#digitalliteracy — Public Fediverse posts

TechSpot: Meta is bragging about how its AI keeps people on Instagram, while facing lawsuits over addiction. “Social media addiction has been a subject of public debate for years, but time spent on apps like TikTok and Instagram keeps climbing. Meta has now confirmed it’s using AI to personalize the Instagram feed, and that shift is driving a sharp increase in the amount of time users spend on […]

Now shipping! In this ALA Editions Special Report, technology expert Robin Hastings highlights the first attempts of libraries across the country to set up policies for the use of AI in their organizations, as well as policies created by cities and other similar institutions, to guide stakeholders in creating their own smart, forward-thinking course of action. https://alastore.ala.org/genaipol

#librarylife #librarywork #librarianship #digitalliteracy #genai #ala150 #Libraries #librarytechnology

Boys and young men who are isolated or struggling to find their place in society are being presented with extreme content online that glorifies dominating and dehumanizing women and amplifies gender-based violence.

Solutions include:

➕ support mental health
➕ stop non-consensual AI
➕ promote digital literacy

https://www.thestar.com/politics/mps-urge-action-to-undercut-manosphere-by-tackling-anti-women-ideology/article_b3d8a1d2-6526-5d4d-9914-7b9aac69de9b.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=copy-link&utm_campaign=user-share

#GBV #DigitalLiteracy #MediaLiteracy #AI #Grok #MentalHealth #toxic #PublicHealth #manosphere

«Protecting Your Digital Trail: Data Retention For Sex Workers»

🗓️ Wednesday June 17th 2026
💻 Online (Zoom) 🕓 16:00 CEST
✍️ Inscription: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/HryK3L6fTBqZfv75-1JRVg#/registration
👤 With Chloé Berthélém (from @edri)

#ESWA #SexWork #Privacy #Security #DigitalLiteracy #Online #Workshop #SWEvents #2026W25

Porting SafeText and analyzing digital content with Apache Tika

Last year I wrote about pitfalls in modern journalism, especially with regards to receiving documents and information from whistleblowers without offering them adequate protection.

The tl;dr is that you, as a whistleblower, need to protect yourself; and you, as an editor or journalist, need to protect your whistleblowers.

Steganographic fingerprints might be one method adopted to detect someone leaking information. Steganographic characters replace common textual characters with unusual but hard to detect variants, e.g. they look the same to the human eye, or are actually invisible. Using a tool called SafeText by David Jacobson we can identify these hidden fingerprints in the content that you share.

I firmly believe we can find clues about what is important to preserve, or learn to preserve, when we analyse the content of the digital record and not just the (file) format of the digital record.

A file can contain many different features and these are all challenges to their future interpretation, and thus preservation.

I wanted to use SafeText in some of my other non-Python tooling and so I decided to port the code to Golang as a composable module and binary.

By coincidence at the time I started writing this I had also just written about revisiting tikalinkextract and so I thought I would write this small explanation about how you might combine Tika and SafeText to perform some content analysis of your own.

Who knows, maybe we will find a conspiracy. Maybe we’ll find secret codes in our own digital records. Maybe we’ll learn something new about our records…

Lets have a look at putting Tika and SafeText together and see where it goes.

The rising threat of disinformation in Canada’s municipal elections
#Canada #Politics #Elections #MunicipalElections #Disinformation #Misinformation #ElectionIntegrity #DigitalLiteracy #AIThreats #Democracy #Transparency #VoterAwareness #ElectionReform
https://the-14.com/the-rising-threat-of-disinformation-in-canadas-municipal-elections/

University of Rochester: The most effective online fact-checkers? Your peers. “Research shows that being called out by peers, not algorithms or experts, makes online authors think twice about spreading misinformation.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/11/19/university-of-rochester-the-most-effective-online-fact-checkers-your-peers/

Poynter: As tech giants retreat, Africa’s fact-checkers are finding new ways to survive. “The platforms that once sponsored fact-checking projects and previous Africa Facts Summits, including Google and Meta, were nowhere to be seen, just as they were absent from IFCN’s GlobalFact conference in Rio last June. Still, 162 participants from 35 countries filled the hotel’s conference hall, […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/10/19/276678/

As you probably know by now, Sean Martin, CISSP and I are not going to be in Melbourne for #CyberCon with the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) this year... which really sucks as we had a great time there in 2024 - We met amazing people, created great content, and truly miss sharing quality time with the #cybersecurity community Down Under!

