Google Knows What You Did Last Night… Here’s How

Everyone knows our online activity is tracked by Google, but how this happens has been a bit of a mystery to people.

According to Safiya Umoja Noble’s piece titled “Google Search: Hyper-visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Girls Invisible,” even though everyone knows that Google sucks up our information and search histories for its own uses, we tend to look past it. She attributes this to Google’s great power; no matter the task or topic, it has become standard protocol for people to first see what Google has to say about a subject.

Open laptop displaying Google homepage

Open laptop displaying Google’s homepage

A huge part of Google’s income is based on the impression they achieve from their users and advertisements. Your voice google searches and written google searches are stored and tracked by Google. They do this so that advertisements can accurately reach the target audience and be customized according to their preferences.

Let’s take the example of online shopping. Suppose you are searching for a vacuum cleaner in your area. You begin your search by finding the best company vacuum cleaner. Now, Google is tracking your searches, and within minutes you’ll see the vacuum cleaner online ads on your social media and even on your other devices. This is all done by Google through third-party cookies and their unique tracking system.

And this seems harmless as it allows for Google to better cater to the needs of its users. For example, if a thirteen-year-old girl searches “Justin Bieber” forty times a day, it should trigger Google to recognize that she likes Justin Bieber. And so, when this same girl looks up “attractive guy,” Google will probably be sure to include some links and photos of Justin Bieber.

Google provides what you want it to provide. And as Noble explains, this causes certain “images and symbols [to] inject dominant social biases into search engine results” because people continuously receive news and answers from like-minded people and resources.

But it gets a little scarier from here. The National Security Agency (NSA) has access to what you search on Google and if you search questionable things, you may be unknowingly saying goodbye to your privacy. Or at least this is what Edward Snowden and many others have come out with information on. Google and the NSA have public and extremely legal arrangements in which unsafe or law-breaking searches may be reported.

Meme of Edward Snowden. Top line reads: Provides proof the government is spying on citizens. Bottom line reads: Government charges him with spying.

Meme of Edward Snowden. Top line reads: Provides proof the government is spying on citizens. Bottom line reads: Government charges him with spying.

Now getting back to the bigger question–how does Google even track all of our activity?

Here’s the gist. Everything you search for is saved by default. This refers to not just the search engine but is something that is true of all Google products, services, and apps. It doesn’t matter what device you’re doing this on; all that is relevant is the fact that you are using this particular search engine.

And beyond your browsing history, Google also keeps a record of where you go and how long you stay there. And no, all this happens without you launching Google Maps on your device.

Google is helpful and I know I personally use it for just about every question and query that I have. But we’re constantly warned about the privacy invasion of Google usage and that’s certainly for good reason…

WTF is an NFT?

A few weeks ago, I came across a piece of digital artwork that sold for a record breaking $69 million. “Everydays—The First 5000 Days” by Beeple is a collage of all the images the artist has posted online over the last 13 years. I appreciate the artistic concept, but what astonished me was that someone paid $69 million for a JPEG file in the form of an NFT.

A collage of colorful images that make up the artwork "Everydays - The First 5000 Days"

“Everydays – the First 5000 Days” by Beeple

Since then, the world is witnessing a boom of digital assets in the form of NFTs. But—WTF is an NFT?

NFT stands for “non-fungible token,” and fungibility refers to the essence of currency as something that retains values and can be exchanged for another. In extremely simple terms, a non-fungible token is unique and can’t be exchanged because it is part of blockchain technology. Blockchain creates a linked network of records, making it resistant to change.

Tokens have played a fundamental role in economic transfers and recording systems ever since Uruk scribes used clay tokens to indicate and record transactions in the fourth millennium B.C. Denise Schmandt-Besserat even proposes that tokens may be the earliest precursor to the invention of writing.

Now, society seems to have reinvented the value of tokens in recording transactions. And unlike the clay tokens of the past, NFTs can verifiably trace possession to a specific person through blockchain, making ownership the source of value.

My favorite NFTs are from individuals and organizations who auction off their tweets. For example, Jack Dorsey recently sold his first tweet for $2.9 million and our own Ohio State football program is selling their first tweet. Tweets as NFTs seem to place a new value on digital modes of writing while also complicating the idea of ownership, especially when it comes to the ownership of words.

For me, the NFT craze indicates the inextricable link between economic interests and forms of writing.

