Month: October 2020

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas and changed the course of history forever. In this blog post, I will present this historical event as if it occurred on modern-day social media.

TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJahnnju/

*Note: I also chose to paint Columbus in a negative light, not glorifying him in the way that many historians do.

In the Age of Exploration, Spain was the main contender in the fight for riches and spreading Catholicism around Asia and Africa. The land route to Asia was long and strenuous, so sailors began to take ships around the tip of Africa to get there. Columbus, a navigator, sought to sail west around the Atlantic instead of having to sail around Africa to get to Asia. He had to find someone to fund his expedition, and after being denied by Portugal and England, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain agreed to.

Columbus stumbled upon the Bahamian islands by accident, thinking it was the East Indies, and quickly decided that the people living there were weak enough to take over, even after they showed him kindness and traded with them. His personal journal from 1492 states “They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things”.

Columbus established a settlement on Hispaniola, and enslaved many people, sending a present of 500 slaves to Isabella, who was terrified. He returned to the Americas several times until he was arrested for decimating and enslaving the Taino population. His journal describes of this experience “With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want”.

Columbus died in 1506 after returning from his final trip to the Americas. He is often remembered as a hero for Spain and the person that led to America’s great success as a colony, but we need to rewrite this narrative. His “Columbian Exchange” took people and goods, and gave them in return disease and devastation. We must remember the indigenous people that lost their land and homes to him.

This assignment reminded me of the many readings we have done in class about scholarship expanding online, but specifically “In Public: The Shifting Consequences of Twitter Scholarship”. Obviously, my post is more of a humorous version of this, but the way that students and scholars can learn and spread knowledge is changing rapidly. I gave a brief synopsis of the story of Columbus stumbling upon the Bahamas in a few short tweets, so why shouldn’t researchers be able to post their findings on Twitter for the rest of the world to read and comment on?

References:

https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/christopher-columbus

“In Public: The Shifting Consequences of Twitter Scholarship.”

Snapchat collects typical data that you provide them upfront, such as your name, username, password, email address, phone number, and date of birth. They can share information such as your name, username, Snapcode and profile pictures with their business partners and affiliates, as well. If you use “commerce services”, you may provide your credit or debit information and also the account connected. They also see our Snaps and Chats, so be cognizant that they can see everything we send. They collect data regarding how we interact with certain ads or filters, and any custom stickers that we make. They collect information about the device we use Snapchat on, such as what other apps we have installed, our IP address, network connections, and location. Even as I am viewing their privacy policy, they can access what websites I went to before and after theirs. They collect and disperse information about us between third parties and advertisers, as well. They basically use all this information to tailor ads to us specifically, and improve their services. They have a section in the policy that says that you may opt out of certain information services, but then say that you may use “full functionality” when you do this. 

Reading the privacy policy made me think back to the article read called “Policy Matter Now and in the Future”. One of the quoutes from this article particularly struck me: “Even as you read this, data about you is being collected, packaged, shipped and sold all over the world”. Everything we do online can be monitored and collected somehow, because of the fine-print of policies we agree to. Snapchat “collects, packages, and ships” our information to advertisers and business affiliates.

I interviewed my roommate about Snapchat’s privacy policy to get a teenager’s perspective on the use of our information.

"Ok, so I have here with me my roommate Laney, Laney do you use Snapchat?"

"Yes"

"And so, I had you read the privacy policy for Snapchat, right?"

"Yes"

"Did anything shock you when you read it?"

"Just that they could take information like after we're on the app, like from our phones"

"And did anything not surprise you? Like did you know Snapchat did any of this?"

"I kind of figured that they were using our information, I feel like a lot of social media websites do that, so that wasn't shocking, just that after we're on the app that they can track what we're doing"

"So they do lay out an option to opt out of certain information services, do you think you'll do this after reading the privacy policy?"

"Probably, I feel like it's a little bit of an invasion of privacy, though I know most social media websites probably do the same things"

"And do you think you'll change the things that you send over Snapchat after reading the privacy policy?"

"I don't really send anything over Snapchat that I really care if they see, so probably not."

"Ok, thank you!"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8755461511000673

https://www.snap.com/en-US/privacy/privacy-policy