Facebook Watches Teens Online As They Prep for College – The Markup
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An investigation by The Markup found Meta’s pixel tracking students from kindergarten to college

An investigation by the media organization The Markup found the pixel by Facebook and Instagram-parent Meta on dozens of popular websites targeting kids from kindergarten to college, including sites that students are all but required to use if they want to participate in school activities or apply to college.

On some level, that’s not a surprise: tracking tools like the pixel are so widespread that intensive tracking is almost the status quo. You could make the argument that these educational sites are “just the same as any other site,” said Marshini Chetty, associate professor of computer science at the University of Chicago.

But dealing with kids raises bigger questions about tracking on the web. “Why is there the Meta Pixel? Why are there session recorders?” she said. “What is the place of that on these sites?”

  • meseek #2982
    8•7 months ago

    Samsung has prep courses that funnel kids from high school into university where they come out with a job. It’s designed to basically fuel Samsung’s employee head count year after year.

    Some ten years ago, they swept graduates and through them into rooms with dangerous chemicals. With nothing more than a mask.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Promise

    But it pretty much the same here in NA. All of my computer classes were Microsoft heavy. I mean intro Computers spent a third of the course on Microsoft Office ffs.

    Companies have educational institutions under their thumb and have for decades.

    • @DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
      1•7 months ago

      Some ten years ago, they swept graduates and through them into rooms with dangerous chemicals. With nothing more than a mask.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Promise

      Not saying this isn’t an indictment of Samsung’s terrible treatment of its workers - it definitely is - but not sure how this relates to the core point of the OP?

      But it pretty much the same here in NA. All of my computer classes were Microsoft heavy. I mean intro Computers spent a third of the course on Microsoft Office ffs.

      Big Tech, in general, has been doing this for decades. I’ve been interviewing networking graduates for many years now, and all they can (mostly) parrot to me is Cisco-drivel. But that’s been (mostly) appropriate for the roles I’ve recruited for.

      Microsoft Office (M365, really) is the proxy standard for enterprises when it comes to choice of productivity suite; directory/authentication; and/or UC. Sure, there are other options, but enterprise IT is generally influenced by where their biggest spend is, or costs that can be avoided. I’ve seen some really shitty decisions made, to put cloud “serverless” hosting with Azure, just because the org wants to dodge a ginormous SQL client CAL bill for self-hosted apps and data.

      The real question we need to ask ourselves is if we’re letting the tail wag the dog here.

      Are we teaching our grads Big Tech because that’s the skills that are most in demand, or are we letting Big Tech drive education agenda?

      Interesting quewtion to ponder…