Digital Diary:

Sunday, November 29^th–

Before this experiment all of my social media was available to the public, on this day I decided to privatize all of my social media, even turning on the “ghost mode” feature on Snapchat so no one could track where I was. The results I got from this were interesting as I assumed no one would notice that my social media was now private. However, I had a few friends message me and ask why, I also got a decent amount of follow requests, which was surprising considering these people had not followed me before. I also noticed that my tweet interactions on Twitter had gone down, meaning that more individuals that don’t follow me view my content rather than the other way around.

Monday, November 30^th–

On Monday I decided to use the search engine “DuckDuckGo” which allows individuals to “search the web without being tracked”. With the ongoing discussion of politics, I put into the DuckDuckGo search engine and Google “Donald Trump is…” to try and see if the results were different considering Google curates responses to fit the user’s appeal. What I found was that DuckDuckGo not only gave more accurate responses but more information filling in the blank. With Google, there were the questions of Tiktok and Roblox being banned, both applications that I use. It was surprising to see that Google had retained that information and to find out that “At DuckDuckGo, we do not collect or share any personal information. That’s our privacy policy in a nutshell. For example, we do not store IP addresses in our server logs, and we do not create unique cookies. As such, we do not even have the ability to create search histories or search sessions for any individual — privacy by design.”

Friday, December 4^th–

On this day I decided to stop allowing all applications on my phone to access my location. As a result of this, I was not given advertisements for restaurants and stores near me. An example of this is when I started getting advertisements on my Instagram feed for the restaurant “Beech” in Charleston after eating there a few times throughout the semester. After turning off my location I got ads for places in states like North Carolina and Colorado. While I do enjoy getting advertisements for places close to me, it was unsettling first seeing the Beech advertisement on my Instagram. Turning off my location on all apps made me realize how many different services track my location. The Drive Safe & Save State Farm application tracks all of my driving throughout the day, and although State Farm says they do not sell customer information that is not always the case with companies.

Saturday, December 5^th–

This day I chose to do one of the examples Applymagicsauce.com to track my digital presence on Twitter. What the sight told me was fairly surprising but also showed me how much information I present on social media, allowing this site to create a “personality test” off of my tweets. It was slightly unnerving considering I joke all of the time on Twitter about people’s perceptions of me, but I still give out information to Twitter about who I am as a person. I think this website was the most interesting, but I wish that there were other social media accounts you could link considering I don’t have Facebook. Ultimately this website will make me second guess what information I am willing to put out on social media.

Sunday, December 6^th– On the last day I decided to not use websites that use cookies. It was interesting to search for “websites that use cookies” and while I didn’t find a clear list of sites that don’t use cookies, I realized that a majority of websites that were a result of my search used cookies. Even when online shopping places such as H&M use online cookies to “Make our website work efficiently and secure and to improve perosnalised user experience.” When I read about the types of cookies and how H&M and other third parties can access them, it made me second guess all the online shopping I have done. Although individuals are able to disable these cookies, I feel as if it’s already too late to erase any type of digital footprint. Of course, with older individuals or children who don’t have access to technology, this is not a problem, but I have already put so much information online as someone who grew up with technology.

During this new digital age, it is difficult to understand how and why social media apps and websites are gaining access to valuable information. While it is in part a problem with users, with the usage of location tracking or online cookies companies are gaining access to hoards of personal information. Now individuals have learned to combat this privacy issue is by counter-surveillance, which can be defined as measures that are usually taken by citizens to prevent surveillance, including covert surveillance. Although this surveillance may seem like just a price to pay for a curated online experience, it is alarming to see how much information companies collect. During this counter-surveillance as a form of protest experiment, I used applications and setting such as location tracking, DuckDuckGo, Applymagicsauce.com, and disabling cookies.
I find it ironic that I am the type of individual to talk about my hatred of being perceived but allow so much information to be publicly accessible on social media. Using the Applyingmagicsauce website allowed me to see how individuals would view my personality based on my tweets. Even though this website only found information like what my gender and personality was like, it was still surprising how much information they could collect from 112 tweets. This website said that my digital footprint closely resembles that of a 25-29-year-old and guessed my age as twenty-eight and while this information is false; it was interesting to see that the application thought I was that old. This website also determined whether you were male or female, my percentage came out to 59% saying that while my “digital footprint is fairly androgynous; it suggests you are probably female”. This website was definitely the most entertaining, it also made me aware of how I present myself on social media and my personality type.
One of the more uncomfortable experiences I had during this project was when I was scrolling through Instagram and saw an advertisement for “Beech” a restaurant on King Street that I had gone to a handful of times over the semester. While I was alarmed at the fact that Instagram clearly knew my location and the places I had visited, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I never go anywhere without my phone since it is my only source of instant communication. This advertisement made me realize that my location services were turned on for almost every app I had on my phone. I never really used the Snapchat “Maps” feature, but when I decided to enable “Ghost Mode” in which no user could see my current location, I had a few friends ask why I had done so. My friends already know where I live and frequently visit, but it made me paranoid when I realized that people actually would check my location. With apps such as State Farms Drive Safe & Save, I was unable to turn off my location because of my Dad’s love of savings. However, I feel safer knowing my location is only available to one application while I am driving. Even with the State Farm app, I do not allow them to always track my location, whether or not that is truly the case I do not know, but it does make me feel as if I’m taking back my digital identity.
Then there were online cookies, which sound harmless when brought up on a pop-up while you are online shopping at stores such as American Eagle or H&M. These online cookies can do things such as track users browsing histories and also allow third parties to access this information collected. As someone who has had a cellphone since the age of twelve and had a laptop at fifteen it is hard to imagine how much of an online presence, I have created for myself. Up until this past year I was virtually unaware and carefree about the information that my social media apps and online browsers had obtained. While this may not be the same for older generations who did not grow up in this digital age, I feel as if it’s hard for individuals who have already given so much information to these companies. Still, there can be things to prevent companies from accessing this information such as not accepting the usage of cookies and using a private browser such as DuckDuckGo.
Ultimately there should be five rules for equity and fairness when it comes to data sharing. Those rules include not selling information to third parties, making users explicitly aware of the information an application tracks, allowing users to opt-out of any data sharing and tracking, making this information hard to access in the event of a security breach, and stopping the usage of curated searches by region. By implementing these rules companies can still access the information of willing participants while keeping their users privacy.