But this isn't stopping us from being virtually there by reconnecting with friends and meeting new ones while covering the event remotely.

So here's my conversation with the one and only Jacqueline Jayne (JJ) talking about her upcoming session: "Beyond Blame: Keeping Our Kids Safe Online" at CyberCon Melbourne (October 15-17, 2025).

There's something fundamentally broken in how we approach online safety for young people. We're quick to point fingers—at tech companies, at schools, at kids themselves—but JJ wants to change that conversation entirely.

Watch the teaser, then dive into the full episode:

🎬

Highlights: https://youtu.be/xeu1sZ3KiiM

🎬

Full episode: https://youtu.be/v-41rOVds-U

🎧 Audio: https://redefiningsocietyandtechnologypodcast.com/episodes/beyond-blame-navigating-the-digital-world-with-our-kids-interview-with-jacqueline-jj-jayne-aisa-cybercon-melbourne-2025-coverage-on-location-with-sean-martin-and-marco-ciappelli

What are your thoughts on this topic? Drop a comment!

#OnlineSafety #DigitalParenting #ParentingTips #KidsSafety #CyberConMelbourne #AISACyberCon #DigitalLiteracy #cybersecurity #infosec #technology #society

Megan Spielvogel CAE Ben Walkenhorst, GAICD ITSPmagazine

5 stories about Big Tech to improve your digital literacy skills

https://therealists.org/?p=8077

If you were to ask me what is my favorite book on the subject of technology and digital mindfulness, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second: it is, without doubt, Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology – published in 1993 but still extremely relevant today.

Acclaimed cultural critic Neil Postman wrote:

Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.

To the late Postman (he passed away in 2003), education is the best remedy to counteract the negative effects of this “technopoly.” Postmas wrote: “education as an excellent corrective to the antihistorical, information-saturated, technology-loving character of Technopoly.“

As a Realist, if I had one wish, it would be for everyone to be more media savvy, to be better versed in media literacy – and especially digital literacy. I notice how we often take new announcements by Big Tech at face value, never questioning the agenda behind innovations and new product launches. The current AI hype is a perfect representation of what Postman warned about.

Here are five stories about Big Tech to increase your digital literacy skills.

1: Amazon’s AI Lies

Have you ever heard of Amazon’s Mechanical Turks? According to Wikipedia:

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourcing website with which businesses can hire remotely located “crowdworkers” to perform discrete on-demand tasks that computers are currently unable to do as economically. It is operated under Amazon Web Services, and is owned by Amazon.

Well, as it turns out, the service takes its name from an elaborate hoax from the late 1770s: a chess playing machine that was touted to play a game of chess against a human opponent. It wowed royals and crowds in Austria and then in tours across Europe and the United States. After 8 decades of public demonstrations, it was ultimately revealed to be a fraud: a human operator hid inside of it to play against an opponent.

It’s supremely ironic that the term “Mechanical Turk” has been made widely known by Amazon. Because this week the company was embroiled in a mechanical turk-like scandal that made headline news around the world. From MSN: “Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ tech relied on low-paid Indian workers, not AI“. In case you are not familiar with Amazon Fresh stores, they are modern grocery stores that allow people to walk around, add items to their carts and leave without passing by a checkout line or paying a cashier – thanks to a technology called “Just Walk Out” which was supposedly powered by cameras and artificial intelligence.

The MSN article explains:

The Information reported that even though Amazon claimed that it used a host of cameras and sensors around the store to track what customers grabbed, hundreds of Indian workers were used by the company to track customers instead of relying completely on AI and technology.

Yes, you read that correctly. An awe-inducing technology heavily promoted by Amazon turned out to be 1,000 low-paid workers in India, watching and labeling videos of customers shopping in Amazon Fresh stores.

2: Google and its Fake AI Demo

On the subject of AI hype and faking the capabilities of an “artificial intelligence” system, there is this December 2023 story about Google. The company was caught red-handed, faking a demo of its new AI system. From TechCrunch: “Google’s best Gemini demo was faked”.

Google’s new Gemini AI model is getting a mixed reception after its big debut yesterday, but users may have less confidence in the company’s tech or integrity after finding out that the most impressive demo of Gemini was pretty much faked.

If you are curious, you can watch the faked demo on YouTube – which included heavy editing to create the illusion of a brilliant AI system.

3: Microsoft’s New Data Collection Service

If you use Microsoft Outlook as an email client, it’s time to reconsider your options. This detailed report by Proton Mail is a must read: “Outlook is Microsoft’s new data collection service”.

Proton’s Edward Komenda writes:

Everyone talks about the privacy-washing campaigns of Google and Apple as they mine your online data to generate advertising revenue. But now it looks like Outlook is no longer simply an email service; it’s a data collection mechanism for Microsoft’s 801 external partners and an ad delivery system for Microsoft itself.

The company is also now storing email passwords from external clients, granting unprecedented access:

When you sync third-party email accounts from services like Yahoo or Gmail with the new Outlook, you risk granting Microsoft access to the IMAP and SMTP credentials, emails, contacts, and events associated with those accounts, according to the German IT blog Heise Online.

Komenda explains:

A deeper dive into Microsoft’s privacy policy shows what personal data it may extract:

Name and contact data
Passwords
Demographic data
Payment data
Subscription and licensing data
Search queries
Device and usage data
Error reports and performance data
Voice data
Text, inking, and typing data
Images
Location data
Content
Feedback and ratings
Traffic data

Bonus digital literacy points: it’s worth pointing out that this exposé about Microsoft comes from ProtonMail – a Swiss end-to-end encrypted email service that is one of its competitors. While the evidence Proton shared is accurate, it’s important to remember it’s in their vested interest to get Microsoft users interested in ProtonMail services.

4: Facebook snoops on Snap users with “Project Ghostbusters”

From TechCrunch reporter Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai:

Meta tried to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors, including Snapchat and later Amazon and YouTube, by analyzing the network traffic of how its users were interacting with Meta’s competitors. Given these apps’ use of encryption, Facebook needed to develop special technology to get around it. […] Facebook’s engineers solution was to use Onavo, a VPN-like service that Facebook acquired in 2013. In 2019, Facebook shut down Onavo after a TechCrunch investigation revealed that Facebook had been secretly paying teenagers to use Onavo so the company could access all of their web activity.

This story is a routine reminder to check the trustworthiness of your VPN service – if you are using one. If you are using a free VPN, there is a high likelihood that the service is tracking, profiling (and possibly reselling) your traffic data. This story from The Next Web may be 6 years old but is as relevant as ever: “Be cautious, free VPNs are selling your data to 3rd parties.”

5: Apple’s Gatekeeping

From Variety: “Jon Stewart Says Apple ‘Wouldn’t Let Us Do’ an Anti-AI Segment and ‘Asked Us Not’ to Have Federal Trade Commission Chair as a Guest: ‘What Is That Sensitivity?’”

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart invited Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan to appear on his show. He revealed to her how, when he was hosting his (now cancelled) Apple TV talk show The Problem with Jon Stewart he had expressed an interest in interviewing FTC chair Khan – but Apple TV turned down his request, openly asking him to refrain from interviewing her.

From Variety:

Considering Khan’s work at the FTC targets tech giants’ monopolistic practices, Apple allegedly did not want Stewart bringing her on the program to presumably talk about such topics. […] Stewart went one step further and said Apple didn’t even want him talking about the perils of AI on his podcast. He said “they wouldn’t let us do even that dumb thing we just did in the first act on AI,” referring to a near 15-minute segment Stewart did earlier in the show in which he criticized the rise of AI and spoke about how it’s making human workers obsolete.

Stewart said to Khan on his Daily Show: “Like, what is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to even have these conversations out in the public sphere?” And Khan responded: “I think it just shows the danger of what happens when you concentrate so much power and so much decision making in a small number of companies.”

It should not be surprising that Apple didn’t want an episode about the perils of AI on Apple TV – considering that Apple is now trying to catch up with OpenAI, Google Gemini and Anthropic. The company is expected to reveal its AI plans at his developer conference in June 2024.

Is there any story that surprised you about the state of tech or the hype surrounding AI? Share your thoughts in the comments.

As always, thanks for being here.

Elena

#AI #AIHype #Amazon #Apple #BigTech #digitalLiteracy #Facebook #Google #hoax #mechanicalTurk #mediaLiteracy #Microsoft #NeilPostman #privacy #Technopoly

I recently had a powerful epiphany: all the research and the work I had been doing for The Realists had the framing all wrong.