Your Attorney is a Robot

Like many other industries, artificial intelligence technology is slowly becoming an existential threat for many young professionals attempting to break into the legal sector. This is because AI is taking over many of the lower-level tasks historically assigned to junior attorneys and legal assistants and performing them in a fraction of the time.

Robot creating a hologram of a balance (representative of the legal field)

AI has taken over research, litigation forecasting, legal analytics analysis, documents automation, and electronic billing in law firms ranging from small to gigantic throughout the United States. The most devastating of these takeovers is document automation. Writing work that once required a team of junior attorneys to finish in a week has been taken over by writing bots that can complete the same work in minutes.

Obviously, such a dramatic increase in efficiency has caused law firms to find buying a legal writing bot software package and hiring a single junior attorney to supervise its writings much more attractive than hiring and training a whole team of junior attorneys to perform the same work. A depressing fact for the swarms of law students attempting to obtain internships during law school and the graduates trying to start their actual careers.

Robotic attorney

It is worth noting that just as McKee & Porter recommend in their article “The Impact of AI on Writing and Writing Instruction,” law professors are actively reacting to the technology and have begun to instruct their students on leveraging and working alongside legal AI and writing bots.

For example, Harvard Law School has already started to offer “legal innovation and programming” courses. Hopefully, this proactiveness on the part of legal academics will soften the blow of the shift to legal AI integration by law firms and prevent future attorneys from being left in the dust by the technology.

Gif of a scene from "Legally Blonde" saying "Girls, I'm going to Harvard!"

The technology is not all doom & gloom though, as it does hold genuine benefits for the field of law. In a profession centered around billable hours for charging clients, the ability for legal AI to cut week-long tasks down to minutes allows for law firms to become much more affordable and therefore accessible to the “everyman.”

Overall, Legal AI is a multifaceted issue since it is both a tremendously beneficial technology and a severely disruptive one. On the one hand, it will benefit the workflow of many law firms and improve the process of law itself. On the other, the technology is guaranteed to allow law firms to cut down on employees and make it even harder for young legal professionals to break into the already very competitive legal job market. If “Legally Blonde” ever gets a sci-fi remake, it’ll for sure have to include a plotline about dastardly legal writing bots and their desire to replace so many poor junior attorneys.

Playing the algorithm: How it can backfire

On YouTube, there is one universal rule for all creators: eventually, you’ll have to make an apology to address a controversy you may find yourself embroiled in. These scandals can range from mostly harmless missteps to being involved in actual criminal offenses. A very recent example of this is David Dobrik, who released two separate apology videos addressing a sexual assault incident he both facilitated and filmed, along with a variety of other allegations.

Like many creators, Dobrik knew that addressing the controversy could lead to more fans finding out about it. Therefore, he released his first apology, title “Let’s Talk” on his least followed channel, disabling likes and dislikes. More than likely, he was hoping that this would be enough of a response for fans asking for him to address the allegations, but not be seen by most people.

David Dobrik looking stupid

A screenshot from one of Dobrik’s apology videos. Notice how he left in him crying and how he is sitting on the floor, common tropes in the youtube apology genre.

Unfortunately for him, the video ended up on the YouTube trending page, and his clear attempt to manipulate the algorithm led to more people speaking out about the issue. He eventually had to make another apology, which still met some controversy. Dobrik has now lost all sponsorships and had to step away from his app, Dispo.

As Timothy Laquintano and Annette Vee discussed, automated systems greatly affect our writing and communication systems, and I believe this is a great example of this. Dobrik has thrived off the algorithm. He even sold merchandise with “clickbait” on it, showing how he works to manipulate YouTube’s automatic system. His name or face attached to a project automatically makes the algorithm more favorable to a piece of media, and he has famously not responded to scandals in the past to avoid negative associations with his name.

a red hoodie with the word "clickbait" on it

This has clearly led to his downfall, however. By playing the algorithm to boost his name recognition, Dobrik has made it even easier for others to call him out. He cannot hide his apology, even from automated systems. In my opinion, he is finally getting what he deserves.

Vaccinations, Public Health Rhetoric, and Snapchat Stories: How Online Writing has Affected Vaccination Efforts

If you live in Ohio and are currently located in the Columbus area, you may know the struggle of getting a COVID vaccine. Just look at the map below to see how the distribution of appointment unavailability is concentrated in Columbus. Compared to other large population centers in Ohio, Columbus is by far experiencing the most shortages. Even with places like the Schottenstein center having delivered over 79,000 vaccines, the demand for vaccination in the Columbus area is higher than the supply.

