Blurts

Studies that show reading from a device and taking notes using a device have been quite influential among educators wanting learners to rely on traditional written materials and traditional handwritten notes. I have always wondered if these studies would replicate especially once learners with daily experience using technology began to move through the educational system.

A soon to be published study of using laptops to take notes will be published this summer in Psychological Science replicating a 2014 study by Mueller and Oppenheimer arguing students would be better off taking notes with paper and pencil rather than using a laptop. As summarized in the following paragraph quoted from this study, this is not what the authors found in their replication study.

“Our direct replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1 showed that,relative to longhand note-taking, laptop note-taking boosted word count and verbatim overlap with lecture content, but it did not reduce knowledge of the lecture material after a brief delay with no opportunity to study. Results, thus, did not support the idea that longhand note-taking improves performance via better encoding of information.” [manuscript can be found online]

The events of the week have been troubling and raise serious questions about the effectiveness of our government and some of those in political offices. For me, an interesting side issue stemming from the complaints of politicians regarding actions taken by social media companies has been claims of violations of free speech. Such accusations first surfaced with Twitter attaching disclaimers to tweets from President Trump related to the election. Trump’s claims were visible, but followed by a comment such as “this claim is unsubstantiated”. Complaints only intensified when President Trump and others were banned from multiple social media platforms following statements claimed to incite the riot that saw the breaching of the U.S. Capitol by a mob.

Here is a way of thinking I often find useful. There is often an important distinction between terms as used in everyday speech and terms having an official meaning. Is free speech such a term? If so, do people complaining about a situation involving “free speech” and assuming a formal meaning (say a constitutional or other legal concept) confuse the formal meaning with some personal notion of freedom? I have been trying to figure this out.

Here are some thoughts on free speech and social media based on my review of a few sources. I provide links to a NYTime article and an analysis from the Congressional Research Service used as my sources.

While multiple precedents may bear on the issue, two, in particular, have received the most recent attention – the First Amendment to the Constitution and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The freedoms described in the First Amendment are about freedoms “the government” cannot deny. The amendment does not concern itself with decisions made by businesses or organizations. In fact, when President Trump tried to block citizens from access to his Twitter account this was denied on legal challenge because it was decided he was using Twitter for a government function. Likewise, it can be argued that someone acting as a government representative trying to control what a media site distributes would be violating the media service’s freedom of speech. So, it would be Twitter or Facebook who could complain about the government attempting to challenge their right to free speech.

Section 230 argues that social media services are not publishers and hence are not libel for content posted by contributors AND allows these services to act “in good faith” to protect users from objectionable material contributors have attempted to post. It is this second protection that many seem not to notice.

I am guessing the First amendment is here to stay. Section 230 is likely to be challenged in the future as some argue that making decisions about content appropriateness and prioritizing the appearance of content based on algorithms amount to publishing. Section 230 is being questioned by both the left and right. Clearly, the protections afforded social media services have resulted in tremendous economic benefits. Social sites functioning at the size of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook would find it difficult to quickly locate, interpret, and delete content meeting what are vague definitions of decency and danger. The Pew Research Center in 2018 found that 68% of U.S. adults use Facebook, 35% use Instagram, and 24% report using Twitter. That is just in this country. Understand that social media companies could be challenged both by those viewing things they did not like and by those having content they had worked on being taken down for what they might regard as trivial reasons. Others also argue that even though moderation would be a difficult challenge likely to result in suits no matter how much effort was expended, that it would be the larger companies most able to adjust or pay the legal costs of fighting complaints and smaller startups would simply be unable to take on such challenges.

So, free speech in a formal sense is not an appropriate way to understand the present situation. As far as what social media companies could do, there are other arguments to consider. At one point, I thought Zuckerberg was claiming that allowing the President and supporters to post unquestionably false information was in fact useful because it revealed something useful to the general public. Obviously, he has reversed this position because of the dangerous consequences we all have witnessed this past week.

Congressional Research Service – Free speech and the regulation of social media content.

NYTimes – Can Twitter legally bar Trump? The first amendment says yes.

There is a trend I often see recently. Problems I think about (e.g., Section 230, social media, surveillance capitalism) defy simple solutions yet this is what too many seem to propose.

Here is an example. Google proposes that it is going to block third party cookies in the chrome browser. I have proposed the same thing. There are already ways to do this with extensions to browsers. A third party cookie means that information that can be derived from your visit to a particular web site is sent via cookie to a web service not responsible for the site you are using. So, for example, you search for something on Amazon and see ads for what you were looking at on a different site. In my way of thinking, I should view ads from sites I visit because I am typically using that site at no cost. I am trading my attention to the ads on that site for the free use of the site. The companies responsible for the ads are paying for the service I am using rather than me. However, I don’t feel an obligation to other sites for this information collected from my attention.

Regulators in the U.K. are upset with the Google plan because by not allowing third-party cookies Google is limiting the opportunities of small companies to benefit from Google’s dominant market share. I guess I can see this argument from the perspective of a small company unable to generate the attention paid to Google services, but not from the perspective of a consumer who in a way is being asked to fund services they might not use.

I see no way out of such complex issues unless the entire ad model is abandoned and I don’t see this happening.

This is probably a day late, but social media has raised the issue of what educators might say to their students following the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Educators often struggle with how to address issues involving politics, but there are some situation that cannot be ignored because students are looking for guidance and reassurance.

EdWeek has responded quickly and made an effort to suggest resources educators might want to review. This would certainly be a place to start.