For years, I had been thinking that my “enemy”, my nemesis, adversary – however you want to call it – was Big Tech… the companies that have built systems of surveillance capitalism and are profiting from it. The platforms promoting unattainable beauty and life ideals. The popular apps that are addictive by design.

But no, I now realize I had it all wrong.

The real “enemy” is indifference – people’s indifference to the monumental changes brought on by Big Tech. What they are doing to our humanity. How they are changing what we value. How we see ourselves. Our dreams and aspirations. How we socialize. How we raise our kids.

Big Tech will continue to keep a powerful hold on our lives if we think that “the toothpaste is already out of the tube”, that the changes are inevitable, and that it’s a good thing to jump on all the latest trends, use the most popular apps, under the belief that they will make our lives better.

Media Consumption

I find it astonishing that nowadays people worldwide spend an average of 455 minutes per day consuming media – that’s 7.58 hours a day. And yet, most people have a vague understanding of the effects of media on their lives, self-esteem and worldview.

My interest in the subject? I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication and I still vividly remember concepts from my college classes about “Persuasion and Public Opinion” and “Media Effects.”

For example, are you familiar with any of these media theories? “Agenda setting” and “Gatekeeping”? “Cultivation Theory”? The “Magic Bullet Theory”?

I learned about these theories many years ago and today the media landscape is completely different. There are now powerful communication devices in everyone’s pocket… and they are being used extensively, for most of people’s waking lives, without much thought about it.

I notice indifference… and I also notice – and experience – resistance to tech resistance. What do I mean by that? I have the perfect example from my personal life.

Resistance to (Tech) Resistance

I’m the mom of a two-year-old daughter.

I have been called a “Taliban” “Putin” and an “extremist” for wanting to raise her screen-free, without any visual media except for interactive FaceTime videos with her grandparents who live far away. (Incidentally, that’s what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, but to some people, it appears to be extreme).

It’s ironic that I’m a filmmaker – but my child has never watched a video in her life. To her, a phone is something that stays in the back pocket; an iPad is a magical portal for video calls with her grandparents. I don’t own a TV and aside from iPad video calls her screen time is exactly 0 minutes a day. She’s 26 months old. And I wouldn’t do things any other way.

Thankfully the colorful nicknames/insults came from one person and they have been toned down since that person watched a documentary on the effects of screen time on young children’s brain development.

These nicknames may sound a bit harsh, but in several situations, with other adults around me and my child, I have noticed similar attitudes. Resistance to my resistance.

I’ve been told that it would be impossible to handle my child on the plane without a tablet or smartphone… and yet she aced her first flights, entertained by her parents, her favorite books and a teddy bear.

I’ve been called “excessive” for voicing my concerns about screen time and reading “too many books” to my child. I was warned I would ruin her eyes with books.

I’ve been advised not to talk about how I raise my child screen-free lest I offend other parents and grandparents who do things differently.

But I think it’s important to share my experiences, to show that there is another way.

Thankfully my husband is on the same page as me, wanting to raise her like we were raised. Think: a childhood like we had in the 1980s – minus television, plus an iPad only for FaceTime calls.

Who’s Raising the Kids?

I have been closely following the work of Dr. Susan Linn for years – a psychologist who founded the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. I have interviewed her for my documentary The Illusionists and I recently read her powerful new book Who’s Raising the Kids? Big Tech, Big Media, and the Lives of Children.

Dr. Linn writes:

You’re dealing with a culture dominated by multinational corporations spending billions of dollars and using seductive technologies to bypass parents and target children directly with messages designed — sometimes ingeniously — to capture their hearts and minds. And their primary purpose is not to help kids lead healthy lives or to promote positive values or even to make their lives better. It’s to generate profit.

Later in the book, she adds:

Traditionally, for kids having what Winnicott might call “good enough” childhoods, the adults with whom they mostly interacted, and who had the most influence over them, were parents, other caregivers, and teachers. They were all familiar family or community members who were at least supposed to have children’s interests at heart. For better or worse, it’s common to raise children to be wary of strangers. Yet in a digitized, commercialized culture, we blithely turn vast portions of a child’s day over to strangers. We don’t see these people. Our kids never meet them. But these strangers know an enormous amount about our children. They know how to capture their attention, to exploit their vulnerabilities, and to trigger their longings. These are the strangers who own, manufacture, and advertise the apps, toys, and games that occupy children’s time and whose jobs demand that they develop and market products that generate big bucks regardless of their impact on the kids who use them.

