Question:

You've read and viewed a lot about data and privacy in technology in general and educational technology specifically. What stands out to you? Use one or more of the activities you explored to inspire Blog Post #2.

 

My response:

Turnitin is an online tool that has a plagiarism detection service to evaluate whether a piece of work is similar to other works in its database. I have personally used this platform several times before. I found it is a very useful tool to validate my academic integrity. However, after I have finished reading “A guide for resisting edtech: the case against turnitin”, I realized that how turnitin uses our work is indeed very critical to us. Privacy on academic performance is an issue that I have never thought of before, assuming a trusted platform would not use my work in other usages. In the article, the authors have illustrated the dilemma of submitting work online through turnitin. Turnitin has been renowned to cooperate with educational institutions to ensure students’ works are original and non-plagiarized. However, according to Turnitin’s terms of services, “If You submit a paper or other content in connection with the Services, You hereby grant to Turnitin, its affiliates, vendors, service providers, and licensors a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable license to use such papers, as well as feedback and results, for the limited purposes of a) providing the Services, and b) for improving the quality of the Services generally.” (Morris & Stommel, 2018), we, turnitin users, do not possess the full right of our own work. The authors have criticized that Turnitin has “create a hostile environment” in classrooms, “undermine students’ authority” over their own work, and violate student privacy”(Morris & Stommel, 2018). I am not saying that we should stop using turnitin immediately, but rather, we should suggest turnitin to amendment their TOS, in order to take away the confusion from users and other stakeholders.

In fact, apart from the privacy on academic integrity, the privacy on personal info is also utmost important to society. Take Facebook as an example, there was a personal information leak happened in 2018. Since Facebook requested all Facebook users the authority to exploit their private information, Facebook has the rights to sell or reuse all personal info that Facebook has collected, without notice to users. That is a possible reason why Facebook ads were successful: they exploited users’ info to generate possible products and services that may appeal to a specific group of people using Facebook algorithm. However, while Facebook is making profits from users, it has failed to protect their users. A software glitch in Facebook system was found and attacked by hackers in 2018.  According to The New York Times, this incident has exposed more than 50 millions users’ info, including the top executives, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, on the internet (Isaac & Frenkel, 2018). To avoid the same pitfall in the future, Facebook has changed their TOS, explicitly stating that “We don’t sell your personal data to advertisers, and we don’t share information that directly identifies you (such as your name, email address or other contact information) with advertisers unless you give us specific permission.”(Facebook, 2019). In addition, Facebook has improved their security system to minimize the eventuality in the future.

To summarize, Turnitin, as a trusted platform that has been used internationally, should take extra caution in the TOS.

 

Reference：

Facebook official website(2019). Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php

Isaac,M., & Frenkel, S. (2018). Facebook Security Breach Exposes Accounts of 50 Million Users. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/technology/facebook-hack-data-breach.html

Morris, S. M., & Stommel, J. (2018). A Guide for Resisting Edtech: The Case Against Turnitin. An Urgency of Teachers. Retrieved from: https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com/chapter/a-guide-for-resisting-edtech-the-case-against-turnitin/