MSJC’s TEDx program will feature seven speakers of varying backgrounds for this year’s event: “Resilience.” The theme aims to highlight ideas and initiatives that aid the community in persevering during challenging times.

“More than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic started – and as the stay-at-home order begins to lift and people slowly step back into the world – we’ve heard about how they got through the COVID pandemic,” said Bianca Swan Finch, Chair of the Department of Theatre for Mt. San Jacinto College, who is a lead organizer of the event. “Therefore, we have focused this year’s theme on these stories within our community. Through the trials of 2020, our community truly showed remarkable resilience.”

Scheduled speakers include:

• Dr. Katherine Kiefer-Newman, San Bernardino Valley College Faculty

• Julie Falen, KCAA Radio Host – Julie Talks Money

• Stephanie Otero, CPA, President and CEO of Feeding America Riverside and San Bernardino Counties

• Angelica M. Anderson, Honors Enrichment Program Administrative Associate

• Dr. Lillian Yvette Melendrez, Idyllwild Arts Academy

• Von Lawson, Mt. San Jacinto College Dean of Career Education

• Brandon Christopher Allen, Motivational Speaker – “When Thunder Speaks”

Check out the event when it debuts on TEDxMSJC’s YouTube.

For more information, please contact Communication Studies and Forensics Associate Professor Ron Newman at rnewman@msjc.edu.

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About TEDx (x = independently organized event)

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that brings people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized, subject to certain rules and regulations.

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, often in the form of short talks delivered by leading thinkers and doers. Many of these talks are given at TED Conferences, including an annual gathering in Vancouver, as well as TEDWomen, intimate TED Salons and thousands of independently organized TEDx events around the world. Videos of these talks are made available, free, on TED.com and other platforms.

Follow TED on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TED.

MSJC | Contributed

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We were very close, you see, as my family would attest to that. I used to come home from work every day, pour me a cold one (Ginger Ale, that is. I can’t drink any alcoholic beverage. God is watching) and we would spend hours together; watching a game, or idly flipping through the channels, or previewing some YouTube videos, or maybe a little Netflix—without the chill part—as my wife would always be around. She did frown upon my spending so much time with him, but in the end, she would just leave us alone, as she had better things to do. I was not ready for the call when my kids told me that there was something terribly wrong with him. They couldn’t see the light in him, whereas he was always so bright and colorful. There was no sound emanating from him, whereas there was always music and laughter. It was as if he had suddenly gone dead. Indeed, he was dead.

I tried to revive him, but I didn’t know how to properly resuscitate him, as I lacked proper knowledge and training. I didn’t even know where to begin. All I could do was to pull the plug out, and then try to plug him back in. There was some momentary activity, but he would fade to black, again and again. I had to stop trying, once I realized that it was of no use, and I probably had lost him forever.

I didn’t know what to do. There were no games that I could watch any longer. There were no movies that I could play. There were no videos to entertain me. I felt lost and I felt miserable. I just sat in my usual chair, day after day, fiddling with the remote, pressing the power button over and over, hoping for a miracle. But, alas, there are no miracles. Prayer doesn’t work where technology has failed.

It was almost to the day of our fifth anniversary when he decided to leave me. I could remember the day I brought him home, as vividly as the pictures that he showed me for all those years. I had asked my wife to use her credit card, as my credit was worthless. I promised to make the minimum payments on time and without lapse. It cost me over two thousand dollars, but it was all worth it when I unpacked him and put him up on a pedestal. He was mine and I was happy.

After almost five years, the amount that I owed was almost the same as it was on day one. Apparently, paying only the minimum amount due on credit card does not reduce the debt by that much, as the interest accrued is almost the same as the minimum payment. It would have taken me another seventeen years to pay the whole amount, if it wasn’t for the three stimulus checks that I’ve received. It took two US presidents for me to pay off my bill. As soon as my final payment cleared, my television stopped working. It was fade to black, literally, as there was no picture visible on the screen. It was just black screen and nothing else.

After three days of mourning, as is the custom of my people, I started to look around. To my amazement, there was a better friend available at Walmart, for only five hundred dollars. A bigger, better, and technologically more advanced friend was on sale. By now, I had reestablished my credit to a point in the last five years, where I now had my own credit card with just enough credit limit to buy him.

This unpacking was even more thrilling than the last one. My new friend looked shinier, sleeker, and more slender than the worthless piece of junk sitting in my living room. I had to make room for my new love. I couldn’t wait to drag the carcass of my old love out to the garbage can. I didn’t even ask for any help from my kids. I didn’t even care that my dragging the body on the concrete was causing it to break into pieces, which I left for someone else to clean. I was motivated to the point that I picked up the broken body, and with a heave and a ho, swung it over the four-yard trash can and dropped it ruthlessly against the back wall.