Instant Gratification and Continuous Distraction

What worries me the most about the shifts brought on by this brave new technological world is this: the internet, smartphones and apps have created a frictionless world of instant gratification and constant distraction.

Are you bored? Fish your phone out of your pocket and you can scroll social media, listen to any song you may think of courtesy of Spotify or watch a video on YouTube.

Do you feel lonely? A couple of taps on the phone and you could communicate with a friend or see what they have posted on social media. Turn on the TV, keep it on in the background, and feel like you are not home alone.

Hungry? A meal can be delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less, courtesy of an app.

Everyday activities that take actual effort are starting to be frowned upon.

Silence and time away from a screen may make certain people uncomfortable.

Technology sweeps in, allowing people to never feel bored and giving them the illusion of connection… and handing them any object they may desire, delivered straight to their doors.

When it comes to spending time with a small child, many adults default to entertaining children with screens… not really thinking about the consequences of screen time and the content they will consume. These devices take away all the effort – but they also take away human connection and the opportunity for a child to develop their curiosity.

I can understand why people do this. Smartphones and tablets have been around for less than 20 years and to hundreds of millions of people they still have a magical aura around them. That’s why it’s so hard for adults to see them in a critical light. Dissenting voices are a minority. Tech giants spend a fortune in marketing their shiny devices and platforms. And – this is key – most people equate technology with progress and modernity – positive things. But media consumption and screen time carry consequences.

Dr. Linn writes in her book:

Today, children’s opportunities for silence — to experience wonder but also to play, dream, and explore — are rare. […] It was a long – ago conversation with Fred Rogers that first got me thinking about the importance of silence in children’s lives. Silence was so important to him that he once used an egg timer to tick off a whole minute of it on his television show. And after listening to cellist Yo-Yo Ma play his cello, Fred commented, “After you’ve heard someone play beautiful music, sometimes you just like to have a quiet time to remember it. Let’s just sit and think about what we’ve heard.”

The Universal Need for Media and Digital Literacy

I think media literacy AND digital literacy classes should be mandatory… not just for young people but also for all educators, parents, grandparents and caretakers. For all humans, really.

Because if you are a parent or grandparent and you read this sentence by Dr. Linn, wouldn’t you start to care?

It became clear to me that the problem with the tech-driven, omnipresent marketing that kids experience today isn’t just that they’re being sold stuff. It’s that the values, conventions, and behaviors embraced and engendered by gargantuan, minimally regulated, for-profit conglomerates permeate all aspects of society, including the lives of children.

I think they would. And they may think twice before handing their toddler a tablet or putting them in front of a TV.

The Lumineers’ song “Stubborn Love” goes: “The opposite of love’s indifference. So pay attention now…”

The ways in which technology has invaded the lives of small children – with most people accepting this uncritically – is just an example of indifference to Big Tech. I think it’s a particularly salient example because it powerfully affects a new generation.

How do we counteract indifference to Big Tech?

Through education. Media literacy AND digital literacy.

If you haven’t already, I would highly encourage you to read the late Neil Postman’s book Technopoly and Dr. Linn’s Who’s Raising the Kids? Listen to podcasts such as The Ezra Klein Show or Offline with Jon Favreau. And don’t be afraid to be different. To resist.

At the end of Technopoly Neil Postman writes:

A resistance fighter understands that technology must never be accepted as part of the natural order of things, that every technology—from an IQ test to an automobile to a television set to a computer—is a product of a particular economic and political context and carries with it a program, an agenda, and a philosophy that may or may not be life-enhancing and that therefore require scrutiny, criticism, and control. In short, a technological resistance fighter maintains an epistemological and psychic distance from any technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never natural.

I encourage you to re-read Postman’s powerful words slowly, carefully.

And then spend a minute thinking about them – à la Fred Rogers.

“Let’s just sit and think about what we’ve heard.”

– Elena Rossini

My first #introduction: I teach #English at #MissouriStateUniversity. Mostly #EnglishEducation I’m interested in #communityliteracy and #digitalliteracy and #placeconsciousliteracy I’m also a huge fan of #yal and #graphicnovels and all things #starwars and #StarTrek I read, I write, I walk, I swim, I bake, I cook, I grandparent….just to name a few. #mastadonmigration