Privacy

 Privacy in the Digital Age

Before watching the TED Talks about privacy, I knew that companies collected information about me online. However, I never really thought about how much information they could actually collect or what they could do with it.

Like most college students, I use my phone constantly. I use social media, search things on Google, watch videos, shop online, and communicate with friends. All of these activities can leave behind information about who I am and what I am interested in. 

One TED Talk that stood out to me was Gary Kovacs' Tracking Our Online Trackers. Kovacs explains how websites can track people as they move around the internet, often without them realizing how much information is being collected (Kovacs, 2012).

This immediately made me think about targeted advertisements. There have been plenty of times when I have searched for a product and then started seeing advertisements for that exact product on Instagram or other websites. I always knew there was some kind of tracking involved, but I did not realize how widespread online tracking could be.

Another TED Talk that caught my attention was Jen Goldbeck's How Surveillance Tech Erodes Your Privacy. Golbeck (2026) discusses how modern technology can allow companies and governments to collect information about people's movements, searches, habits, and everyday behaviors.

That is probably the part that freaked me out the most. There is a difference between choosing to post something publicly and having information collected about you in the background. Most people probably do not even realize how much data they create just by using their phones normally.

These privacy issues affect my friends, family, and me because we all rely heavily on technology. Even someone who does not post much on social media can still have a large digital footprint through apps, websites, online purchases, and other services.

I also think it is unrealistic to say that people should simply read every privacy policy before using an app. Most privacy policies are extremely long and complicated. People often click "accept" because they want to use the service, not because they fully understand everything they are agreeing to.

I think the government should create stricter and clearer rules about digital privacy. Companies should have to clearly explain what information they collect, why they collect it, how long they keep it, and whether they share or sell it to other organizations.

People should also have more control over their own information. It should be easier to tell a company that you do not want certain information collected or that you want your information deleted.

At the same time, there are things we can do ourselves to improve our privacy. We can check our privacy settings, limit unnecessary app permissions, use strong and unique passwords, and turn on multi-factor authentication. 

We should also think more carefully before giving apps access to our location, contacts, microphone, or camera. An app asking for permission does not necessarily mean we need to give it permission.

Overall, these TED Talks changed the way I think about privacy. What concerns me most is not just the information I intentionally put online. It is all the information that can be collected without me really thinking about it.

Technology makes our lives easier in so many ways, but that convenience should not mean completely giving up our privacy. I think individuals need to become more aware of their digital footprints, while companies and governments need to be held accountable for how they collect and use personal information.

References

Golbeck, J. (2026, June). How surveillance tech erodes your privacy [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/jen_golbeck_how_surveillance_tech_erodes_your_privacy

Kovacs, G. (2012, February). Tracking our online trackers [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/gary_kovacs_tracking_our_online_trackers

Anti-War Post

 

Where Did All the Antiwar Voices Go?

Before this week, I had never heard of Antiwar.com or The American Conservative. I'm a journalism student. I read the news every day for class and follow a bunch of news accounts on TikTok and Instagram, and I still had no idea these sites existed.

When I opened Antiwar.com, the headlines were stuff I barely see anywhere else: how the Pentagon counts (and leaves out) troops killed in war, a piece on how war propaganda justifies conscription, and warnings from Yemen's Ansar Allah about the U.S. entering another war. The American Conservative runs a daily "Iran War Day 208" update. Day 208. I knew there was conflict with Iran, but seeing a running count made me realize how normal it has become to not think about it. What surprised me most was that one of these sites is openly conservative, and the other brings together writers from the left and the libertarian right. Antiwar views don't belong to one party, which makes it even weirder that they get so little airtime.antiwar+1

So why do we have to go looking for these voices? I think there are a few reasons.

First, mainstream news depends on access. War reporters rely on the Pentagon, the White House, and "senior officials" for information. If you keep calling out the people who give you your sources, those sources can stop calling back. So coverage ends up framed the way officials frame it: strikes, targets, strategy. It's rarely framed as "should we even be doing this?"

