FAKE NEWS
An unavoidable cost for the furtherance of Facebook’s advertising dominance? Frankly speaking, Facebook has been on the receiving end of a lot of flack from Congress, world media, and the occasional law student for their (unintentional?) propagation of deliberately false information during the 2016 US election cycle and all of the claims of foreign meddling […]
Question of the Week (Class 5): Will the “Singularity” be achieved by the year 2065?
The Singularity (AKA) the technological singularity is defined by Wikipedia as “the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization. According to this hypothesis, an upgradable intelligent agent (such as a computer running software-based artificial general intelligence) would enter a “runaway reaction” of self-improvement cycles, with each […]
News of the Week; January 24, 2018
MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY Bell Canada, et al. v. Attorney General of Canada (Motion to Stay CRTC Decision Denied, January 24, 2018) Vice’s Canadian cable TV channel is going off the air, after low ratings and reported losses for the $100 million joint venture Mozilla, Consumer Groups Sue The FCC For Its Attack On […]
Legislative “should”s
Last week we touch on the seemingly unusual wording of section 3(1) of the Broadcasting Act which contains the word should in several critical places. One specific issue we touch on was the potential for subsection (g): (the programming originated by broadcasting undertakings should be of high standard;) to be used to regulate the fake […]
Super Bowl Ads – The Controversies Continue
Beyond the issue of Superbowl ad substitutions impacting Canadian society – there is still a constant controversy when it comes to the Superbowl: sexist Superbowl ads. http://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/super-bowl-where-women-ads-metoo/311907/ The above article highlights this issue as it takes into consideration how the Superbowl, being one of the highest watched sports games of the year plays a huge […]
Are you being tracked?
It has recently been reported this week that a Fitness Tracking app, Strava, is able to display locations of American military bases from Syria to Afghanistan due to the use of Fitbits by American soldiers when exercising. The bases are even more prominent on the tracking app because they are in deserted areas where no […]
More on Net Neutrality!
How timely with the Grammy’s tonight to discuss net neutrality! To be honest, I had heard a lot of buzz about it for some time now, but didn’t really know what it was. I found the Burger King experiment/explanation very accessible and fun! I also found the following link very helpful to grasp the concept […]
A clear explanation of (parts of) Net Neutrality from Burger King
As we will see later in the course “net neutrality” is a concept that has multiple meanings. Many of its frequently contested interpretations are projected McGufins that communications activists, pundits, regulators, and lawyers chase around in concentric spirals of ever deepening confusion. Into the fray (of all corporate persons) comes Burger King who brilliantly and […]
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