My grandma didn’t have a commitment to your privacy. When she caught you stealing cookies, she let the entire neighborhood know. Grandma Judy had a very recognizable voice, and she had an uncanny ability to know when we had raided her cookie jar. She didn’t care about preserving your dignity or your privacy. If you were in trouble, people knew about it!
So what does this have to do with Modern Learners Community and our new website? Well…
You may or may not have noticed when you landed on our new website, you were not asked to “accept our cookies“. We are not collecting your data, so there is no need to accept our cookies! We have made a commitment to your privacy. We won’t know you’re hanging out here and learning with us, and we won’t follow you around the internet!
A Site that Honors Privacy…I Can’t Fathom it!
Oh wait! Yes I can!
You see, the data on our website helps us make informed decisions about how to serve our audience and community better. We opted for using Fathom. According to Fathom’s website, “Fathom is a simple, light-weight, privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics.” I invite you to read a little bit about how their product works because in reading that you will come to understand our commitment to your privacy. We even pay a small fee to honor it.
It is pretty awesome, and Modern Learners Community feels good about paying a small fee to honor your privacy and support the developers at Fathom. If you click on the link and subsequently sign up, you save $10, and Modern Learners Community is paid a small percentage of your investment. We would have told you about Fathom even if they didn’t incentivize us because we think their business model and belief systems are awesome and ahead of their time.
And… we know they won’t follow you around on Facebook!
Speaking of Facebook…and A Commitment to Your Privacy
In the past, we have run Facebook ads made possible by the Facebook pixel on our website. The pixel helped us find the people most likely to benefit from our work. But in recent months, we have vacated that platform. We are hesitant to contribute to the noise and the confusion and the privacy violations that happen in that space, so we promise we don’t have the Facebook pixel either.
We might post content on Facebook (or Instagram) again at some point, but we’ll also let you know when we have new content available through email…that you opted in to receive.
Even Stricter Privacy Laws Hit in January 2022.
You can read all about the even more stringent EU privacy laws in this article: Austrian DSB: Use of Google Analytics violates “Schrems II” decision by CJEU. The bottom line is that any data that passes through US servers can be spied on by the US Government and the people Europe don’t like that idea. Recently, the media has been reporting that Meta, formerly Facebook, is threatening to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe if they can’t transfer data between the EU and the US. Facebook doesn’t want to shut down operations, but the law is preventing them from doing global business. If nothing else, the data privacy issues that have been surfacing for years are heating up, and people are taking it seriously. The tech giants may have to adapt.
We’re not Experts In Privacy but We’ll Honor Yours
While we don’t claim to be privacy experts, we do care about and honor your privacy. Modern Learners continues to be concerned about the privacy of learners as well. Will wrote a blog about the focus of edtech being focused on building surveillance software several years ago, but like most of Will’s writing, it is still relevant today.