The noise that the cracked screen made, was still ringing in my ears, as I plugged my new friend in and started flipping through the channels, looking for something new and exciting to watch. Here’s to another five good years. At least I carried a much smaller debt this time. I am sure I can pay this debt off in the next five years by making just the minimum payment due. Now, that’s what I call progress!

Muhammad Naaem • Columnist

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has filed suit against three of the country’s biggest tech companies, claiming he and other conservatives have been wrongfully censored. But legal experts say the suits are likely doomed to fail, given existing precedent and legal protections.

Trump announced the action against Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube, along with the companies’ Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai, at a press conference Wednesday in New Jersey, where he demanded that his accounts be reinstated.

Trump has been suspended from the platforms since January, when his followers violently stormed the Capitol building, trying to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential win. The companies cited concerns that Trump would incite further violence and have kept him locked out. All three declined comment Wednesday.

“We’re asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to order an immediate halt to social media companies’ illegal, shameful censorship of the American people,” Trump said of the filings. “We’re going to hold big tech very accountable.”

Twitter, Facebook and Google are all private companies, and users must agree to their terms of service to use their products. Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, social media platforms are allowed to moderate their services by removing posts that, for instance, are obscene or violate the services’ own standards, so long as they are acting in “good faith.” The law also generally exempts internet companies from liability for the material that users post.

But Trump and some other politicians have long argued that Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms have abused that protection and should lose their immunity — or at least have it curtailed.

While conservatives often claim the sites are biased against them, several recent studies have found that isn’t the case. Indeed, posts by conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro, Franklin Graham, Dan Bongino and Dinesh D’Souza are routinely among the most widely shared on Facebook.

The suit against Facebook and CEO Zuckerberg says Facebook acted unconstitutionally when it removed Trump from the platform. Suits against Twitter and YouTube make similar claims. All three ask the court to award unspecified damages, declare Section 230 unconstitutional and restore Trump’s accounts, along with those of several other plaintiffs who joined the suits and have also had posts or accounts removed.

Trump’s lawsuits, however, are likely doomed to fail, said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University in California who has studied more than 60 similar, failed lawsuits that sought to take on internet companies for terminating or suspending users’ accounts.

“They’ve argued everything under the sun, including First Amendment, and they get nowhere,” Goldman said. “Maybe he’s got a trick up his sleeve that will give him a leg up on the dozens of lawsuits before him. I doubt it.”

“Trump’s suit is DOA,” echoed Paul Barrett, the deputy director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Barrett said Trump was fundamentally misunderstanding the Constitution. “The First Amendment applies to government censorship or speech regulation. It does not stop private sector corporations from regulating content on their platforms,” he said by email. “In fact, Facebook and Twitter themselves have a First Amendment free speech right to determine what speech their platforms project and amplify — and that right includes excluding speakers who incite violence, as Trump did in connection with the January 6 Capitol insurrection.”

Goldman said he suspected Trump’s legal team knows it is not going to win in court, and suggested Trump was pursuing the suits to garner attention.

Indeed, Trump’s political action committee was already raising money off the announcement by early Wednesday afternoon.

As president, Trump last year signed an executive order challenging Section 230 that was seen as largely symbolic.

“It was always about sending a message to their base that they’re fighting on their behalf against the evil Silicon Valley tech giants,” Goldman said.

Trump’s move comes a week after a federal judge blocked a new Florida law signed by a Trump ally, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, that sought to punish large social media companies like Facebook and Twitter for removing content or banning politicians. The law would have allowed the state to fine the companies $250,000 a day for removing the accounts of statewide political candidates and $25,000 a day for removing the accounts of those running for local office. But U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle on June 30 granted a preliminary injunction stopping the new law from being enforced.

The judge said that tech industry groups challenging the law were likely to prevail on their claim that it violated the First Amendment if the case went to trial.

Matt Schruers, the president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech industry trade group that includes Facebook, Twitter and Google, said internet companies have a right to enforce their terms of service.

“Frivolous class action litigation will not change the fact that users — even U.S. Presidents — have to abide by the rules they agreed to,” he said in a statement.

Since departing the White House, Trump has continued to repeat lies about the 2020 election, baselessly claiming that he won, even though state and local election officials, his own attorney general and numerous judges, including some he appointed, have said there is no evidence of the mass voter fraud he alleges.

__ O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press writer Mae Anderson contributed to this report from Nashville.

