The first mobile app I’d like to discuss is YouTube, an app that most everybody is familiar with. Available on almost every device with internet connection capabilities, YouTube is a video sharing platform with millions of users worldwide. YouTube’s age demographic ranges all over from young to the elderly, everybody has a use for YouTube’s video sharing capabilities.

YouTube, like many other apps has paid services that it’s users can purchase to unlock various features.  YouTube’s paid service called YouTube Premium allows for several privileges not afforded to normal views on the platform. Some of these privileges include things such as ad free watching, background playing of videos, downloading of videos, and access to YouTube Music premium.  YouTube has a secondary paid membership for specific YouTube channels, for users to show their direct support to said channels.

The second mobile app that I’d like to discuss is Discord, an app that is mostly directed towards teens and young adults. Available on most devices, Discord is a heavily text based communication app, with limited video and audio calling capabilities. Used by professionals, semi professionals, and various internet communities, Discord is widely used for anybody wishing to connect with one and other.

Similarly to YouTube , Discord as a paid subscription service, called Discord Nitro. At a rate of $100 a year , Discord Nitro unlocks various features. Some of these features include custom emoji’s, higher video quality, better personalized profiles, the ability to show off your Discord Nitro status, bigger file uploads, and the ability to directly support servers of your choice.

https://www.youtube.com/

https://www.youtube.com/premium

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6304294

https://discord.com/

https://discord.com/nitro

There are an incredibly vast number of ways for anyone on the internet to demonstrate “bad” behavior. Sometimes these “bad” behaviors even have real-world consequences and can hurt real people. In the grim example I plan to discuss, the lives of ten people were lost, and three more people were seriously injured as a result. Though it hasn’t been discussed in mainstream media other than to be brushed off as a “conspiracy theory”, it has been rumored by some, that members of either the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), had instigated the shooter who on May 14^th killed 10 people and injured 3 more in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. While the accusation that the United States of America would use government agencies to instigate massacres against its’ own citizens is a heavy thought to bear and it is currently unknown whether the accusations have any credible standing. There is another immoral behavior that took place in regard to the event and which occurred through the internet, this time solely at the hands of the perpetrator of the heinous Buffalo store shooting. 18 year old Payton Gendron, livestreamed his assault of the Tops Friendly Markets supermarket in Buffalo, New York through the popular streaming website Twitch, before the stream was taken down. Obviously, as the one livestreaming himself slaughtering innocent people , Payton Gendron is the main purveyor of the “bad behavior” that unfolded during over twitch on the 14th of May, 2022, although it could also be reasoned that Twitch as a company is somewhat involved in the incident as the livestream happened on their platform, although they struck down the video as soon as they possibly could. The outcome of this “bad behavior” was the ending of 10 lives, and the injury of 3 more people. Clearly there is loss associated with the death of loved ones, a loss that cannot be calculated in monetary terms, but as well there was destruction to property, and the influence over any positive or negative reputation that Gendron may have had before his killing spree, as well as a blow to the reputation of the United States federal government if the aforementioned rumor is brought up in court and proven to be in any way true. Currently, Payton Gendron is still going through the legal system and likely to be charged severely for his inhumane actions. It is difficult to learn a practical sort of lesson from the events that unfolded, although perhaps something of an indirect takeaway is the effect that unrestricted access to the internet has on the young human mind as the isolation of the covid quarantine and access to the internet are prominent factors in the current investigation into the shooter’s motives.

In digital space there are a plethora of dangers and threats can disrupt the flow of internet traffic. As the IT Supervisor for a small corporation, I’ve identified the top 5 sources and types of digital threats that our company should work to be better equipped against. The first of these threats is those of Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS), which is defined as when a high volume of internet traffic bombards a targeted server, service, or network as a means to disrupt normal traffic, in a metaphorical sense, opening the digital floodgates and overwhelming the server’s ability to process network requests. Secondly, I think the next biggest threat to the company’s digital wellbeing is likely to be DNS hijacking, a strategy implemented by third party perpetrators in which they forward site visitors to a fake website that allows them to steal login credentials, and all manners of personal and confidential data. DNS cache poisoning is yet another serious threat to internet users as this method of attack re-routes internet queries to malicious websites that could be laden with computer viruses or other harmful things. Domain infringements are another serious threat as occasionally, cyber-criminals will spoof domains by making something extremely similar, if not the exact same, as their target’s domain or IP and can do a number of malicious things to harm the viewer and the company. The final threat is expired digital certificates or domains, either of which would pose a risk of an entire website shutting down or becoming simply inoperable.