A map of ohio that highlights vaccine availability

But why is this? As discussed in Week 12, the pandemic has caused an increase in coalitions and relational literacies in regards to health on this specific issue. We in Columbus, especially those who attend OSU, are lucky to have a close relationship to health information via the Wexner Medical Center. They provide so much information on health and wellness, and many students and alum value their writing greatly.

 

With the integration of health information so strong in the Columbus community, it seems to me there has been an even greater response to vaccination. Even in my personal communities, everyone I know is actively trying to book a vaccine appointment or has booked an appointment. We, as OSU students and community members, are more aware of how important getting vaccinated as quickly as possible is, and we, therefore, have a much higher demand for vaccine appointments.

 

This increase in availability may be more of a reflection of trying to support rural and minority communities, who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks. This increase in appointment availability will hopefully help these rural communities get over some of the vaccine hesitancy presents there. Unlike in Columbus, many people in rural communities may not be able or willing to take a vaccine appointment time that interferes with their work or life schedule. There will also need to be a bigger push of public health writing and rhetoric to decrease vaccine hesitancy, and it will need to target the specific fears and hangups each community has.

 

Unfortunately, this lack of appointments means people like me, a 22-year-old college student, have a much harder time accessing vaccines. We want to be able to celebrate our graduations safely, but this means we need to be vaccinated within the next week if it’s not already too late. But fortunately, social media has helped many people access the vaccine in an alternative way. While you shouldn’t be posting your vaccine card, posting about getting a vaccine is a way of sharing support for a public health issue. It also makes others aware of how they can get vaccinated. I personally found access to a vaccine through social media. While it may be used to push anti-vax rhetoric, social media also has the power to get us back to normal even faster.

Wikipedia: To Cite or Not To Cite

I can remember hearing countless time during my education, “make sure to cite your sources, but do not use Wikipedia as one of your sources.” I’m sure many of you have heard the same thing.

What makes Wikipedia a non-credible source to many? This might help explain why. But is it really that unreliable? Perhaps Wikipedia is more than we give it credit for.

Wikipedia Logo

Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia

Compared to other sources, Wikipedia offers multiperspectivalism. Many people, voluntarily, contribute and edit Wikipedia pages. While information added can be incorrect, it is constantly being edited; each page being fine tuned and expanded. Every contributor comes to Wikipedia with their own background, knowledge and perspective. That is what makes Wikipedia so diverse, expansive and collaborative.

In “Networked Expertise in the Era of Many-to-many Communication: On Wikipedia and Invention,” Pfister discusses the role multiperspectivalism plays for Wikipedia:

If the first way that many-to-many communication reshapes the relationship between invention and expertise is to reshuffle traditional attention routines, the second significant effect of these new communication environments is a facilitation of multiperspectivalism. This multiperspectivalism emerges, not necessarily in the main article entry itself, but in the edit history and talk pages that constitute the substrata of Wikipedia. Herbert Gans (1979/2004, 2011) famously argued that traditional top-down news formats privilege particular views with the consequence that what gets covered is a very narrow slice of the actual news. How that news is framed shapes how citizens attend to it—if at all. Multiperspectival news, his proposed alternative, is journalism that draws in the opinions of the many in an attempt to better encompass available opinions…If multiperspectival news is desirable, then surely so is a multiperspectival encyclopedia. The many-to-many communication on the edit and talk pages reveals behind[1]the-scenes conflicts from multiple perspectives that need(ed) negotiation before some contingent consensus was reached.

Many-to-many communication – isn’t that better than one source with one perspective? I’d think so.

Are educators concerns with Wikipedia justified? Somewhat.

While Wikipedia may not always be accurate, it is a culmination of many people coming together to add their own knowledge. So next time you write an academic paper, use Wikipedia, but be aware of its accurateness. Instead of relying on it’s validity, use it to explore multiple perspectives you might not have considered or known.

The Colorization of Writing

History has shown that writing by black and white people are not perceive the same, even if both writings are grammatically correct.

An early example of this is Phillis Wheatley. She was an African American slave who published her own poetry. She wrote her poetry so it was grammatically correct and would be read easily and be indistinguishable from white writing. But Thomas Jefferson read her work and said she did not write it because she was black; no black person could ever write poetry that well.

Grammar Tree

Sentence. Noun Phrase: Determiner – The, Noun – man. Verb Phrase: Verb – bit, Noun Phrase: Determiner – the, Noun – dog.

