Oversimplified Online Presence of Politics: Political Alignment Tests

Boran GÖHER & Hülya AFAT

01.02.2021

Political opinions are often hard to define and sort, because of their complexity and individuality. Personal opinions are formed by personal experience, political opinions are no different. A person’s political opinions cannot be defined with only one ideology or as a mixture of two ideologies, and political compass tests surely fail to understand this.

Memes and Comment Sections: Mechanisms of Criticism or Harassment?

Hülya Afat & Boran Göher

04.01.2021

In 2020, our lives became online more than ever, as much as we carried our professional lives to our screen, we also fulfilled our entertainment needs online too. With the increase in content consumption online, content creation also increased as expected.

Why Do We Still Use Piracy Even Though We Know It Is Not Ethical?

Didem ÖZÇAKIR

07.12.2020

Like it or not, nearly all of us use piracy as an option for music, movies, and books. It can be in the form of using free online streaming services with a lot of ads, or it can be like having an archive of 5 hard disks full of albums.

Whatever Does “Accept Cookies” Mean, Really?

Boran GÖHER

02.11.2020

In the current landscape of the world wide web, any person who spends even the smallest amount of time browsing the internet will definitely run into a prompt requesting their direct consent in order to send and receive cookies between their computer and the server. In other words, the contemporarily notorious “accept cookies” notification. General consensus among regular internet users seems to be that accepting these cookies is not really harmful and accepting them is par for the course.

Epic Games vs. Apple: Behind the Curtain

Ümit Altar BİNİCİ

05.10.2020

On August 13, 2020, Epic Games made a drastic move by pushing an update that will ensure in-app purchases for Fortnite V-Bucks to be maintained by Epic’s own payment system, bypassing Apple and Google’s 30% cut. This would lead to Fortnite to be removed from the store shelves for infringing their Terms of Service. In return, Epic responded to this action with two separate lawsuits against Apple and Google. As a response, Apple threatened Epic with revoking their developer licenses for iOS and macOS, thus simply blocking Unreal Engine to be supported by iOS and macOS, hindering the development of many games benefiting from this.

Misinformation Whack-A-Mole: How Social Media is Destined to Fail

Alp Ünal AYHAN

07.09.2020

With election season in the US approach, misinformation and fake news on social media, especially on Facebook, is on the rise. Piling on the rampant misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep track of all the false information that’s circling in our feeds. Facebook said it removed 7 million posts and labeled 98 million others with coronavirus misinformation on its main site and Instagram between April and June.

Hauntology and Technology

Begüm GÜVEN

07.09.2020

I like drinking coffee. More than that, I like gazing over the half finished coffee sitting in my cup getting colder as I leave it on my desk for the rest of the day. Getting in and out of my library, I stare at my cup with dried stains on its surface. It is a remembrance, a gift sent to me from my peaceful morning.

Online Streaming Services’ Popularity and the Danger Against Them

Ege GAZİTEPE

03.08.2020

Streaming services are a part of most people's life by now. Their global expansion was most certainly can be considered as a miracle because the most common streaming service provider Netflix itself increased its subscriber number more than eightfold in just some years. It went up from 21.5 million in 2011 to 192 million in 2020.

Data Breaches: Ways to Protect Our Credentials

Ümit Altar BİNİCİ

06.07.2020

Ever since the foundation of the internet, espionage, and data theft actions have been switched online up until today. We have witnessed the data of many companies, regardless of how big they are, being disclosed to the public, and the number keeps growing every day. From elderly individuals who are unaware of the key functions of a computer to large companies with multimillionaire shareholders, everyone can be a victim of an unauthorized data breach. To protect our data from a possible leakage, we have to know what a data breach is.

Finding Twitter's Place in Political Discourse

Alp Ünal AYHAN

01.06.2020

Ever since it was founded in 2006, Twitter has become a highly influential place for discussion of news and current events. This is really easy to see. It is categorized and marketed as a news app and not a social media one.

Perfect Body Image on Social Media: Idealistic or Unrealistic?

Didem ÖZÇAKIR & Hülya AFAT

04.05.2020

Every day we unlock our phones to admire other’s lives and looks, regardless of who is profiting off of our self-conscious, we would like to ask the question: is this idealistic or unrealistic?