Is Our Online Data Really Safe?

On May 7, 2026, the educational technology company, Instructure, was hacked. Instructure owns Canvas, a platform used by schools across the world for education purposes, such as course grades and assignments. The cyberattack left millions of students unable to access the platform.

ShinyHunters, the group that claimed to be behind the breach, demanded that a ransom agreement be made, or else they would leak the stolen data, which included students’ emails and messages. According to Instructure, ShinyHunters was able to hack their software by exploiting a security breach through their Free for Teachers platform.

Luke Connolly, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, described ShinyHunters as a “a loose affiliation of teenagers and young adults based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.”

Society has become almost totally reliant on technology to store vital information which means our online data is even more susceptible to cyberattacks.

ShinyHunters isn’t the only hacking group out there, but the group alone has been associated with a number of notable data breaches in recent years. Many platforms were used by students and younger generations in general, such as Wattpad, SoundCloud, and even Mathway, a platform students use to solve algebraic equations.

They haven’t only targeted educational or social platforms. In 2024, the website Ticketmaster and its parent company LiveNation were victims of a data breach by ShinyHunters, who claimed to have stolen the data such as the names and addresses of over 560 million customers. In recent years, ShinyHunters has also gained access to user information from companies such as AT&T Wireless, Google, and LVMH.

The breach at Canvas has raised concerns across the board about how safe our information really is online, especially from students affected by the hacking.

A Liberty University graduate student said it wasn’t just Canvas that was down for her school. “I was trying to sign up for classes, and I needed a form to fill out, so I went to look for the form, and it wasn't showing up.” She was concerned about being able to turn in the rest of her assignments on time. She said, “Honestly, at that point I was annoyed. I need to do my assignments, and I don't get any extensions." she said. Luckily, one professor was lenient. “Because of [Canvas] being down, one of my professors did put an extension on the assignment!”

"We're secure until all the technology goes down.” she added. “It's not security, it's a crutch, and I think you realize that when you don't have it."

A Lenoir-Rhyne University senior said he found out Canvas was down after attempting to check his grades. “I check Canvas a lot,” he said. “All my assignments and things were turned in already, and I was getting updates about grades in Outlook, but I could not check what the grades were.” He remarked on how much harm can come from even one cyberattack. "One hacking, one malware attack, can shut down thousands of schools,” he continued. “It's kind of ridiculous how that can happen."

When asked about how safe our information really is, he said, "It's not secure at all, it's very fragile, and I also think it just goes to show that putting all of our eggs in one basket is very dangerous.”

Could TMZ Bring Accountability to American Politics?

TMZ is branching out from the Hollywood Hills to Capitol Hill.

On March 26, 2026, they put out a open call for pictures to be taken of politicians spotted out over Easter weekend, and it could be just the thing to bring more accountability to American politics.

You might be thinking, really? TMZ and accountability?

To understand how TMZ can be effective, you have to understand the United States, its elections, and its relationship with the media.

In the United States, we elect politicians to represent us in government. Elections are just one way the law allows us to replace the leaders we feel aren’t representing us well or making the changes we want to see. If politicians want to be elected or re-elected, they have to do what we, the people, elect them to do. Not only that, but they have to win over the American people, so it matters how they are perceived. This is where the media comes into play.

Think of it as filmmaking v.s. Hollywood: Filmmaking is the actual act of making movies, and Hollywood is about image and perception. If people actually like you (actor, director, etc), they’re more likely to support your work (Film, TV, etc).

When it comes to government, I like to think of it as public service v.s. “politics.”

Public service is the actual boots on the ground work, like drafting legislation. Whereas a big part of “politics” is playing the game of perception. Hence, campaign tours, doing interviews, etc. 

Political campaign tours basically run on the same principle as Hollywood press tours. Perception and likability are key!

Throughout American history, politics and the media have gone hand in hand. From political cartoons, radio interviews, images in newspapers, to televised presidential debates, television commercials, and now social media. Politicians have always relied heavily on the media to get their message across to the public.

With social media being even more crucial in election results over the last ten years, we’ve seen politicians becoming even more and more visible and accessible to the public, where before they may have been harder to reach. Ironically, visibility doesn’t solve a lack of transparency. Just because we’re seeing politicians on our feeds more, doesn’t mean they’re being more honest.

Currently, there is a lack of transparency between the American people and the officials we have elected to represent us.

