Social Thieves: The World Behind Social Media

Let me first begin by asking a simple question, how many of you have or have heard of the app thisisyourdigitallife? “Thisisyourdigitallife was originally an application used to complete a good survey for academic purposes” as explained by the creator Aleksandr Kogan, who later sold the application to Cambridge Analytic. For the most part, if you have a Facebook, I’m assuming you’ve heard of the drama behind what Cambridge Analytic is said to have manipulated and influenced within Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Kevin Granville’s article “Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: What You Need to Know as Fallout Widens” (2018) published in the New York Times, describes the way information was illegally sold to Cambridge Analytica via Facebook during Trump’s 2016 election campaign. According to Granville, “researchers in 2014 asked users to take a personality survey and download an app, which scraped some private information from their profiles and those of their friends, activity that Facebook permitted at the time and has since banned”, which allowed for over 50 million Facebook users personal information to be accessed to alter advertisements and target people based on personal likes. The purpose of this article is to explain and debunk the ways Cambridge Analytica data harvested Facebook. I feel the article is geared towards any individual using any type of social media platform, not only just Facebook, with the ultimate goal of explaining how to protect your identity on such platforms. I found this article intriguing and also extremely terrifying as many people do not see where their personal information goes once they enter it within the internet. Which leads me to my next question? Do you know what you are sharing on the internet? How protected are you?

I, myself, have multiple social media accounts ranging from Instagram all the way to PlayStation Network. To be completely honest with my readers, I only know about 1/3 of the privacy settings tips and tricks to secure my personal information. After learning about how Facebook “inappropriately” shared over 50 million users personal information, I did some research of my own. How many sites are set to mine and sell personal information? According to CBS News “The Data Brokers: Selling Your Personal Information” (2014) there are various companies in place to collect, analyze, and sell social media users personal information. These companies are referred to as data brokers. The task of these “data brokers are to collect, analyze and package some of our most sensitive personal information and sell it as a commodity…to each other, to advertisers, even the government, often without our direct knowledge” (2014) seeming like much of an intrusion.

I feel it is safe to assume most people have no idea what happens to the information they enter online, like their birth dates, social security numbers, telephone numbers, addresses, and even their credit card numbers! How many of you have an Amazon account active with a credit card or debit card on file? I know I do! Now let us think for a moment, what happens if and or when Amazon is hacked and all of that personal information is leaked? I fear for the day something along those lines happens. With my presence on social media, I’ve found over the years that people are targeted by what they post. I feel social media platforms have influenced me in such a way that sharing an experience is simplified and easily expressible.

When I am online, I try to leave my personal information as bleak as possible. I hardly include my address, phone number, or birth date unless I know the people I am sharing it with. Even then, after the information is shared I often wonder where it will end up and with who. Social media in my opinion is used as a tool to manipulate the masses of people within them. Advertisements on individual social media accounts are a result of data brokers harvesting information like, likes and shares. So how are we to prevent another Facebook Cambridge Analytic data breach? Drop a comment for me below with how you think we might prevent another personal information scare!

Thank you again for reading my post!

Lauren

Sources:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-data-brokers-selling-your-personal-information/

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/10/601163176/how-to-check-if-your-facebook-data-was-used-by-cambridge-analytica

In-N-Out, Call of Duty, and Envy Glass Design: popular culture?

I’m going to start by making an educated guess. I am guessing at least fifty percent of California’s population has had or have heard of the popular fast-food franchise In-N-Out. From their fresh, hand-cut potatoes prepared in 100% sunflower oil advertisements to their animal style burger, In-N-Out has been a sought after dinner choice since 1948! So what makes In-N-Out so popular? From my experience, it is definitely not the wait. I’ve always wondered why In-N-Out is called In-N-Out when in reality it feels more like Sit-N-Wait.

According to John Storey’s article, “What Is Popular Culture?” (2001), popular culture can be broken into six distinct concepts: “simply culture which is widely favoured or well liked by many people, the left-overs of high culture (meaning not difficult or scare to access), mass culture which is produced for mass consumption, popular culture for “the people”, popular culture as a site of hegemonic struggle, and popular culture informed by recent thinking around the debate on postmodernism”. In my opinion, In-N-Out is “simply culture which is widely favoured or well liked by many people”, as the debate of which burger joint is the best is often won by famous In-N-Out.

Being a college student at Humboldt State University, the closest In-N-Out is about 200 hundred miles away, therefore a common conversation and theme between my college roommates is whether or not In-N-Out is the first stop in or out of Humboldt County! Although I feel In-N-Out is not completely on the scene as mass culture, I do believe the franchise has the potential to be, as the company recently invested more stores into states other than California for the first time ever! In-N-Out has impacted my life in the way a simple meal can bring together so many of my close friends and family. I hold onto some very meaningful memories every time I visit In-N-Out as my grandfather use to take my there frequently after high school days, and we would share our days over a burger and a shake.

In addition to the popularity of In-N-Out, is the world of Call of Duty. Setting game sale records over and over again with different games, Call of Duty can easily be placed into a few of Storey’s popular culture definitions. Currently, I am a fan of playing Call of Duty: World War II. I play online and at any given time, there are hundreds of thousands of other players, excited and intrigued by the first person shooting strategy. Call of Duty is mass produced, for “the people” by a company determining a market price. So although you can say Call of Duty is not high culture as it is not difficult or scare to access, I believe the video game to be a site of hegemonic struggle. I feel the struggle comes from the market price set so people of certain classes cannot afford to partake in the activity.

What makes Call of Duty: World War II so popular is the background of the story. The game play follows the Axis and Allies attack on Germany during World War II, allowing players to be either friend or foe on the battlefield. Believe it or not, the information and facts in the game play relating to the war, I did not even know existed! I have been impacted by Call of Duty: World War II, in the information presented and the way I am able to interact and play with people all over the world.

Finally, the last example of popular culture text that has influenced me in some way or another is Envy Glass Designs. Envy Glass Designs, with over 51k followers on Instagram is seen as something that a huge number of people like! Envy Glass Designs is considered popular in that it is talked about. Envy Glass Designs follows the culture of the people as each piece is hand-crafted, rather than mass produced for a profit. Quality over quantity is seen in the processes of the Riverside based company.

Envy Glass Designs although liked by 51k people on Instagram, still is relatively unknown to the most of the planet as the culture behind Envy Glass Designs might not be for everyone. Envy Glass Designs is apart of what PBS Ideas Channel video, “Does Pop Culture Need To Be ‘Popular’?” (2014) covers as the popular culture process. According to the host, Mike Rugnetta, the popular culture process is dynamic in that variations and customization keep the popular culture text alive. For example, the piece I own by Envy Glass Designs is now considered “out-of-date”.

To me, popular culture is ever-changing and can differ from person to person as every individual has their own unique identity. Within that identity is where I believe things become popular. The individual finds commonalities among the things the world deems important which creates the collective consciousness of that popular culture. So in my opinion, be unique and continue to do what makes you happy. Whether that’s eating In-N-Out, playing Call of Duty, or collecting Envy Glass Design Pieces, there will always be another unique individual in which those things make happy. In this process, popular culture is created and continued.