That got me thinking. Aside from Wheatley’s race, what was it about her writing that made Jefferson think she didn’t write it? Her writing followed grammatical rules and was written in a

way to appease white people, so why did he not accept it? Has this judgement regarding overall literacy of African Americans gotten better? Not entirely.

One major discrimination today against African American literacy is African American vernacular, or African American language (AAL). Standard American English (SAE) is what is taught in schools. It is tested on placement tests like the ACT and SAT, but it is not everyone’s primary form of English. In an educational setting, any other form of English is “incorrect.”

In “‘wuz good wit u bro’: Patterns of Digital African American Language Use in Two Modes of Communication,” Cunningham studies the use of AAL. He finds that AAL Follows predictable patterns that a language needs:

Both DAAL text messages and SNS posts served the function of creating brief or concise messages that are visually different from SAE while also approximating the phonological patterns of AAL. Pedagogically, these consistencies of composition and function speak to the literacy practices of DAAL interlocutors, demonstrating their ability to use multiple linguistic varieties, which, if valued, utilized, and examined in the classroom, can be an asset rather than a detriment to rhetorical knowledge, literacy skills, and composing ability. Overall, this research illuminates the multiple linguistic repertoires necessary when composing DAAL and the consistency of linguistic and paralinguistic patterns and functions between the two corpora further suggest the ways in which DAAL is a valuable, pragmatic hybrid literacy.

If AAL is the common form of English for African Americans, it should be accepted in schools. A prior blog post discusses in more detail the change that needs to happen in schools.

Using SAE furthers the stereotype and belief that African American’s can’t write or speak well when they can. Criticism that Wheatley faced is still common in schools today; it just has taken a new form. And it needs to be discussed.

The Internet and Democracy

When the World Wide Web was invented in 1989, an excitement gripped the United States as the internet went from a system primarily used by scientists to a system that could one day connect the world. Connection didn’t happen immediately. It took several years before email or the internet were widely available to everyone, and even then, there were barriers to access.

Thirty years later, most Americans walk around with access to the world’s information in their back pocket in the form of smartphones. But how connected is society? Is the internet actually driving us further apart?

Laptop Computer with Image of American Flag Covered in Code on ScreenIn the wake of last November’s contentious Presidential election, these questions have been at the forefront of mass media. Recently, an article in The Atlantic asked if democracy itself is at risk of failing as a result of partisanship on the World Wide Web. The internet is an open system that allows anyone to post nearly anything at any time. On the one hand, this open source format allows Americans to exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner the Founding Fathers could never have imagined.

But this open system also allows bad actors a platform that was not available to them in a world where print ruled. One example of this is the use of algorithms that “control” what a person might see on their social media feeds. In their article, “How Automated Writing Systems Affect the Circulation of Political Information Online,” Timothy Laquintano and Annette Vee mention a “Red Feed, Blue Feed” graphic created by the Wall Street Journal in which one can see the difference between a conservative or liberal Facebook feed “on a variety of issues,” thus highlighting the potential polarizing effect of the Web.

Algorithms, bots, and the Google search engine can all give the effect that humanity is not really in control of the internet at all. Fortunately, as The Atlantic article mentions, there are pockets of the internet that are so far free from manipulation, such as Wikipedia.

The question for American society is how to reclaim the parts of the internet controlled by trolls, bots, and corporations. In order to regain connection over division, tough decisions will need to be made on how to govern the internet without impinging on the rights of citizens. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary for the future of democracy.

True Crime Podcasts Are Rewriting The Narrative Of Victimization

I, like many people, am a huge fan of the true crime and comedy podcast called My Favorite Murder. It’s hosted by two amazingly funny women, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, and they tell really horrific stories about different murders that have happened all around the world.

What’s really unique about the way they discuss these crimes is how they discuss the victims. Instead of mirroring the tone of most media sources when discussing crime, using derogatory language against the women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ community, they discuss them as people.

Karen and Georgia emphasize how these victims deserve life like anyone else. Instead of calling someone a ‘prostitute’, they call them a ‘sex-worker’. They are very careful to talk about who the victim was outside of the crime and to emphasize their importance in the world.

They have taken the victim narrative, the one where the crime is the victim’s fault, and completely turned it around.

While I was watching this week’s material where Karma Chavez discussed how many Black members of the LGBTQ+ community were demonized by the AIDS epidemic, I couldn’t help but think about how Karen and Georgia would discuss the stories Chavez told. It would have mirrored the justice that Chavez gave to those victims.

