In one of my previous classes, GEOG 258: Digital Geographies, they showed us this film. The film shows how technologies such as facial recognition and large language models and how they promote inequality. One example in the film is that facial recognition software is much less effective on people of color than white people, because that is the biases behind the people who created it.

I have never had any type of ethics class, so all of this information was new to me. I did not know about how you use an ethics framework to decide if any actions are ethical or not, and I found that very interesting. I also learned about many different ethics frameworks, some that I have never heard of before.

The article talks about how on Apple devices, the setting to not allow apps to track data does not completely prevent them from doing it. Many developers have just grouped people together instead of targeting individuals, as this is how the interpret Apple's rules. The article says that despite these settings, information about individuals still gets through such as IP addresses, location, and screen size. The article ends by saying that there is still some benefit to using these settings.

It felt like every single decision negatively impacted a group in some way. In this simulation, it didn't phase me if a certain group was upset over a decision that I deemed correct, but I can see how that could change when you add the actual incentives present from owning a social media platform.

This article talks about a Halloween prank that Jimmy Kimmel shared to parents on his show. Kimmel told parents to film themselves telling their children that the parents ate all of their candy overnight. Next, it talks about how a child and adult will comprehend the situation differently. The article disagrees that it is a psychologically traumatic experience, since the children immediately find out that the candy has not actually been eaten.

I think that there are many times when reconciliation should not be possible. I think that the section of the textbook regarding the Nazi's is a prime example. Any person or group that commits heinous crimes or partake in a genocide should not have reconciliation.

This article talks about how crowd harassment was used against people who joined a neo-Nazi led march in Charlottesville. As many of these people were photographed extensively, a Twitter account was able to find many of the people involved and publicly shame them. This led to a few of these people losing their jobs as many employers do not want to hire white nationalists.

I believe that crowd harassment is rarely justified. The only time that I think it should be is when a person is abusing a position of power. For example, an elected politician that is bribing or breaking laws without consequences would justify crowd harassment.

I believe that a social media platform shouldn't have different responsibilities for crowd actions than for individual actions. This would mean that the platform should not allow individuals to spread harmful or hateful information, which would prevent groups from doing the same.

This article talks about an incident at a hocky match between the Vancouver Canucks and the Seattle Kraken. In the game, Vancouver's assistant equipment manager got a message from a fan sitting behind the team bench telling him that a mole on the back of his neck was cancer. After the game, he got it checked and found that the fan was correct, it was a malignant melanoma that he had removed days later. After this, the Canucks turned to social media to find the woman who discovered the cancer. The original post was retweeted over 8,000 times, and the woman was found within two hours.

This article talks about Facebook's moderation team, employees who are underpaid to look at disturbing content. The article highlights how these employees are not treated well, and issues such as PTSD from viewing this content is dismissed by the company. The article talks about lawsuits regarding the topic but explains that they have caused no change to how Facebook treats these employees.

In the game, the added time pressure made it feel like answers needed to be instant. It also made looking into these sources feel like a waste of time, since it was impossible to do this for a few, let alone all of them. I believe that this can be shown in true moderation, as many things can slip past filters by using deception. This time crunch makes content moderation a practically impossible task.

A part of this article that really stuck out to me was simply how it explains what the spectrum that is referred to when people say "autism is a spectrum" actually looks like. Despite having some autistic family members, I was under the impression that the meaning was simply referring to the gradient that the article mentions and that it simply wasn't based on facts. Because of this, I believe that this labeled spectrum is extremely helpful to understand what autism actually is and should be taught to the wider public.

I have found that social media has distinctive positive and negative effects. The major positive for me is that it allows me to stay connected and in-touch with other people. I am personally more introverted, so being able to communicate on a social media platform is much easier. I have found many negatives with social media, such as feeling negative emotions from comments and getting sucked into social media algorithms.

A detail from this source that I found interesting was the inclusion of multi-level marketing (MLM). I had always thought that MLM was a different term for pyramid schemes. I did not know that the FTC acknowledged legal MLM's, and I think this is quite strange. The definition the FTC gives that distinguishes legal MLM's from pyramid schemes seems extremely vague and predatory. However, after learning this I am not surprised at all that this is the product of a lobbying group.

I believe that you do not need to cite your sources for content when something is not exactly the same. While I think it is a good practice to give credit to inspiration, I do not believe that it is mandatory. However, I believe that any exact copy included should be cited, whether or not you gain a monetary benefit. Even if you do not personally gain value from taking someone else's work, you can limit the revenue/attention they get. This is solved by citing, which could potentially even give the original poster a larger reach.

