Wow – I had never considered the privacy concerns of plagiarism / cheating detection software. Perhaps that is because, as a student, I have not yet been subject to them, but even still, being a student, you’re rather expected to take such measures in stride rather than putting up a serious protest. I suppose that is even more concerning.

Screening Surveillance’s videos do an excellent job of exploring the broader implications of such privacy-encroaching policies, as does Jim Luke in his blog post That’s No Plagiarism Checker. The latter alluded to the risk for such technologies to pave the way for social credit systems in higher education institutions and more broadly, society, and the former illustrated this exact result happening while raising the obvious questions in my mind – is this level of social policing okay? Are we comfortable heading in this direction?

Wonder – I wouldn’t say that I am comfortable with the level of surveillance on social platforms today. To answer the above questions, no, I don’t believe social policing to the point of regular snitching on others is an acceptable direction for society to be heading towards. Living in such a society seems dangerously comparable to life in East Germany post world war II. Do we really want to be weaponized against one another by social media?

To put this into the context of our chosen group project platform, Facebook, I think surveillance concerns are present here moreso than ever before. In recent years, Facebook has been in the crosshairs more than anyone else for their data collection and handling policies. I do not feel comfortable knowing that my online behaviours are being actively commoditized and sold to interested companies. This is one reason I have reduced my activity on Facebook. It is clear others are doing the same as the company struggles to retain technical talent amid the ongoing exodus of employees and users from it’s platform.

Luke, J. (2019, March 12). That’s No Plagiarism Checker. Retrieved March 6, 2022, from https://econproph.com/2019/03/12/thats-no-plagiarism-checker/.

Screening Surveillance (2022, February 16). #tresdancing [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUivOlVpcWA.