Digital Literacy and AI

The Internet was going to liberate us, but in truth it has not. For every story about the web's empowering role in events such as the Arab Spring, there are many more about the quiet corrosion of civil liberties by companies and governments using the same digital technologies we have come to depend upon. In Consent of the Networked, journalist and Internet policy specialist Rebecca MacKinnon argues that it is time to fight for our rights before they are sold, legislated, programmed, and engineered away. Every day, the corporate sovereigns of cyberspace (Google and Facebook, among others) make decisions that affect our physical freedom -- but without our consent. Yet the traditional solution to unaccountable corporate behavior -- government regulation -- cannot stop the abuse of digital power on its own, and sometimes even contributes to it. A clarion call to action, Consent of the Networked shows that it is time to stop arguing over whether the Internet empowers people, and address the urgent question of how technology should be governed to support the rights and liberties of users around the world.

"This book will help readers identify strategies to understand, avoid and handle fake news, misinformation, disinformation, information overload, surveillance and privacy loss, cyberbullying, hacking and other security flaws, and online and IT behavioral conditioning"-- Provided by publisher.It all started out so well: the online world began as an effective tool for communication that carried with it a great promise to level the playing field and eliminate borders. But it's morphed into something totally unintended. We've all had to endure the troll that derails a generally benign conversation; or received that scam email from a wealthy Nigerian prince; or felt the strange feeling of being watched and tracked by advertising companies as we navigate the web. Welcome to the modern internet. These are but a few of the topics that The Dark Side of Our Digital World: And What You Can Do about It examines to get at the root causes of our current problems with information technology, social media, and problematic online behavior. The book explores the issues raised by the negative side of information technology, including surveillance and spying, declining privacy, information overload, surveillance capitalism and big data analytics, conspiracy theories and fake news, misinformation and disinformation, trolling and phishing. What's ultimately at stake is how we are able to cope with increasingly invasive anti-social behaviors, the overall decline of privacy in the face of total surveillance technologies, and the lack of a quality online experience that doesn't devolve into flame wars and insults. The future of the internet as well as our societies depends upon our ability to discern truth from lies and reality from propaganda. The book will therefore also examine the possible directions we could take to improve the situation, looking at solutions in the areas of psychology and behavioral conditioning, social engineering through nudging techniques, the development of e-democracy movements, and the implementation of public policy. -- Provided by publisher.

Data has become a social and political issue because of its capacity to reconfigure relationships between states, subjects, and citizens. This book explores how data has acquired such an important capacity and examines how critical interventions in its uses in both theory and practice are possible. Data and politics are now inseparable: data is not only shaping our social relations, preferences and life chances but our very democracies. Expert international contributors consider political questions about data and the ways it provokes subjects to govern themselves by making rights claims. Concerned with the things (infrastructures of servers, devices, and cables) and language (code, programming, and algorithms) that make up cyberspace, this book demonstrates that without understanding these conditions of possibility it is impossible to intervene in or to shape data politics. Aimed at academics and postgraduate students interested in political aspects of data, this volume will also be of interest to experts in the fields of internet studies, international studies, Big Data, digital social sciences and humanities. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.routledge.com/Data-Politics-Worlds-Subjects-Rights/Bigo-Isin-Ruppert/p/book/9781138053267, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

America's most popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals how the government and corporate America misuse our personal data and shows how we can reclaim our privacy. Most Americans are worried about how companies like Facebook invade their privacy and harvest their data, but many people don't fully understand the details of how their information is being adapted and misused. In this thought-provoking and accessible book, Thom Hartmann reveals exactly how the government and corporations are tracking our every online move and using our data to buy elections, employ social control, and monetize our lives. Hartmann uses extensive, vivid examples to highlight the consequences of Big Data on all aspects of our lives. He traces the history of surveillance and social control, looking back to how Big Brother invented whiteness to keep order and how surveillance began to be employed as a way to modify behavior. As he states, "The goal of those who violate privacy and use surveillance is almost always social control and behavior modification." Along with covering the history, Hartmann shows how we got to where we are today, how China--with its new Social Credit System--serves as a warning, and how we can and must avoid a similarly dystopian future. By delving into the Constitutional right to privacy, Hartmann reminds us of our civil right and shows how we can restore it.

Scholars from across law and internet and media studies examine the human rights implications of today's platform society. Today such companies as Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter play an increasingly important role in how users form and express opinions, encounter information, debate, disagree, mobilize, and maintain their privacy. What are the human rights implications of an online domain managed by privately owned platforms? According to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted by the UN Human Right Council in 2011, businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights and to carry out human rights due diligence. But this goal is dependent on the willingness of states to encode such norms into business regulations and of companies to comply. In this volume, contributors from across law and internet and media studies examine the state of human rights in today's platform society. The contributors consider the "datafication" of society, including the economic model of data extraction and the conceptualization of privacy. They examine online advertising, content moderation, corporate storytelling around human rights, and other platform practices. Finally, they discuss the relationship between human rights law and private actors, addressing such issues as private companies' human rights responsibilities and content regulation. Contributors Anja Bechmann, Fernando Bermejo, Agnès Callamard, Mikkel Flyverbom, Rikke Frank Jørgensen, Molly K. Land, Tarlach McGonagle, Jens-Erik Mai, Joris van Hoboken, Glen Whelan, Jillian C. York, Shoshana Zuboff, Ethan Zuckerman Open access edition published with generous support from Knowledge Unlatched and the Danish Council for Independent Research.