Politicians benefit from the tax dollars we pay, but they aren’t following through or being truthful. 

Let’s go back to the Hollywood and politics analogy.

For the most part, actors or other celebrities will say whatever they need to say to the public for a plethora of reasons, whether it be promoting a movie or avoiding scandals. It’s the same for politicians.

That is why TMZ may be the answer. The way TMZ and other paparazzi and tabloids pry into the lives of celebrities without second thought or abandon could be exactly the aggressive journalism America needs right now.

Think about it: America is being run not just by a businessman, but a media mogul. His presidency so far has been like a reality show, and many of the people in his cabinet are from the media world. There’s Dr. Oz, a physician and television host, who currently serves as the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Linda E. McMahon, co-founder and former CEO of the WWE, serves as the U.S. Secretary of Education. 

What better way to combat this style of leadership than with the very thing all people in the media try to avoid? The paps!

So here comes TMZ, a tabloid company that is notorious for prying into the personal lives of the rich and famous, often releasing photos and information that is downright intrusive and sometimes evil. They promise that if people send them photos of politicians on vacation, they will help demand accountability.

In a time of cellphones and technology like Meta glasses, there is a general lack of privacy that previous generations didn’t have to face, where at any moment someone could be recording you, and you would never know it.

Everyone is a paparazzi now; all anyone needs is a recording device and a little bit of nosiness. People even go as far as to record strangers! It’s no longer just celebrities who are concerned with being photographed during their off time, but everyday people.

By calling for people to send in pictures of politicians on vacation, TMZ is tapping into a gold mine! Essentially allowing people to channel the power of surveillance into holding their elected officials accountable. It would seem that the paps might be obsolete when everyone can take a photo or record a video, but TMZ has found a way around it, a way to funnel all that media attention back through themselves.

And they found the perfect timing: amidst last month's government shutdowns, T.S.A. agents working with no pay, and waiting for Congress to make a decision, while members of Congress take two-week vacations, during which many will travel by plane. 

The hypocrisy is hard to miss.

Since the current political landscape looks like a reality show, with members of the administration being fired like a Survivor elimination, who better than TMZ to step up to the plate to hold them accountable?

TMZ created an avenue for the people’s frustration to become motivation, and for that motivation to become an actionable step. It’s honestly genius.

In a way, it taps into the very heart of the American experiment, the idea that, if we the people don’t like how our leaders are acting, we can do something about it.

Time will tell how much this will change things, but in a rapidly changing, image-obsessed political landscape, it might be the perfect start.

The Devil Owns Amazon and Now… Fashion?

Money may not be able to buy you taste, but it sure can get you close to it.

The price of a ticket to the Met Gala for 2026 is $100,000, which is up 33% since last year’s price of $75,000. For context, an annual salary of $100,00 now provides Americans with the same kind of lifestyle that $80,000 would have given just a decade ago. In the same reality, Amazon workers have been organizing for weeks ahead of the Met Gala to advocate for its boycott.

Posters titled “Boycott the Bezos Met Gala” have popped up across NYC, highlighting Amazon's ruthless worker exploitation and collaboration with ICE. A notable display right in front of the Met Gala carpet showed a sign titled “Met Gala VIP toilet” which said it was “installed in honor of Met Gala chair Jeff Bezos” with a basket of empty water bottles because, the sign reasoned, “it’s good enough for his staff”. Combined with horrific workplaces with worsening labor rights, Amazon workers take home a median pay of about $37,000 as of 2025-2026, if they even make it home.

The Met Gala has been criticized for years for its invitees’ extravagant parading of their opulence and riches, but what happened this year?

Jeff Bezos, along with his wife Lauren Sánchez, stepping into the roles as co-chairs of the Met Gala—roles which they paid at least $10 million for—is just the latest move to assert influence and dominance in practically every aspect of American life by bleeding Amazon’s workers dry. It’s not a secret why Amazon workers are protesting this move. In fact, the reasons have been extensively documented. Amazon warehouse workers are twice as likely to be seriously injured than workers at other warehouses. Half of Amazon warehouse workers are reliant on public assistance programs like Snap and Medicaid as they struggle to make ends meet. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s 2026 investigation found that Amazon violated the worker rights of disabled and pregnant workers by denying medical accommodations and forcing unpaid leave. Warehouse staff routinely face intense pressure during peak production periods for Amazon, leading to thousands of workers suffering from musculoskeletal disorders and other preventable workplace injuries. 