Karen and Georgia were some of the first true crime podcasters to take this new stance on crime, but they absolutely aren’t the last.

The podcast And That’s Why We Drink with Em Shultz and Christine Scheifer focuses on haunted places and true crime. Em and Christine have taken the same mentality as Georgia and Karen, but they have also focused a lot on the importance of honoring someone’s gender identity. They take extra steps to ensure that they are using someone’s correct pronouns, and continually remind their audience of the importance of respecting pronouns.

Something Was Wrong is a podcast that allows victims to tell stories themselves, with the host, Tiffany Reese, giving the speakers a compassionate, safe place to speak. She joins them in their pain and offers constant reassurance.

One key thing here is that all of these podcasters listen to their audiences, they listen and adjust. If they say something problematic, they hear the voices of their fans and they immediately apologize and continue onward, bettering themselves and their shows.

This wave of understanding and respect seems to be an entirely new thing. As Chavez discussed, the way the victims of the AIDS epidemic were talked about in the media was dehumanizing and delegitimizing.

It’s like a breath of fresh air. By now, I’m so used to hearing victims being respected by their storytellers that it catches me off guard when I hear the bigoted, disrespectful way people or news sources still discuss victims.

Hearing all of these women empowering traditionally disenfranchised groups has really given me a glimpse into what the would could be. It’s given me the scope to be able to spot misogyny, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, and more that was hidden just below the surface of our society.

And I think that the more people who listen to rhetoric like theirs, the better the world is going to be. Because they’re setting an amazing example of how to listen, how to respect, and how to become better people.

Something Needs to Change In Regard to How Literacy is Taught in U.S. Schools

Kirkland & Johnson’s article “‘We Real Cool’: Toward a Theory of Black Masculine Literacies” about the literacy practices of Black young men was simply fascinating.

The line on page 294, “To this point, Young (2004) has described Black male uniqueness as characterized through “a difference between Black boys and white boys”. For him, “Black boys not only feel coerced to give up their masculinity if they do well in school, but they also feel forced to abandon their race” (p. 700). This pressure that young Black men face to choose between a mainstream and fringe world, between race and educational rights, we argue, is the force motivating Black masculine literacies–literacy as practiced by the cool kids” really impacted me, I had to go back and read it over and over to really let that sink in.

A blog post released on March 1st explained functional illiteracy and how it affects people in their day-to-day lives.

I think that in the context of the Kirkland & Johnson article, that post is especially relevant. In our society, the ability to read and write is how our worth as humans is judged. And as I discussed in my past blog post about how literacy is used as a way to disadvantage minority groups, functional illiteracy is a huge factor in inner-city Black male lives.

And as Kirkland & Johnson show, a counter-culture has risen around literacy among young Black men. It has become a sort-of villain, a way for “The Man” to force them into a racist, unjust society. So in rebellion to “The Man”, young Black men have found themselves exploring literacy through clothing, music, and speech.

For speech specifically, African American Language (AAL) is an academically recognized dialect of English, yet it is seen by a lot of people as a way to determine someone’s education level. And I think that truth speaks to how our education system (de)values AAL speakers, specifically Black children/young adults.

There is a documentary series called “Talking Black in America” that I watched in my Folklore class, and it does a fantastic job of diving into Black speak and how it represents the broader Black culture in the US. One part of it, linked here, discusses how rap is a highly prized artistic expression of AAL within the Black community.

Kirkland & Johnson express in their piece that young Black men don’t reject literacy, they reject it’s traditional form. Literacy is found all over their culture, but that culture is a uniquely Black culture.

And in my opinion, it has been warped by a lot of people and media to portray Black literacy in negative light.

Something needs to change. I do believe that the U.S. education system values Standard American English above all other forms of English and systematically devalues other forms of English. The School-To-Prison pipeline is very real, and I think it at least partially a consequence of how we view SAE.

And I think that the conversation about how to adjust the school system is pretty overrun by people who don’t actually know much about other cultures.

So, something needs to change, and that change needs to begin with listening to the voices of other cultures in this country. We need to listen to people who have grown up in inner-city schools, and figure out how to connect with those children in a meaningful, impactful way.

Likewise, we need to give these children a voice and let them join the discussion in how to make a classroom more inviting and influential.

It is time to listen to what causes these problems, and make sure everyone is heard.