Speakers: Jennifer Hill
Abstract: There is a war a raging in our cyberworld and it is time for you to join the resistance. Cambridge Analytica stealing Facebook user’s data, white supremacists getting verified on Twitter, and child pornography on Instagram. The list of atrocities continues. We as technologists know the inner workings of social media platforms more than anybody. We see the hypocrisy and the evil of social media platforms in a way that most people do not. It is time for us to awaken from our passivity and take a stance against our corporate social media overlords. Weaponizing Your Website will give you ideas, or ammunition, to fight against our broken social media world. This bootcamp will include learning how to utilize the strongest weapons in your stockpile; your voice and your website. With me, Jenn Hill, a University of Mary Washington student, at the helm I will prepare you for taking up arms and battling the corporate social media tyrants.
My Notes
tl;dr: Social media is killing the personal website.
Hill argues that we need to become less reliant on social media by using our own websites to host our voice. This ties into the POSE (publish once, syndicate everywhere) idea that Jim and the Domains community has been pushing.
Avowedly ironic twitter embed:
In Q&A: what kind of reception do you get for this message? Hill said that freshman in digital identity workshops take FaceBook and other social media at face value. It takes work to help students see the ways in which their data is being sucked up.
I didn’t get a chance to ask, but I’d like to hear more about the differential impact of having a student like Jennifer advocate for students to make their own web spaces as opposed to having staff or faculty make the same types of arguments. I really like the model UMW is using with their students, and I would love to see some discussion / analysis of their peer-to-peer work.
