Sins of omission: Critical informatics perspectives on privacy in e-learning systems in higher education

The COVID-19 pandemic emptied classrooms across the globe and pushed administrators, students, educators, and parents into an uneasy alliance with online learning systems already committing serious privacy and intellectual property violations, and actively promoted the precarity of educational labor. In this article, we use methods and theories derived from critical informatics to examine [anonymized] University's deployment of seven online learning platforms commonly used in higher education to uncover five themes that result from the deployment of corporate learning platforms. We conclude by suggesting ways ahead to meaningfully address the structural power and vulnerabilities extended by higher education's use of these platforms.