3 ms·

> Which career paths? I imagine "not getting banned from Twitter" is an important skill to have for any job that requires twitter. Well this is moving the goal

by skohan 5y ago

> Which career paths? I imagine "not getting banned from Twitter" is an important skill to have for any job that requires twitter. Well this is moving the goal-posts isn't it? The comment I responded to said that the effect of being denied access to a certain social media platform is overstated. I would argue for media professionals it's basically a requirement. > That's absurd and a failure on the university's part. What country was this in. This was a masters program in Germany

chriswarbo 5y ago
> This was a masters program in Germany Witholding access to course materials, unless a student enters a contract/relationship with a third-party (Facebook or otherwise), is coersion. I would certainly kick up a fuss: start politely with those running the course (who probably didn't give it much thought); go up the chain as necessary. At each step, make sure the focus remains on the coersion: the University is retroactively adding terms (e.g. whatever is in Facebook's policies) to the contracts agreed during enrollment. It is threatening to impose penalties (e.g. lost marks) on those who don't accept such unilateral changes. Do not allow the issue to get derailed into tangential concerns, especially money (e.g. price of the service, or provision of equipment/connections, etc.). Those things could be solved by signing a cheque; but would not address the real problem. If concrete reasons is really needed, there are a bunch to choose from that aren't easily solved (and are not under the University's control): for Facebook/Meta there are a whole bunch, from real name requirements, privacy concerns, non-consentual psychology experiments, etc. Personally I would just say I find the company, their products and their business practices unethical. (I had a similar experience when my Physics course tried to make me use Microsoft Excel)
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by skohan 5y ago

chriswarbo 5y ago

> This was a masters program in Germany Witholding access to course materials, unless a student enters a contract/relationship with a third-party (Facebook or otherwise), is coersion. I would certainly kick up a fuss: start politely with those running the course (who probably didn't give it much thought); go up the chain as necessary. At each step, make sure the focus remains on the coersion: the University is retroactively adding terms (e.g. whatever is in Facebook's policies) to the contracts agreed during enrollment. It is threatening to impose penalties (e.g. lost marks) on those who don't accept such unilateral changes. Do not allow the issue to get derailed into tangential concerns, especially money (e.g. price of the service, or provision of equipment/connections, etc.). Those things could be solved by signing a cheque; but would not address the real problem. If concrete reasons is really needed, there are a bunch to choose from that aren't easily solved (and are not under the University's control): for Facebook/Meta there are a whole bunch, from real name requirements, privacy concerns, non-consentual psychology experiments, etc. Personally I would just say I find the company, their products and their business practices unethical. (I had a similar experience when my Physics course tried to make me use Microsoft Excel)

deleted 5y ago

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