Is Cloaking easy to spot?

This week in class we discussed cloaked websites and cyber-racism. From the article, we learned that there is a wide-range of cloaking websites, from political cloaking to corporate. There are also different levels of cloaking in which the website may either openly identify itself and its agenda or it could be more complicated, in which the website might operate out of different countries or lie about its broadcasting. During our discussion, I tried to think of a website that I may have come across that was cloaked. Then I started to think, would I even know if a website I had visited was a cloaked website? I think in some cases it is fairly obvious, as we discussed in class, but in others it may not be as simple. Thinking back, I remember for a project in one of my classes, we had to look up websites that were Pro-Life, and those that were more informative on reproductive health and Pro-Choice. I remember coming across one website called www.teenbreaks.com, that seemed to be Pro-Choice from the outside. This was a website for teens that had advice and information on issues ranging from relationships and sexual abuse to abortion and pregnancy. From just the home page, it looked to me like it was about sexual health and issues relating to it. It did not seem to be taking a Pro-Life stance whatsoever, nor did it seem to be promoting absitence. However, one of the links was named "sex is awesome" and when you click on it, the word UNLESS is the first bolded image on the page, followed by a list of reasons why you should wait to have sex. The website also has pregnancy and abortion links. In the pregnancy link, there is useful information, advice and self-help numbers to call, while in the abortion section, there are a number of cons against abortion as well as long-term effects and hardly any information. There are hundreds of success stories from girls who decided to keep their children while the stories of girls who had abortions are all filled with regret. Although I did not recognize it at the time, this was clearly a cloaked website, and was very heavily pro-life. At the outset, one might not see that this website has a hidden agenda, but as you browse the links, it is clear. Before realizing this website was cloaked, I thought I would have an easy time at recognizing a cloaked website when I saw one. However, teenbreaks.com prooved that its not as easy as it looks.

CyberBullies

In class this week, we watched numerous videos on Cyber-Bullying. Teens and Tweens today have so much access to technology, it becomes something that they can abuse. It has become part of their social norm, and they use it to interact with each other in any way that they can, whether it be to talk online, post pictures of one another or publicly humiliate each other. Bullying is something that has gone on forever, but now that it has expanded onto the internet, it has become dangerous. Kids are being tortured online, and this torture has led to horrible tragedies such as suicides. One ad that we watched in class that stood out to me was the ad about the girl who got up on stage and started to bad-mouth another girl in the audience. The premise was that if you wouldn't say something to someone's face, then do not say it about them online. This ad reminded me of a website that my 14 year old cousin first turned me on too. One day, on her facebook page, my cousin Nicole posted a website called www.formspring.com onto her status. I clicked on it and was amazed by what I saw. You can anonymously post whatever you want about this person, any kind of statement, question, fact, dirty joke, and the person whose formspring it is can answer. Although I wasn't impressed by this website, Nicole's formspring wasn't horrible. It was mostly posts by her friends with inside jokes or "your so pretty, where do you get your makeup" etc. But occasionally there would be the post "You and your friends are stuck up b*****s" or something of the sort, in which she responded with "Who is this?". This kind of website opens up a whole new realm of cyber-bullying. The fact that kids are willingly creating an open forum for their peers to bash them is scary. Nicole told me that she has seen worse on formspring than her own; kids writing terrible things about each other which spark rumors etc, and lead to even more bullying. According to Conway, I think that this kind of "terrorism" wouldn't be classified as use rather than misuse. It is not causing any kind of real disturbance besides the fact that it has left multiple teenage girls distraught about their social status's. However, it could lead to worse, which makes it a threat. These are the kinds of websites that should be more regulated. Cyber-bullying is worse enough as it is, and websites such as formspring only feed into it.

iPad or iBad?

This week's class topic involved internet democracy. Today specifically we talked about the question of whether the internet expands our horizons by allowing us to interact with those whom we do not share the same beliefs (which according to Sunstein, we don't) or whether sharing our views in common spaces with those who have similar beliefs as we do helps to build relationships and expand beliefs (as the echo chambers article states). This argument got me thinking about the iPad, and where it fits in with these two opposite viewpoints. Although the echo-chambers article does not specifically mention polarization, I would have to say that the concept of the iPad is more in tune with Sunstein's idea. You can personalize the entire thing to be exactly what you want. Your music, your homepage You can choose applications based on your interests. It also seems like a multi-tasking device. You can look at pictures, read a book, listen to music and check the score of a baseball game all in the same instant. This is only adding to our generation's ability to be able to multi-task. The fact that it is mobile and more readily accessible than a laptop makes the ability to multi-task even easier. You can use in on a train or in a restaurant. The iPad is said to be "changing the things we do everyday". However, the only way it could connect people is if they are comparing it with each other. It has become another victim of polarization, and is furthering Sunstein's view that we are not expanding our horizons enough.