https://www.cscdbs.com/blog/digital-threats-to-businesses/

There are a number of ways to protect against the many digital threats that seek to destroy or harm website infrastructure and internet ecosystems and I have compiled a number of protections we’ve put in place to prevent against such threats and addressed ways our processes may be further strengthened. Firstly, to mitigate threats such as DDoS attacks, we often monitor for things such as poor connectivity, slowed performance throughout the website, unusually high demand for a specific page, among a number of other unusual activities, although each factor could be circumvented to some extent. Another of the various threats we’ve taken steps to prevent is those of DNS hijacking, which to mitigate, we use Google’s DNS resolver servers with the DNS IP of 8.8.8.8 which is a well known DNS ip and therefore could lend to a hacker guessing the in-use ip and hacking us through there. DNS cache poisoning is extremely similar in nature to DNS hijacking and so we’ve been able to deal with it in much the same way we deal with DNS hijacking, although it has some of the same downfalls as well. To combat potential domain infringement, we have already registered our domain under trademark rights and so we are able to easily fight back against domain infringements in a legal manner, this gives very little room for any cyber-criminals to commit infringement offenses against the company other than perhaps intellectual property infringements. Our final digital threat is that of expired certificates and domains for which I, the lead IT supervisor, have been entrusted with keeping up to date and preventing any issues with expired digital permissions, which could be foiled by simply not paying attention to when the renewals must be done.

To further strengthen our protections against the aforementioned digital threats, there are a number of steps we can take. For protecting ourselves against DDoS attacks, one easy way to prevent them is to invest in Amazon’s DDoS protection, known as their AWS program. The most effective way I’ve found to protect against both DNS cache poisoning and DNS hijacking, is through utilization of centralized DNS configurations, such as BlueCat. In regards to fighting domain infringement, we’ve already taken the best route we can by registering our domains and intellectual properties through legal avenues that will help to enforce trademark and copyright laws should someone infringe on said rights. Finally, to prevent any risk of domain or digital certificate loss through forgetfulness, I would advise the implementation of automatic domain and certificate renewals.

There is undoubtedly, a lot of content on the internet, an unfathomably large amount of content in fact. Because of this massive amount of information, it is necessary to have a way to organize it, which is the job of content management systems (CMS’s). Content management systems are used to, as the name suggests, manage content. This can include content such as videos, pictures, text, and more. Websites like YouTube, Facebook, Gmail, and plenty of others are examples of what an online content management system looks like. Content management systems aren’t just online though, hand-made inventory counts, role call in schools, grocery lists are also technically all content management systems.

There is a vast number of CMS sites on the internet and each one is unique in its purpose such as sharing, storing, or manipulating information. One such purpose for some CMS sites is that of web design. There are plenty of content management systems dedicated to providing ease of access to those wanting to make websites and provide accessible templates for people to choose from or drag and drop features and styles into their website. CMS sites are a great way for the average person with no coding experience to make a website that is serviceable to their needs and rather easy to maintain. Although a reasonable choice for website creation, content management systems take away freedom from the creator by only offering so many options, many of which are not what the user truly desires. Coding a website takes and immense amount of knowledge, skills, and time which sometimes simply isn’t available many times when trying to make a website for a business, as an example. CMS web development services are great for those who don’t need a very complex website and are willing to settle for something outside their original idea, where coding a website is a longer process and requires a certain amount of knowledge to achieve a perfect result.

With the advent of CMS services being able to fill the role of web developers, at least to a certain extent, it is easy to understand why web developers may have a more difficult time finding a job. While a spectacular option for website making if you are a small business in need of a quick website, the option to make one’s own website so easily and readily is ultimately quite dangerous to the careers of most web developers.

