The Digital Human Folgen

If you want to send a message without any chance of it being intercepted then end-to-end encryption services are the way to do it. Governments and intelligence agencies can’t even intercept these messages, without compromising the phone they’re sent or received on, because the tech companies themselves don’t even have access. In the pursuit of protecting people’s privacy, in the wrong hands these messaging apps can be dangerous. Aleks discovers how the Taliban used WhatsApp to help them sweep through Afghanistan and take Kabul, without a bullet being fired. Unless you turn off the internet it's impossible with technology like WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal to let the ‘good’ guys use it while restricting the ‘bad’ guys. Aleks hears why turning off the internet is not the answer because it often favours those who are trying to oppress rather than the people who need help. Aleks learns that while the Taliban were using WhatsApp to organise and disarm those who may have tried to resist their takeover of Afghanistan, many Afghans who were desperately trying to escape Kabul relied on WhatsApp to connect and keep in touch with military officers and diplomats in order to get to and through the right gate and onto flights to safety. For some, when their phone battery ran out so did their hopes of escape. "WhatsApp has provided a lifeline to millions of people around the world and we're grateful to have played a small role in helping people in Afghanistan. Of course, WhatsApp requires a mobile connection, and anyone who has spent time in Afghanistan knows its complex terrain often times requires multiple forms of communications to reach across the country." WhatsApp spokesperson.Producer: Kate Bissell Researcher: Anna Miles

Aleks Krotoski explores the relationships between social media content creators and their audience, asking how does it get complicated when money starts to change hands.These are often described as para-social relationships. Ones were the audience knows a lot about the content creator and they know next to nothing about the viewers. This can lead to misunderstandings and even behaviours that border on coercive control.How can this new breed of celebrity navigate this world when what their subscribers are paying for is their own piece of them?Producer: Peter McManus

We all cheat at least a little bit, some of us in family games of monopoly, others on their taxes. Aleks asks if the digital era has made that easier; with less apparent consequence and therefore more tempting? If that's the case where does that lead us.Why, for example, would people hack the language learning app Duolingo to achieve an entirely meaningless high score, just to beat those of their fellow learners? And if you use the fitness app Strava to compete with others who cycle the same route, what possesses you to use an electric bike next time, or even do it in your car? One of the key factors that encourage us to cheat is psychological distance - we can't see the impact of our cheating so it becomes more tempting. That's the digital world.More charitably, another influence on our cheating is if we're already exhausted physically, psychologically or emotionally. Is that what might explain the rise in academic cheating that experts have detected during the course of the pandemic, when so much education and assessment has moved online?Aleks explores all these examples along with the justifications people engage not own up to their behaviour.Producer: Peter McManus