Algorithmic Control

Access Permissions, Intellectual Property and the Content Control Industry

Prior to copyright, anyone could freely copy, adapt or sell other people's work. They planned to use this content for their own purposes, which meant that content creators had no intellectual property rights to their work. In comparison to today's date, where we are in a world revolving around intellectual property laws and the penalties that come with it.

The content control industry believes that a copyright protected environment allows authors to obtain and own their intellectual property. A world without copyright, on the other hand, would result in no new ideas, no innovations and no advancement in civilization. Authors would avoid posting content in the fear of others taking possession over their work and ideas.

The industry would be at a complete standstill today"

- Bill Gates

When two or more objects join together to form a new whole, this is known as convergence. Convergence, in terms of algorithmic control, can refer to the flow of material across media platforms, as well as the mergers and acquisitions of numerous media industries and shifting behaviour of media viewers. Products become a generative platform for promoting flow of material when considering the number of platforms/devices known as convergence. The generation of material, on the other hand, stops when open platforms become closed.

Privacy, Surveillance, and the Price of Content

When you were younger (or now) did you ever try searching your name up on google to see if you would come up? I did, (and again about 15 mins before writing this blog)

This is what came up...

My Instagram account and twitter account came up... With my Insta showing all my the statistics behind my account.

Another image that came up was a link to a cover lofi song I made from Frank Oceans - LOST.

Although my profiles may be public I still felt uneasy as to how it is open to the whole world. This makes me think about how much I value my privacy, data and patterns of behaviour of social media, especially if they are further used for advertising (which I will get more into when talking about web 3.0). The processes in the slow of content we create and share online such as, generative platforms and dialogic media, lead to the statement

"We are information generators... we generate content continuously."

The larger the contents the more flow and patterns to detect as advertising.

As users of social media, how do we know who is viewing our content we are sharing? How do we know where it is going? We don't.

That's the risk everyone is willing to take to be on these platforms. Everyone knows, once you post content on a social media platform, it then belongs to that network.

It's a scary place, the web. Be careful what you post otherwise you might get stuck in it.

Digital rights, Sovereignty and Web 3.0

Algorithmic control when it comes to a users data, is very discrete. When you first make an account, you agree to a Terms & Conditions claiming that you are fine with for e.g. Instagram, to own your data and legally create a profile of your interests (what you search up on Instagram, what you save, such as clothes or sports etc.) And then use this profile to send appropriate advertisements to your feed that you would be interested in. This is how businesses on Instagram make their money, through these algorithms.

Web 3.0 is the third generation of internet services for websites and applications that will focus on using a machine-based understanding of data to provide a data-driven and Semantic Web. The ultimate goal of Web 3.0 is to create more intelligent, connected and open websites.

Alexander s.Gillies. (2019). Web 3.0. Available: https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/Web-30#:~:text=Web%203.0%20is%20the%20third,intelligent%2C%20connected%20and%20open%20websites .. Last accessed 1/6.

I don't know about you, but the Web 3.0 seems scary... to me.

Will the Web 3.0 further benefit our lives? Taking our personal data for business and organizations uses... Yes it may be good for these enterprises but are we safe in it all? Will our data end up in the wrong hands? It's out of our control really.

Let me know your thoughts on it on my contact page where you can send me a email. I'd love to hear your thoughts!!

XOXO, Charli