Discipline, control, and health of the body are the three pillars of THE METHOD, which declares health as the principle of state legitimacy. Juli Zeh’s dystopian narrative of THE METHOD examines the notion of a society that is established on the optimization of the individual as a result of the harmony between the body and mind. By monitoring the well-being of its citizens through an implanted chip in the upper arm, THE METHOD makes human actions and information readable, collectible, and sharable to governmental control and the greater public. As a rewrite (palimpsest) of George Orwell’s 1984, Juli Zeh’s work engages with the question of what it means to be human in a world in which “a person’s data trail can be taken apart and reassembled in a million of different ways” (Zeh, The Method, 199). In 2020 our own health data has become a particular value while living during a pandemic.

Please use this blog entry to reflect upon potential benefits, repercussions, and ethical challenges of contact tracing, health related data sharing, collecting, and mining. Write at least 250 words, answer the questions posed in no. 1, and pick at least one more question 2. or 3.  Comment on another students’ blog response. When applicable (answering number 2, include a quote from Zeh’s The Method)

1.  Pick an app that collects health data such as sleep patterns, activity levels, Covid-19 symptom tracking, or contact tracing (examples might be: SleepCycle, Headspace, CofC’s Student Health Service Apps, MyFitnessPal …).  There is no need to download a specific app, it is up to you which one you want to use. You could also reflect upon an integrated health-related app/functions of your smartphone, Apple Watch, or FitBit.  Think about the following questions when you engage with the app: Which data is collected? Who has access to that data? What is the individual, but also the collective benefits of collecting such data? Who is benefitting from sharing such data? Are there ethical challenges or repercussions attached to using your app?

2. Compare your findings from question 1 with the depiction of THE METHOD’s health care surveillance systems. Can you spot any similarities? What are the differences?

3. The concept of “Data doubles” (Haggerty, and Ericson The Surveillant Assemblage challenges the idea of individuality. In which ways does our understanding of what it means to be human change when one becomes a bundle of “health” related information that is readable, collectible, and shareable with other entities?

On Thursday we will discuss Hasan M. Elahi’s digital art project “Tracking Transience” in tandem with Simone Browne’s work “Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.” This blog post will be a little bit more open-ended.

How does the excerpt of Browne’s Dark Matters inform your interpretation of Hasan M. Elahi’s “Tracking Transience” project? For whom can it be beneficial to not be tracked and in which contexts? What is the role of gender, race, or class when it comes to aspects of tracking and surveillance? In which contexts can tracking be beneficial and for whom?

Make sure you’re your blog is about 250 words long. Your blogpost needs to comment, respond, or critically engage with your classmates’ blog entries and use examples of your own watch-experience of Hito Steyerl’s digital art. Incl. at least one quote from Simone Browne’s Dark Matters to back up your arguments.

Consider this blog to be our conversation starter. We will continue the discussion in class on Thursday!

On Thursday we will discuss Hito Steyerl’s digital art project “How not to be Seen” in tandem with Simone Browne’s work “Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.” This blog post will be a little bit more open-ended.

How does the excerpt of Browne’s Dark Matters inform your interpretation of Hito Steyer’s video “How not to be Seen”? For whom can it be beneficial to not be seen and in which contexts? What is the role of gender, race, or class when it comes to aspects of visibility and surveillance? In which contexts can visibility be beneficial and for whom?

Make sure you’re your blog is about 250 words long. Your blogpost needs to comment, respond, or critically engage with your classmates’ blog entries and use examples of your own watch-experience of Hito Steyerl’s digital art. Incl. at least one quote from Simone Browne’s Dark Matters to back up your arguments.

Consider this blog to be our conversation starter. We will continue the discussion in class on Thursday!