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A House subcommittee is investigating YouTube Kids, saying the Google-owned video service feeds children inappropriate material in “a wasteland of vapid, consumerist content” so it can serve them ads.

The inquiry comes despite Google agreeing to pay $170 million in 2019 to settle allegations that YouTube collected personal data on children without their parents’ consent.

In a letter sent Tuesday to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, the U.S. House Oversight and Reform subcommittee on economic and consumer policy said YouTube does not do enough to protect kids from material that could harm them. Instead it relies on artificial intelligence and creators’ self-regulation to decide what videos make it on to the platform, according to the letter from the committee’s chairman, Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi.

And despite changes in the wake of the 2019 settlement, the letter notes, YouTube Kids still shows ads to children. But instead of basing it on kids’ online activity, it now targets it based on the videos they are watching.

YouTube did not immediately respond to a message for comment.

The congressional investigation comes a year into the pandemic that has shuttered schools and left parents who are working from home increasingly reliant on services such as YouTube to keep kids occupied. This has led to a rethinking of “screen time” rules and guilt over the amount of time kids spend in front of screens, with some experts recommending that parents focus on quality, not quantity.

But lawmakers say YouTube Kids is anything but quality.

“YouTube Kids spends no time or effort determining the appropriateness of content before it becomes available for children to watch,” the letter says. “YouTube Kids allows content creators to self-regulate. YouTube only asks that they consider factors including the subject matter of the video, whether the video has an emphasis on kids characters, themes, toys or games, and more.”

Kids under 13 are protected by a 1998 federal law that requires parental consent before companies can collect and share their personal information.

Under the 2019 settlement, Google agreed to work with video creators to label material aimed at kids. It said it would limit data collection when users view such videos, regardless of their age.

But lawmakers say even after the settlement, YouTube Kids, which launched in 2015, continued to exploit loopholes and advertise to children. While it does not target ads based on viewer interests the way the main YouTube service does, it tracks information about what kids are watching in order to recommend videos. It also collects personally identifying device information.

There are also other, sneaky ways ads are reaching children. A “high volume” of kids’ videos, the letter says, smuggle hidden marketing and advertising with product placements by “children’s influencers,” who are often children themselves.

“YouTube does not appear to be trying to prevent such problematic marketing,” the letter says. The House research team found that only 4% of videos it looked at had a “high educational value” offering developmentally appropriate material.

The kids app has helped turn YouTube into an increasingly more attractive outlet for the advertising sales that generate most of the profits for Google and its corporate parent, Alphabet, which is based in Mountain View, California.

YouTube brought in nearly $20 billion in ad revenue last year, more than doubling from its total just three years ago. The video site now accounts for about 13% of Google’s total ad sales, up from slightly more than 8% in 2017.

The House subcommittee is recommending YouTube turn off advertisements completely for kids aged 7 and under. It also asks that it give parents the ability to turn off the “autoplay” feature, which is not currently possible (though parents are able to set a timer to limit their kids’ video watching).

The lawmakers are asking YouTube to provide them with information on YouTube Kids’ top videos, channels and revenue information, as well as average time spent and number of videos watched, per user, among other information.

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Some people may not be aware of this issue, but it’s a harsh reality all over the world. This is an important problem and we should start doing something about it. Because humans are the more conscious being, but not the most important for the ecosystem, indisputably animals and plants are.

One big problem

Keeping exotic animals as pets has become a trend all over the globe,Instagram stories and Facebook videos showing animal caretakers doing their job, we romanticize the idea of having one of those animals with us.

This could perhaps be the reason the black market of unusual animals is growing. That’s the case of the traffic of otters in Southeast Asia, it’s increasing so much that some people are willing to pay more than a thousand dollars for just one of them. Otters are adorable, we all know that, but they are a wild animal, when in their natural habitat they hunt fish and crustaceans, they don’t play with toys and Teddy bears. Otters still don’t have the classification of endangered species, but they’re certainly getting there, and their numbers keep decreasing with each passing day.

Social media and their impact

It is necessary to emphasize the influence that social media has nowadays, thanks to Youtube, Facebook and Instagram, the commerce of otters increased exponentially, some of them are even being sold via Facebook. Almost every country in Southeast Asia has banned all otter trade but people still market this poor animals.

Otters are just one of the species that is affected but there’s a lot more, some kinds of turtles, monkeys, even tigers. Humans sometimes don’t realize what effect we can have on our own planet. We need to stop following this ‘influencers’, we can admire this magnificent animals but we shouldn’t keep them from living freely in the wild on account of our vanity. We still have a lot to learn about compassion.

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