DL 265

Butterfly Attacks

Published: October 24, 2020 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue 265. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.

🔖 Key Takeaways

Google Antitrust Lawsuit: Most significant action against tech company in decades focuses on search monopoly through exclusive contracts
Proctorio Silences Critics: Exam surveillance company sues researcher who tweeted about their practices, draining his savings
Butterfly Attacks Explained: Fake social media accounts use keyword squatting to capture attention during breaking news
Twitter Limits Retweets: Platform urges context before resharing in weeks before 2020 election
Webcam Requirements Problematic: Think deeply about requiring all students to use cameras during virtual class

Hi all, welcome back to Digitally Literate and issue 265.

Thanks for showing up this week. I appreciate you.

This week I worked on the following:

Innovation & Execution - When innovating, ideas without implementation mean nothing. Basically, talk is cheap.
How to Cultivate Self-Awareness - The struggle between internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.
Look for the Good Apples - A great primer on culture, the barrel, and being the good apple while not getting spoiled.
Fail Hard - If you set your goals high, you'll fail above everyone else's success.
Computational Thinking - I'll have a series of posts upcoming about computational thinking. Here's the first one.

📺 Watch

Intergalactic Ghostbusters

In keeping with his Halloween tradition, music meme creator William Maranci has hilariously combined the Beastie Boys song "Intergalactic" with the perfectly fitting "Ghostbusters" theme song by Ray Parker Jr.

You should also check out this remix of Nine Inch Nails and the Ghostbusters theme song by Maranci.

📚 Read

Justice Department Sues Google for Antitrust

On Tuesday, the Justice Department sued Google for anticompetitive practices, in the most significant antitrust action by the U.S. government against a technology company in decades. The government's case focused on Google's search and how it appeared to create a monopoly through exclusive business contracts.

Google responded that this was a deeply flawed lawsuit that would only hurt consumers.

Karl Bode in TechDirt suggests that this is a weaponized farce from Bill Barr before the election.

Ben Thompson offers a more measured review while explaining Aggregation Theory, which is endemic to digital markets. Read more at his original Aggregation Theory Article.

Pay attention and educate yourself. You need to read up on aggregation theory—you'll need it on the quiz.

Proctorio Trying to Silence Critics With Lawsuits

Between August 23rd and 24th, Ian Linkletter, a learning technology specialist at the University of British Columbia, began researching and tweeting about Proctorio, an online test-proctoring tool. Linkletter has become the target of a lawsuit, and says he has drained his savings while fighting back against the company's attempts to silence him.

You might consider donating to the GoFundMe page set up by Linkletter to fight this lawsuit.

2020 Student Technology Report

This report presents results from EDUCAUSE's 2020 research on students' experience with information technology, which included 16,162 undergraduate students from 71 US institutions.

Findings identify next steps institutions can take in student success, technology use, data privacy, online harassment, and accessibility.

Twitter Temporarily Changes Retweet

In the remaining weeks before the 2020 US Elections, Twitter is limiting your ability to retweet content from others. More specifically, Twitter is urging you to give some context in your re-share—as opposed to blindly boosting the message of others.

As I follow online information trends, it's interesting to see the terms used to describe many of these practices. Here's some new info for your lexicon.

Throughout 2017, pranksters and extremists utilized parody accounts to discredit the antifascist movement in the US, taking advantage of available Twitter handles and public confusion to spread narratives about antifa violence. These butterfly attacks used keyword squatting to capture attention during breaking news events.

🔨 Do

Think About Webcam Requirements

Think more deeply about the requirements to have all students use their webcams during class.

🤔 Consider

You have to take it. Nobody is gonna give you anything.

Killer Mike

Killer Mike's blunt wisdom frames an issue about power—Google defending monopoly power, Proctorio using legal power to silence critics, platforms controlling information power before elections. Whether it's butterfly attacks or antitrust suits, the lesson is the same: power must be contested, not requested.

Previous: DL 264 • Next: DL 266 • Archive: 📧 Newsletter

🌱 Connected Concepts:

Media Literacy — Butterfly attacks, keyword squatting, Twitter retweet friction
Privacy Rights — Proctorio surveillance, webcam requirements, student data
Pedagogy — Computational thinking, student technology report
Platform Accountability — Google antitrust, aggregation theory
Civic Engagement — Election misinformation, fake antifa accounts