Workers have responded to Amazon’s inhumane conditions by organizing for better conditions and pay, to which Amazon has retaliated with aggressive union busting. Amazon spent at least $26 million on firms that specialize in anti-labor organizing and union-busting techniques, according to the company’s 2025 filings with the U.S. Labor Department. And they paid good money for the consultancy for a reason. Amazon has flooded its warehouses with anti-union flyers in bathrooms and breakrooms, which workers could come across after their mandatory meetings with disinformation about unions. In fact, Jefferson County spokeswoman Helen Hayes asserts that the county sped up the red lights near Amazon’s fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama at the company’s behest, making it harder for union organizers to engage with employees and drivers at the traffic median.

Amazon’s worker treatment is not the only reason for the protest of Bezos and the Met Gala by association. The Met Gala’s lead sponsor has consistently supported ICE in their efforts to target minorities and terrorize vulnerable communities. According to the Immigrant Defense Project, Amazon Web Services supports the Department of Homeland Security via its cloud storage services. By being the primary broker of cloud storage for the DHS, the company allows ICE to collect information on immigrants and their communities to ultimately surveil and track people for deportation. And the environmental impact of these data centers? Just a few weeks ago, Amazon was to pay $20.5 million in a settlement over nitrate pollution from their data center facilities contaminating the groundwater in Morrow County in northeast Oregon. 

Vogue’s former editor-in-chief Anna Wintour said on her 2017 appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden that she would never invite Donald Trump back to the Met Gala. But what does it mean when the Founder of Amazon—which contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund—is now a co-chair at the Met Gala, which Anna Wintour runs? 

And what does a tech billionaire, who is rich off of the world’s largest e-commerce and cloud computing company, want with the world of luxury fashion anyways? For the longest time, Silicon Valley built its ethos on its rejection of art, taste, and beauty by refusing to consider style, artistic principles, and visual aesthetics. The tech world prided itself on its focus on function and utility over an appreciation for the arts, which would translate into a maintained distance from the humanities as a whole.

But as the tech industry has gained its current reputation as being empty and soulless, especially with tech companies sapping consumers’ privacy and money more and more every day, it is in dire need of a PR facelift. And what has the strategy been? Palantir has been cosplaying as a lifestyle brand selling apparel and tote bags. Zuckerberg even had a seat at this year’s Met Gala, a night that is dedicated to celebrating creativity and supporting the arts. 

But these billionaires only care about the arts to the extent to which their support can launder their reputations.

Days after the Met Gala, Meta is discontinuing end-to-end encryption of Instagram direct messages. Palantir has a contract with the IDF to provide AI-driven data analysis software for use in Gaza. All of this is what the Met Gala has served to obscure by being associated with Bezos, which is what he gains for contributing so heavily towards. Artists and creatives receive his monetary support, especially at a time when the increasing cost of living is crushing Americans nationwide, but only if they can ignore the structural violence of Amazon’s empire.

The Met Gala has effectively legitimized him culturally, and others like him, in the eyes of the public. A public that is waking up to the violence being perpetuated by tech companies and the billionaires that benefit from them.

This is not to imply that union-busting and practices are mutually exclusive from the Met Gala itself, either. Ahead of the 2026 Met Gala, unionized workers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art posted that 91% of the museum’s hourly staff and 27% of salaried staff earn less than a living wage.

Condé Nast, the primary organizer and media partner for the Met Gala, has been accused of engaging in retaliatory and anti-union behavior. The union, Condé United, which is affiliated with the NewsGuild of New York, states that Condé Nast fired four union leaders and suspended others after a confrontation with the company’s HR over the layoffs and closure of Teen Vogue. Teen Vogue was known for its youth-focused political coverage, and its closure marked another hit to candid reporting at a time when hard-hitting journalism is needed most, while newspapers all over the country close.

Fashion, and the arts as a whole, has always sought to encapsulate and represent the human experience. But after depleting natural capital by polluting our water and exhausting human capital by working employees to death, Amazon and other tech giants are now coming for cultural capital as a way to validate their existence in our society.

An existence that they’ve built by betraying every facet of the social contract, when at the very least, they could pay their share in taxes.

If our understanding of what it means to be human is going to be shaped by tech companies’ money in arenas such as fashion, what does that say about our sense of humanity?