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This is my final reflection on the second half of this module. I feel like I've gained a lot over the course of this module and I'm glad I had the opportunity to reflect on it properly:
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Over the course of this portfolio I’ve had to reflect a lot on my place online. After creating my LinkedIn account I had a strange wave of nostalgia even though I’ve never used it before. A lot of this I found came down to unfamiliarity with the atmosphere, environment and terms enforced by the structure and content of the site. LinkedIn maintains a professional environment and rewards content that aligns with this image and atmosphere. I initially contrasted it with Facebook, which it reminded me of in its design. This was a particularly stark contrast for me because I first joined Facebook as an 11 year old and have now joined LinkedIn as a 21 year old and I feel like it reflects my own maturity at each point in time to create a weirdly similar feeling around the way I interact with the internet. In general rather than wanting to see what my friends’ statuses are I’m more interested now in how the industry is doing and what possibilities there are for my future.

When I began working on the data analytics/visualisation section of the portfolio I found it somewhat demystifying of the whole process which I find is usually discussed in a similar way to how people would talk about horoscopes or weather forecasts. Similarly I found it nice to use intuitive data visualisation tools. My course involves using tools for research such as R studio, and I found it much more intuitive to use tools that achieve much of the same result and often more when focusing on social media that are designed to be usable and easy to navigate such as Piktogram (Aleksejeva, 2015).

I feel that this reflection has made me appreciate that I’m not just learning a directly transferrable list of skills for employment but rather being shown the entry point to any number of career possibilities involving the combinations of skills and techniques that appeal to me (Nations, 2020). However, that’s just the explicit uses of LinkedIn, beyond that there’s a whole world of possibilities from applying these skills directly to my LinkedIn account to cast a wider net in the professional world and identify myself as someone personally interested in these skills beyond just having learned them enough to graduate (Nations, 2020).

With all of this acknowledged my reflection wasn’t just limited to the possibilities in my future, as I mentioned before in regards to Facebook I’ve been reflecting on my past with the internet and my current choices in how I use it. A lot of the issues  I’ve had with the internet in recent years have been around privacy, transparency and predatory algorithms. This is why I chose to do my privacy policy around YouTube since I’ve been watching YouTube most days since primary school and they have a lot of data on me that they are fairly unrestrained in their use of (Google, 2023).

Over the years I’ve found myself watching more mature content than I would have before, but I’ve had less control over this with the release of “Youtube Shorts”, short videos that very easily catch your attention and gather a lot of information on your interests. I’ve realised how uneasy this makes me and tried to reflect this in my personal privacy policy by including a section on letting each user see their own data simply presented, because by its nature this content puts you in a state where you quickly forget how long you’ve been watching or what you’ve just watched, and I feel most people would have a different relationship with it if they were aware of the details of their relationship with it (Kennedy & Moss, 2015). I feel its design mimics the design of casinos with no clocks or windows and excessive stimulation, designed to keep you separated from your common sense. I feel like this is summed up well by Schull’s quote “The aim is not only to speed up play but to extend its duration”, also seen in its design similarities with gambling apps (Schull, 2005)(Schenwyn et. al, 2009).

While I was initially skeptical around how much reflection on this topic was necessary given how long I’ve been using the internet I found that the opposite was true, I had quite a few thoughts and opinions related to this topic and quite a lot of experience to mull over in the investigation of data and its role on social media, the exploration of a new social media and the questioning of a privacy policy whose terms I have been quietly accepting for a decade. Overall I feel that over the course of this portfolio and the module as a whole I’ve come to have a greater respect for my autonomy and appreciation for my place in the digital world.

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I found this to be a pretty fun exercise that helped me think about the way I interact with the internet and the boundaries I set with it. More than any other site I've got experience with YouTube and the way that works so a lot of my thoughts naturally led back to that, but in general it's been nice to reflect on what I would ideally like to see in a privacy policy and what I value in a medium.

My privacy policy below, based around Youtube.

Transparency is of immense importance to any content oriented digital platform. Transparency allows for an active dialogue both among users and content creators and between users and management regarding the needs and wants of communities in order to help growth and provide stability. Because of this the following are reported on a regular basis

-Moderation guidelines, updates and statistical breakdowns of the content that is most frequently removed.

-Including a review process in which reported inappropriate removals can be inspected and discussed providing clarity and dialogue to users whose content has been removed and guidelines on how to avoid this in the future

-Reports of the financial state of the site and breakdowns of income by content type and creator type among other factors intended to inform creators on what to expect from the site in the future.

-Including breakdowns of content viewership and average levels of income generated from different content styles, lengths and genres as well as a corporate mission statement for the site’s expected trajectory and aims for the next quarter.

Additionally to the transparency communications mentioned prior another priority of our company for our treatment of users is in the rights of users to ownership and determination of their own content.

-Users have full ownership of their own content and any use of the content not from the user (including for promotional purposes) must be preceded by explicit consent from the user. In cases where the user cannot be contacted or the account has been deactivated or abandoned consent may not be acquired and as such the content may not be used excluding cases of fair use as outlined in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Finally with explicit focus on non-contributive users steps will be taken to ensure the user is made aware of the impacts of excessive use of the site as well as a breakdown of user analytics including:

-Time spent on the site and viewing content

-Types of content most commonly watched

-What times the user most commonly watches content

-Notifications when the user has been using content for 2 hours or longer (excluding music) in the style of Netflix’s “Are You Still Watching?” feature

-This data may be used for advertising and content suggestion purposes, however this is optional and users will be prompted to give or reject permission for each of these uses individually.

Rationale:

The reasoning behind the aims and structure of this privacy policy is in prioritising user wellbeing and understanding of the nature of their relationship with the website with a particular focus on content creators as they are often central figures in communities. This privacy policy aims to maximise the healthy, rewarding or otherwise fulfilling aspects of the site, the particular focus on transparency for content creators is intended to simplify content creation and open the avenue for content creation to become a feasible, predictable and stable activity for those who wish to do it and encourage users who would otherwise be intimidated away by the more complicated aspects to engage comfortably with the site and for those more comfortable with the intricacies of social media management to create content informing other users on how to succeed as a content creator.

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I found the tutorials to be a pretty pleasant introduction to data visualisation and analytics, because of my course and general interests it mostly covered things I'd already researched independently but it was still nice to fill out the gaps in what I already knew

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I've been putting off making a LinkedIn for a while but it was pleasantly straightforward to make an account. It's a little sparse at the minute but that's more down to my lack of credentials than anything else, however it gives a nice feed from companies I'm interested in and is a nice place to start thinking about what I'd like for my career.

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I feel like this really neatly articulates how we can create an internet that we can all safely engage in that's designed to improve lives rather than just make profits. It'd be really nice to see this go somewhere.

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It's interesting to read this article because even though it's mostly concerned with how children understand privacy policies and what they're signing up to I also didn't realise that these are what the terms actually are or that they could be explained this simply.