situation. The only information on the talk page was by the RMCD bot, which I presume to stand for “Requested Moves Current Discussions” based on it’s user page.

Here, stated by the bot back in 2016 was a notification of discussion on the Electric Love (Børns song) – a proposal to make the song page the official “Electric Love” on Wikipedia and change the festival page to something along the lines of “Electric Love Festival”.

I was conflicted… do add to the talk page of the festival? Or add to the page of the song? Best solution here is to follow the link to the song’s talk page, which to my relief already sorted out this page name situation back in 2016.

Ultimately it was decided to oppose the changing of names since none of the Electric Love’s are the primary topic over one another. This is why I felt correct in continuing to make edits to the festival talk page rather than the song page.

One thing I found interesting about the proposal in the talk page was someone who had made a claim and retracted it, then corrected themselves:

This seemed to be a turning point int he discussion and the fact that this Wikipedia editor was bold enough to admit they were wrong stood out to me as an editor who truly had the validity of the page in mind rather than just wanting to be right. As we learned in this Wired article, editors can be quite malicious when they choose. However, this Talk page was sorted out in a very polite and informational manner throughout the entire discussion.

Before adding my edits, I contributed to the talk page a proposal of the edits I wanted to add.

I included my references below the proposal. Each year of headliners was found on a different page, so I wanted to be very specific when citing so I didn’t run into any problems. The page I found the information is called “Festicket”, which is not a scholarly article or a book, but it is a proclaimed official partner of Electric Love, so I felt it was a credible source.

I took to my sandbox to draft the changes I wanted to make. I fiddled with a few different layouts and landed on a list-view:

Note that the lower section of the 2018 and 2019 listings are cut off – my screen was too small to take a screenshot of the entire list.

I was very meticulous to cite each artist in the page I found the information on. I double checked spelling, as some of the names are foreign to me.

I waited for a while to hear anything back on the talk page, but there was no push back to my proposal, so it was time to move it to the official Electric Love Wikipedia page. I transferred the information, but in addition, I also included links to the Wikipedia pages of all the artists I could find. This is the edit summary I created:

And the finished product (well… a snippet at least):

I am extremely satisfied with the way it turned out. None of my changes were taken down or reverted back. I didn’t have high expectations for myself in this project – after reading about the woman who uses Wikipedia editing as a  way to say “F*** You” to trolls, I felt my changes would be insignificant in comparison. However, I felt extremely accomplished in the end!

I would like to have been able to add a photo, but I never found anything fitting. That is the only thing I would have done differently if I chose a different article to edit.

Will I edit more Wikipedia articles in the future? Absolutely! It doesn’t seem like such a daunting task after finally doing it one time. And if I ever have the opportunity to spread researched and true information to others on the internet, I now understand how rewarding it can be.

To actually try and solve “The Grandmother Problem” I decided to have a talk with my boyfriend. Really, I should’ve chosen my mom or dad, but I wanted a challenge.

My boyfriend believes everything he sees, no matter what. I’m a very passive person, so before now I haven’t really cared. But after this weeks assignment and reading, I decided enough is enough.

A lot of the times he shares small stuff, about celebrities and what not, but a lot of the times it is just blatantly false. This time, however, he shared misinformation about the coronavirus. So the other night when we were just sitting on the couch, I asked him about it. (I tried to find the article again to link it in here, but he deleted it from his page and I cannot find it again).

I asked him, “Did you fact check this source?” and he told me no, he didn’t because he did not feel the need to. So I told him I did it for him, and that what he shared was indeed false, and he needs to be careful what he shares.

He did not like this. For one, he didn’t see what the big deal was about sharing false information. So filled him in on why it’s not okay to do that. He started to get a little bit of an understanding, but I still don’t think he cares.

He also didn’t like that I was trying to “prove him wrong” which was crazy to me. I really was just trying to help him. Spreading false information about something so serious is not okay. I just wanted him to realize that.

After explaining to him that I was not trying to prove him wrong, but just get him to understand, he started to get it. Luckily, it didn’t cause any major fight, and he has gotten over it.

He also has started asking me whether or not an article seems true before he asks it. So, my next task is to now get him to learn how to do that on his own.