The top three social media sites in 2019 – 2020, in terms of internet traffic, include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

People use social media in various ways and each social media site has a specialty in the way that it functions. Facebook for example is more intended for longer articles, blogs, and event planning sort of things. Instagram and Twitter are different from Facebook but similar to each other as they are intended for shorter posts, not long blogposts or articles. They do differ from one another though, as Instagram is typically geared more toward the intent of sharing photos and pictures, where Twitter is used primarily for text posts shorter than 250-300 characters.

Demographics consist of socioeconomic information expressed statistically, including employment, education, income, marriage rates, birth and death rates, race, sexuality and more. Understanding demographics is vital for social media sites so they can effectively advertise to users and use demographic information to tailor the site to the needs of its many diverse users.

There are a few demographics that stand out when talking about specific social media platforms. Facebook for example, started as a college-only site although its current highest usage is from individuals around the 30 – 49 years old age range and those who make $30,000 to $49,999 annually. Instagram however is home to younger users mostly consisting of ages 18 – 29 and particularly popular among Hispanics. Twitter is similarly popular among the 18 – 29 year old demographic while also being more popular among those making more than $75k in a year.

According to digitalmarketing.org, the average person globally spends 144 minutes a day on social media, which extrapolated to weeks and months is 1,008 hours and 4,320 hours respectively. (https://www.digitalmarketing.org/blog/how-much-time-does-the-average-person-spend-on-social-media)

Currently, it seems Instagram is rising in numbers faster than Facebook and Twitter, perhaps due to the platform being geared heavily toward engaging the youth in easy, effective sharing.

The majority of social media users are accessing their choice site through mobile devices, around 78% of people asked in a survey admit to using mobile exclusively.

Do more people access the web using computers or mobile devices? Globally, 71.2% of all website visits in 2020 came from mobile devices, while desktops drove 28.9% of visits. https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-desktop-usage

Who controls the world wide web, and what is it made up of? The World Wide Web is the language used to describe all of the computers connected through the internet and so, technically speaking, nobody is “controlling” it. https://www.javatpoint.com/what-is-world-wide-web

Who is Tim Berners-Lee, and what is he best known for? Tim Berners-Lee is a computer scientist who worked with CERN and is generally credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tim-Berners-Lee

What is a blog, and what is it used for? Essentially, a blog is a regularly updated website or web page, furnished with frequently updated text pertaining to the purpose of the site, and can either be used for personal use or to fulfill a business need. These sorts of blogs are typically used for engaging with audiences: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-a-blog

What is responsive web design? Responsive web design means that your website and all of its pages and interactables (for example) can adapt and deliver the best experience to users regardless of the device or dimensions they’re being viewed in. https://www.webfx.com/blog/web-design/what-is-responsive-web-design/

Why are responsive website designs necessary? Responsive web designs can help you solve a lot of problems for your website. For example, making them more mobile-friendly, improving the way it looks on devices with both large and small screens. This is necessary to increase the amount of time that visitors spend on your site. It can also help you improve your rankings in search engines. https://www.webfx.com/web-design/learn/why-responsive-design-important/

What is SEO, and why should website owners / managers be concerned about it? Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of algorithmic methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings. Higher SEOs means website owners will get higher rankings on search engines, boosting the amount of people drawn to a site and in turn creating a larger target audience. https://www.vontweb.com/blog/what-is-search-engine-optimization-seo/

What is dynamic content? Somewhat similar to responsive web design, dynamic content is defined as any digital or online content that changes based on data, user behavior and user preferences. https://www.toolbox.com/marketing/content-marketing/articles/what-is-dynamic-content-definition-types-strategy-best-practices-with-examples/

What is a content management system? In simple terms, a content management system (CMS) is an application that’s used to create, edit, and publish digital content including web pages, landing pages, blog posts, etc. Some common example of CMS’s include YouTube, Facebook, and the site you’re viewing now, WordPress. https://www.business.org/services/website/what-is-a-content-management-system/

What is a YouTube channel? Who might want to start one? YouTube channels are a series of sites available to each [logged in] user of YouTube where they can post their own videos and content. Or they can view content posted by other YouTube users to each’s own channel. There are a number of reasons someone might want to start one, such as those who want to share content of the academic sort, whether being a student, teacher, or otherwise. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1646861?hl=en

I think I finally have my site setup how I like it. I’m still confused on how this site works and where everything is supposed to go.

This is a test post, I don’t have any idea how this stuff works.

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