Matt Boyer

  The art of the selfie I think it was a tall order for Gianna Smith to pick Instagram, because condensing the social ramifications and legal implications of Instagram in a mere three minutes is massively difficult. Nonetheless, she did a good job providing a broad overview of the application and its overall impact. It was fascinating to learn about the research done into the toxicity that Instagram has wrought upon the world. It really is just a tool designed to manipulate people into constant popularity contests with each other. Generally, it's an extremely unhealthy way to navigate the world - only encouraging feelings of negative self-worth and narcissism.  While initially Instagram was a tool to just share photos, it's become (as Smith has pointed out) an addictive game tuned to gather data and sell you advertisements. In my opinion, there's no redemption for the platform at this point. It's become a mess of self-aggrandizing personalities that constantly seek vali

 How large an online footprint do you have? Do you have a personal website? I try to keep any semblance of my true identity off the internet. Even so, I also have a fairly active Google account that I'm not particularly proud of. Of all web data collection services, Google probably has to most accurate profile of me of anyone given just how frequently I use its services. So, yeah. Even when actively trying to maintain a low profile, I'm not very good at it. I also have a portfolio website . I need to get hired at some point, so having this website is pretty much a must. Still, this site contains very little actual information about me. Which social media sites do you use? What have you put on them? What have you linked to?  My Facebook account has sat dormant for years, and is set to private. I don't use Instagram, snapchat or Twitter. The only one that I really use is a fairly filled-out LinkedIn because I need it for school.  My old Facebook account that I've since

  Disinformation, as the Merriam-Webster puts it , is " false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." In other words, disinformation is a concentrated effort by one party to control another party with lies and half-truths. It's a method for populace control. A tool to sway and subjugate. Historic Disinformation In the 1980's the Soviet government purportedly perpetrated an elaborate scheme to convince the American populace that  "all victims of AIDS are the result of a monstrous experiment." The Soviet " aktivinyye meropriatia " (active measures) scheme was apparently designed to weaken the "'main enemy' ( glavny protivnik ), the United States — and to create a favorable environment for advancing Moscow’s views and international objectives worldwide" ( source ). If what the CIA claims is true, then the deliberate attempt to swa

  Privacy is dead, and the internet killed it. Specifically, major online companies and over-funded government agencies killed privacy. I've been aware of the decline of private browsing for a few years now. It's been a major topic of study for me, even going as far as writing a final research paper on Deep Fakes and Privacy a while back (yes, I'm aware of the irony of writing a paper on privacy with Google Docs). So, none of the information talked about in these videos is particularly surprising to me. In psychology, there's a theory called the " Kübler-Ross model " that proposes the experience of grief follows a basic pattern: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. While it's a bit of a stretch to equate the metaphysical concept of  'privacy' to death and grief, I do think that the model has merit here. I have reached the second-to-last stage of the model: depression. I don't yet accept that the mode of privacy has fundamenta