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1,100 Schools Now Scan Social Media For Violent Students - and Alcohol Use (usatoday.com)
In the hunt for potential acts of student violence, "schools are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence-backed solutions," reports USA Today.
Bark Technologies, Gaggle.Net, and Securly Inc. are three companies that employ AI and machine learning to scan student emails, texts, documents, and in some cases, social media activity. They look for warning signs of cyber bullying, sexting, drug and alcohol use, depression, and to flag students who may pose a violent risk not only to themselves, but classmates. When potential problems are found, and depending on the severity, school administrators, parents -- and under the most extreme cases -- law enforcement officials, are alerted. In the fall of 2017, Bark ran a test pilot with 25 schools. "We found some pretty alarming issues, including a bombing and school shooting threat," says Bark chief parent officer, Titania Jordan....
The Bark product [which monitors more than 25 social media platforms] is free to schools in the U.S. for perpetuity. The company says it can afford to give the service away to schools, because of the money it makes from a version aimed at parents... Bark is currently used in more than 1,100 school districts, covering 2.6 million children. If it detects something that is considered exceedingly severe such as a child abduction or school shooting threat, the issue is escalated to the FBI. According to Jordan, Bark sends out between 35,000 and 55,000 alerts each day, many just instances of profanity. But 16 plausible school shootings have been reported to the FBI since Bark launched its school product last February, she says.
The article notes these solutions have three major limitations:
The Bark product [which monitors more than 25 social media platforms] is free to schools in the U.S. for perpetuity. The company says it can afford to give the service away to schools, because of the money it makes from a version aimed at parents... Bark is currently used in more than 1,100 school districts, covering 2.6 million children. If it detects something that is considered exceedingly severe such as a child abduction or school shooting threat, the issue is escalated to the FBI. According to Jordan, Bark sends out between 35,000 and 55,000 alerts each day, many just instances of profanity. But 16 plausible school shootings have been reported to the FBI since Bark launched its school product last February, she says.
The article notes these solutions have three major limitations:
- "A school can't police a student's smartphone or other devices outside the ones it issued, unless the student signed into a social media, or other account, using the email or credentials the school provided."
- "None of the companies USA TODAY talked to for this story claim the ability to catch suspect behavior every time."
- "Students also are often more tech savvy than their parents and won't tell them about every account they have."
Good!
If only they had done this when I was a kid going to school in the Santa Clara county, maybe I would still have my upper teeth.
Seriously, why is it good for the eventually-to-be-grownup pupil to get forced into reconciling themselves to a life of constant surveillance? Is that the message these schools want to convey? Because it's what they're doing.
This is the logical end to those "why didn't they do something about it, all the warning signs were all over social media." Well, now they're doing something about it. They've started - and will never stop - surveillance of human activity for deviant behaviors. If you're thinking this is ripe for abuse by being the one able to define deviant behaviors, you're right. It's basically what happened to England in the plot of "1984". I hope you're happy and you got what you asked for.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"ou guys think I'm just some untouchable peasant? Peon? Huh? Maybe so, but following a broom around after shitheads like you for the past eight years I've learned a couple of things. I look through your letters, I look through your lockers. I listen to your conversations. You don't know that, but I do. I am the eyes and ears of this institution my friends. By the way, that clock's twenty minutes fast!"
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
This is the reality we are facing, lord knows we aren't gonna take away dangerous individuals rights to commit mass murder with guns.
1) Students will shift away from public media / platforms to new semi-private networks
2) OSINT surveillance services try to follow, but are blocked by privacy rules
3) Surveillance tries legal hacks to get backdoor access to networks and students' media
We will have a society where everyone is aware of someone listening in and potentiall taking action.
I have lived through the Soviet times in ex-USSR. We have been there and this is not nice.
I also have three kids (two teenagers and one younger). I strongly believe they should have options for privacy both from us the parents, the school and authorities.
Aha! Found the dangerous deviant! Best lock you up indefinitely at once!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So 35,000 and 55,000 students were psychologically damaged to feel exposed and never trust anything online again. 16 of those were plausible. How many actual? Totally worth the damage to society as a whole to live as terror stricken people living with the thought that everything that they write and say is judged by authority figures instantly.
You know, so they can see if the teachers/school administration has had any DUI, domestic abuse calls, etc?
Oh, that's right. If you're under eighteen you have no legal right to know this information.
