Cheating at the Internet: Digital Literacy and You

So, I really want a PS5. I don’t need one. I have other games to play, productive things I could be doing, charities I could be volunteering for, and so on. I don’t need it.

But I really want one. This is the first time a new console came out and I had enough ready cash to just buy one, no scrimping and saving, no horrible guilt trips. But the internet bullies won’t let me. See, PS5 stock is limited, and scalpers are using programmed bots to snatch up all the consoles as soon as they become available and then resell them for hundreds of dollars more than they’re worth. Also, they don’t like when people are mean to them online.

Now, obviously this is a grave injustice; it’s affecting me, after all. But after months of trying to get lucky buying a piece of technology before a large group of people with specialized software, time on their hands, and much more competitive internet connections, I’ve had some time to think about this isn’t the only playing field that the internet has made considerably less level.

Let’s think about the COVID vaccines for a moment. Statistically, the elderly have been the hardest hit by COVID-19 and are most in need of the vaccines. In a lot of places, however, you can only set up an appointment online through buggy online portals. Assuming that an elderly person has internet, and a computer/smartphone, and enough digital literacy (or a young person with plenty of time to help them out,) that appointment is achievable. For anybody else, they're stuck waiting weeks, maybe months longer. A lot of impoverished or simply disconnected people are going to be vulnerable to a deadly disease for a lot longer for no good reason. And that's before we get into scammers who can use a slight amount of publicly available information to pass themselves off as credible online or on the phone. The elderly are usually easy prey for scams, but any person with low digital literacy, due to lack of access, lack of a quality education, or just lack of support from people who DO have those things is vulnerable.

There's an episode of Parks and Rec where the character Ben Wyatt says the internet isn't optional anymore, and people shouldn't need advanced law degrees to avoid being taken advantage of by billion dollar corporations. He’s right, but it’s not just corporations we have to worry about. It’s anyone with a little more digital cunning than the crowd who’s willing to exploit it. It’s not just those who struggle to navigate a website that are disadvantaged, it’s anyone without a working knowledge of how to take advantage of digital systems for their own gain. There need to be more consumer protections in the digital sphere to protect people in an arena where programming experience and faster technology creates a huge advantage over everyone else as more of what we want, and sometimes NEED, is online.

To bring it back to the most important example (me), I don't have time to learn how to write a program to automate my once every five-year console buying process. Why am I being forced to compete several times a week with people who have custom programs to crash a website to get what they want when my money spends just as well as theirs, and I'm not trying to cheat anyone?

I worry that the future of e-commerce will be an app with a stupid name like 1stnline, where people pay a subscription so that the app can create bots to buy any scarce item before anyone else gets the chance: theater tickets, limited edition shoes, maybe even vaccine appointments or other essential services. And the problem is that’s an appealing idea until you realize that if there weren’t bots cutting to the front of the line, there might be enough for everyone anyway. And once something like 1stnline becomes the norm, people with enough money will buy their way to the front of the digital lines, and the gap will keep growing.

But I’d love to be proven wrong. You can start by finding me a PS5.