Let's Talk About TikTok, Part 2

Earlier this year, I posted about TikTok, but it was really just a post about the Internet, privacy, and security. This week, Pew Research Center published a report about similar topics: What Americans Know About AI, Cybersecurity, and Big Tech. To find out what they knew, the Center surveyed 5,101 U.S. adults and asked them 9 main multiple-choice questions:

1. As of April 2023, which of the following companies did Elon Musk run?
2. If a website uses cookies, it means the site can . . .
3. What is a "deepfake?"
4. In 2021, Facebook changed it's name to . . .
5. Which of the following passwords is the most secure?
6. How do large language models, such as ChatGPT, come up with answers to questions users submit?
7. Some websites and online services use a security process known as two-step or two-factor authentication. Which of the following images is an example of two-factor authentication?
8. Websites in the United States are prohibited from collecting data online from children under what age without a parent's consent?
9. Does the United States have a national privacy law that sets common standards for what companies can do with all data their products and services collect?

Among the findings, these stood out to me:

• Only 4% of respondents were able to answer all 9 questions correctly. The median answered only 5 correctly.
• Less than half of the respondents correctly identified an example of two-factor authentication from a series of pictures.
• Not a lot of respondents know much about artificial intelligence. Only 42% know what a deepfake is, and only 32% understand how ChatGPT works.
• Not a lot of respondents know much about federal privacy laws. Less than a quarter answered Questions 8 and 9 correctly.

With so much of our lives online, it's unsettling to see these results. I wonder, too, how policymakers would fare on such a survey––my guess is they'd do worse than the general public. And yet here we are in a world where Montana is the first of probably several states to ban an app. (See Montana Becomes the First State to Ban TikTok.)

What about you? Where do you think you'd fall? Take the quiz here: Test Your Knowledge of Digital Topics.

Things I'm thankful for: curiosity and reading and journalists