This article talks about how in 2022, Amazon faced a lawsuit for two separate teenagers that bought chemicals from their website to take their own lives. A complaint file in California state court also said that the website also suggested anti-vomiting medicine and a book about assisted suicide. While these chemicals are considered legal as they could be used to cure some meats, the purity that Amazon sells them has no household purpose and would kill individuals with only a teaspoon. The article ends by saying that it found ten other people who had used this chemical to end their own life in the last two years.

I think one way that social media may be able to improve their recommendations is by allowing users to have a greater input into what is shown to them. This way, users will avoid some of the content shown to them because of negative actions such as a comment or longer view time. Also, users should be seeing what they want instead of simply what keeps them on the site for longer periods of time. I believe that this will also benefit the platform, as it will cause less people to completely quit it over burnout from excessive negative content.

In my GEOG 294 class from last quarter, we went over many different examples of racially biased technology similar to this. One of the main examples is how facial identification technology doesn't effectively work on the faces of people of color. I think that it is important to consider who made a technology as their biases can show up in it.

This article talks about a woman who has increased perception of colors. This is because she has tetrachromacy, a variation in her genes that influences development in her retinas. This condition is exclusive to women, as the genes for the red and green cones are on the X chromosome. While this genetic anomaly is not uncommon, only few of the people who have it show increased perception. The article ends by talking about the negatives of tetrachromacy, such as how the vastness of colors can be overstimulating.

This is an NPR article in 2021 that discusses how Facebook elected not to notify its users of a potential data breach. This data was found by misusing a feature on Facebook where you could search people by phone number. Facebook elected not to tell people about it claiming that they did not know who they would need to notify. The article ends by showing that Facebook has struggled with user privacy before, having to settle for $5 billion dollars for breaking an agreement to protect privacy in 2019.

One major incentive that social media companies have to protect privacy is that it makes their users feel more secure when using the technology, keeping a better user retention rate. This will also work as a reason that a user will select this social media. Another incentive is that better privacy protections make it less likely for a government to push regulations and sanctions against a social media company.

I think that there are tons of data that can be used for bad purposes. One example is health issues. This data can allow online companies to charge higher prices to people that need special accommodations since they know that these people are forced to get these products. Another thing that can happen from data mining is dynamic pricing. This is a more general effect that still causes harm. With dynamic pricing, companies are able to charge more to people based on how much they are willing/able to pay, making products more expensive for all people.

This article talks about how Facebook collects data for their ad preferences page. The author claims that they are very specific but quite inaccurate. The author explains this by describing the Facebook Pixel. The Pixel is a tracker on non-Facebook websites that sends information regarding view history to Facebook.

This article looks at posts made by comedian Jaboukie Young-White. First, it shows a post where he changed his Twitter account to look like an official FBI page and make a joke alleging that the FBI killed Martin Luther King Jr. The article then shows a similar style tweet that the comedian made. Finally, the article shows the FBI post that the Young-White based his post on.

I think that the best way to deal with trolling is to report and ignore the trolling. If nobody interacts with the troll, they are no longer incentivized to continue posting. Reporting can also help, but many of these platforms can benefit from trolling, so they may not do anything.

This article codes through all of Donal Trump's tweets at the time to compare the 628 tweets from iPhone and 762 tweets from Android to see if there is a clear difference between the two, as it is hypothesized that Trump only personally posts from an Android. This includes looking at the time posted, images included, and how other posts are retweeted. Next, the article finds that most of the emotionally charged words are exclusive to the Android and that the iPhone has nearly every hashtag and event announcement.

When I see posts that are not made by Trump himself, they feel completely inauthentic. However, I believe that him having this is much less harmful to the United States's image than what he posts as his authentic self. Since moving to Truth Social, Trump has posted problematic ai art that includes extremely racist imagery. After seeing the posts from Trump's authentic self, seeing authenticity from social media posts does not seem important.

This source talks about the Federal Trade Commission's complaint regarding Facebook and their anti-trust actions on their mobile platform. This occurred by Facebook illegally acquiring competitors instead of innovating their products. Another thing in the FTC complaint is that Facebook started as an open space for third party software developers and then abruptly made these developers agree to conditions that prevented any successful apps to emerge as a threat to Facebook. The article ends by saying that this case to file the complaint was presented in front of federal judges and won 3-2.

Some of the things people use social media for are: * Keeping up on other people's lives, whether friend or celebrity * Finding places to eat * General entertainment through videos and posts * Communication * Learning new information * Finding locations to visit

I personally believe that the person who made the post is the person who ran it. I don't think that the bot made the code but is closer to a tool that can be used like a shovel. I also think that the person who made the post is simply the person who created the tool to make the post.

Another thing to add about Taoism is the idea of Yin and Yang. This idea is that the world is composed of opposing forces that must exist in harmony. There is also a belief that the concept of good or bad does not exist.