Anti-War Propaganda (1940)

Second, money. Big networks are owned by huge corporations, and they need advertisers and ratings. War coverage with cool graphics and dramatic footage gets views. A commentator questioning the whole premise of a war is less exciting, and it can be seen as "unpatriotic," which scares off audiences and sponsors. Much of the cable news "expert" pool is retired generals or think-tank people, and some have ties to defense contractors.

Third, the algorithm. Even on social media, where you'd think anyone can be heard, platforms push what's already popular. Smaller independent sites don't have huge marketing budgets, so they get buried unless you go searching.

This connects directly to what we learned about the Progressive Era. During World War I, people like Eugene Debs were thrown in jail just for speaking out against the war and the draft. In Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court said antiwar leaflets could be punished because they created a "clear and present danger." But later that same year, in Abrams v. United States, Justice Holmes dissented and argued for what became known as the "marketplace of ideas," the idea that the best test of truth is letting ideas compete openly. That dissent helped build the modern First Amendment we have today.

Today, nobody is getting arrested for writing on Antiwar.com. The government isn't banning these views like it did in 1918. But if those voices never make it onto the big platforms, is the marketplace of ideas actually working? Having the legal right to speak doesn't mean much if hardly anyone hears you. It's less about censorship and more about who gets the microphone.

As someone who wants to go into broadcast journalism, this is a little uncomfortable to think about, because I'm going to be part of the system that decides which voices get airtime. I don't think every antiwar argument is automatically right, and it's smart to fact-check these sites just like any other source. But the public deserves to hear the full debate, especially when lives are on the line. Dissent is supposed to be part of the conversation, not something you have to dig for.

Image 1 - https://yalealumnimagazine.org/articles/4331-the-forgotten-antiwar-movement 

8 Values of Free Expression

 

Reflecting on the Eight Values of Free Expression

When we first went over the eight values of free expression — the marketplace of ideas, participation in self-government, stable change, individual self-fulfillment, checking government power, promoting tolerance, promoting innovation, and protecting dissent, I'll be honest, they kind of blurred together. They sounded like the type of list you memorize for an exam and forget by Friday. But the longer I sat with them, the more I realized I've been living inside a few of them my whole life without having the vocabulary for it.

The one that hits me hardest is individual self-fulfillment. As a broadcast journalism major, basically everything I make is me figuring out who I am out loud. Scripts, captions, podcast episodes, that one commercial I re-edited nine times. Free expression, for me, isn't only about protecting political speech at a podium — it's about the ordinary, slightly cringe process of becoming a person through the stuff you create. If I couldn't post, write, or record freely, I don't think I'd know myself as well as I do.

Right behind that is checking government power, which feels less personal and more like the reason my future job exists. Journalism only works if somebody's allowed to be annoying to people in charge.

Here's where second-level thinking kicks in for me. It's easy to say "social media is free speech" and stop there. But which theory actually explains what's happening on our feeds?

I keep coming back to the marketplace of ideas — and how algorithms complicate it. The classic theory assumes that if all ideas compete openly, truth eventually wins. But TikTok and Instagram aren't open marketplaces; they're curated ones. An algorithm decides which "stalls" I ever walk past. That's not censorship in the traditional sense, but it does mean my marketplace looks nothing like my roommate's.

Which is why it caught my attention that Australia's government moved to let social media users opt out of algorithmic feeds, a plan the White House reportedly criticized and that critics themselves argue could curtail free speech. I find that genuinely hard. Is regulating the algorithm protecting the marketplace, or interfering with it? Second-level thinking means admitting both answers have a real argument.

Arrests of Anti-Royal protestors spur free speech debate

Then there's protecting dissent, which shows up in a story I can't stop thinking about: the Free Speech Union reported that more than 62,000 people in the UK were arrested for "speech offences" over five years, including for social media posts, based on Big Brother Watch's FOI findings. Whatever you think about offensive posts, this reminds us that the line between "harmful speech" and "unpopular speech" is drawn by whoever's holding the pen.

The theories aren't just historical trivia. They're competing arguments about what speech is for — and every time I open my phone, I'm participating in that argument whether I mean to or not. Tolerance theory says the discomfort is the point. I'm still deciding if I believe that, which honestly feels like the correct place to be right now.