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And as for turning on the camera of student issued laptops to check up on them, let me guess...
30 seconds to check to see if the quarterback is saying a racial slur.
5 minutes to see if the head cheerleader is drinking during a sleepover.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I'm perfectly happy to NOT subject my children to this surveillance.
Fuck Bark and the horse they rode in on!
The Bark product is free to schools in the U.S. for perpetuity. The company says it can afford to give the service away to schools, because of the money it makes from a version aimed at parents.
It would be more accurate and honest to say that the Bark product being used by schools is a business-critical marketing device to gain leverage over parents and “convince” them that they’d better pony up the 9 USD per month. Because, you know, it would be too bad if their child’s school found out whatever could be out there in the cloud, and proceeded to initiate some reprisal or even call the police on their beloved little one.
Stop using all social media that can be tracked.
Don't get your image uploaded to any social media service.
Dont use names, words, jargon, locations that will induce tracking online.
Have an online computer for work, study, education. Have a VPN computer for computer games, searching.
Need social media for some project? Set up an account with the min information just for that. Never use it again.
Enjoy your freedoms like past generations did.
Be aware of how many jobs, other nations, gov, mil, services will "demand" social media accounts in later decades.
Show them the account that has nothing on it as needed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/l...
https://www.asumag.com/safety-...
Florida school officials and law enforcement had more than enough data to stop Nicholas Cruz.
Technology and good intentions are no match for incompetent and corrupt government officials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis
You drop your kid off for the day and expect that they will be kept safe. If they aren't, you sue the school district's ass off.
Have gnu, will travel.
it aided their successes in life
Becoming a teacher is considered success?
Have gnu, will travel.
Social cooling.
People are starting to realize that this 'digital reputation' could limit their opportunities.
Look: Remember the very first porn sites way back in the 90s? We clicked to see titties and then a question popped up: "Are you over 18 or over?"
- Yes
- No
We clicked, "No," and went to Disney.
Having IQs higher than asphalt, we made another run at it and gave the answer that fit our needs.
Few on /. are unaware of behavioural modification techniques.
People are slowly learning to shape their narrative on social media to avoid pain and gain favour.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Ha, that is some lazy parenting if I ever heard any. "it's okay if the school fucks my kid over , I can make money off of it... It's a child not a paycheck. I'm not going to honor my responsibility to my child to vet and monitor those that are trusted to care my child and sit class once in awhile 2 monitor the school's environment ."
If care so little for your kid, you might as well sell them.
The school system doesn't have the time to do right by your child they won't compromise your child to stabilize their metrics and make their day easier. You're still at the child has no rights for advocacy. If you're not in their checking up on the schooled keep them on their toes, they're going to think they're in charge of your kid over you. That is an ultimate betrayal of your responsibility to your child
it aided their successes in life
Becoming a teacher is considered success?
To raise that question says so much about American culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The term you are looking for is 'poison the well'. Good idea, more people need to do it.
But poison the primary source, facebook etc. The school is a symptom of too much useable data being available. Of course nannies are going to nanny, it's their fucking job.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That is an ultimate betrayal of your responsibility to your child.
It's not my kid that I'm worried about. It's the child of the parent who gets indignant and insists that its his job and his job alone to raise his kid. And then his kid brings the AK-47 to school.
Sure, I'll visit the teachers and evaluate the classroom from time to time. But you might not like my input. Maybe I'll tell them to keep that Draper kid out of the school. Because he's a trouble-maker, unstable and one social media post away from shooting up the classroom. Or perhaps I should expect them to be watching for this sort of thing impartially.
Have gnu, will travel.
The AI would simply generate a report inquiring how it's even possible for a human to post THAT MANY MEMES. It just doesn't seem possible.
Why would I send my kid to public school when most of public school is waiting for the teacher to shut up cuz you finished the homework 15 minutes into class before the teacher even assigned it. Because public School workloads are that lax and easy. People are in bad lessons from public school. Mainly that it doesn't matter how hard you work it doesn't matter how well you do .they'll never reward you with anything you truly value. Your time and freedom do as you choose and go where you want because you finished your work.
If kids were rewarded with free roam time for finishing their curriculum for the week you can about guarantee they will get everything done by Monday or Tuesday, so that can go explore the world and live a while. if you give kids the freedom they burned by completing their daily responsibilities, will only ever be at school long enough to get their next week's curriculum. how would they waste their time with people when there's more interesting things to explore in the world?