Another way of managing disabilities is assistive technology, which is something that helps a disabled person act as though they were not disabled

Most humans are trichromats, meaning they can see three base colors (red, green, and blue), along with all combinations of those three colors. Human societies often assume that people will be trichromats. So people who can’t see as many colors are considered to be color blind, a disability. But there are also a small number of people who are tetrachromats and can see four base colors2 and all combinations of those four colors. In comparison to tetrachromats, trichromats (the majority of people), lack the ability to see some colors. But our society doesn’t build things for tetrachromats, so their extra ability to see color doesn’t help them much. And trichromats’ relative reduction in seeing color doesn’t cause them difficulty, so being a trichromat isn’t considered to be a disability.

Social media sites then make their money by selling targeted advertising, meaning selling ads to specific groups of people with specific interests. So, for example, if you are selling spider stuffed animal toys, most people might not be interested, but if you could find the people who want those toys and only show your ads to them, your advertising campaign might be successful, and those users might be happy to find out about your stuffed animal toys.

One particularly striking example of an attempt to infer information from seemingly unconnected data was someone noticing that the number of people sick with COVID-19 correlated with how many people were leaving bad reviews of Yankee Candles saying “they don’t have any scent” (note: COVID-19 can cause a loss of the ability to smell):

In the mid-1990s, some internet users started manually adding regular updates to the top of their personal websites (leaving the old posts below), using their sites as an online diary, or a (web) log of their thoughts. In 1998/1999, several web platforms were launched to make it easy for people to make and run blogs (e.g., LiveJournal and Blogger.com). With these blog hosting sites, it was much simpler to type up and publish a new blog entry, and others visiting your blog could subscribe to get updates whenever you posted a new post, and they could leave a comment on any of the posts.

4Chan has various image-sharing bulletin boards, where users post anonymously. Perhaps the most infamous board is the “/b/” board for “random” topics. This board emphasizes “free speech” and “no rules” (with exceptions for child pornography and some other illegal content). In these message boards, users attempt to troll each other and post the most shocking content they can come up with. They also have a history of collectively choosing a target website or community and doing a “raid” where they all try to join and troll and offend the people in that community.

Why do you think social media platforms allow bots to operate?

3.2.1. Friendly bots:# Some bots are intended to be helpful, using automation to make tasks easier for others or to provide information, such as: Auto caption: https://twitter.com/headlinerclip Vaccine progress: https://twitter.com/vax_progress Blocking groups of people: https://twitter.com/blockpartyapp_ Social Media managing programs that help people schedule and coordinate posts Delete old tweets: https://tweetdelete.net/ See a new photo of a red panda every hour: https://twitter.com/RedPandaEveryHr Bots might have significant limits on how helpful they are, such as tech support bots you might have had frustrating experiences with on various websites.

“The internet isn’t real life.” This was used as a way to devalue time spent on social media sites, and to dismiss harms that occurred on them.

Egoism# “Rational Selfishness”: It is rational to seek your own self-interest above all else. Great feats of engineering happen when brilliant people ruthlessly follow their ambition. That is, Do whatever benefits yourself. Altruism is bad.