26 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2023
    1. How have your views on ethics changed (or been reinforced)?

      I used to have very ambiguous knowledge on ethics myself before, judging right from wrong based on my personal feelings simply. However, I now get to learn about all sorts of frameworks pertinent to this field, which could undoubtedly help me better when making my own decisions, and viewing things from a variety of different angles before doing my personal judgment as well by taking advantage of these ingenious ethics frameworks hopefully.

    1. We hope that by the end of this book you know a lot of social media terminology (e.g., context collapse, parasocial relationships, the network effect, etc.), that you have a good overview of how social media works and is used, and what design decisions are made in how social media works, and the consequences of those decisions.

      This course undoubtedly leaves a profound impression on my mind's eye on basically how social media platforms work, and ways to view as well as judging their behavior through the utilization of a variety of ethics frameworks. For example, I'm currently pretty familiar with all of the pertinent terminologies related to social media, and are able to distinguish different users' behavior before making my own action undoubtedly. In the meantime, I also get to gain some insight into computer programming as well, like designing my own bots on different sites and platforms.

  2. Nov 2023
    1. What do you think would work well, what would work poorly?

      Things that will go very well is that since this is a government-funded social media site, it does not need to worry problems of making money at all due to well-supplied funds, and users who take advantage of this site will feel much safer when using it. Things that may go bad, however, include how freedom and variety of topics could be restricted severely by the government itself, like things that can potentially cause instability to the society, which would reduce the number of users to a much larger extent in the meantime.

    1. In what ways do you see capitalism, socialism, and other funding models show up in the country you are from or are living in?

      Well, back in China, before the Reformation and Opening up, most of the economy was dictated mainly by the government, taking forms including the large number of state-owned enterprises. However, nowadays there is also capitalism coexisting with socialism too, demonstrated by the market economy that allows a lot more freedom within producers and buyers, but still under the command as well as surveillance of the government frankly.

    1. Pick a social media platform. In what ways does that platform make it difficult to repair or reconcile after public shaming?

      I will choose Tiktok as an example. For instance, when a person has been publicly shamed, the platform could then simply take down all of his videos, including all those that are related to him. In this way, getting repaired or any possible reconciliation afterwards is then made much harder due to this action taken by Tiktok literally.

    2. Do you think there are situations where reconciliation is not possible?

      Yes of course. Just like Nazi trial case discussed above, which is simply beyond possible reconciliation, there are also lots of cases where it would seem to be pretty hard too, such as in between China and Japan, Israel and Pakistan, etc.

    1. Have you experienced or witnessed harassment on social media (that you are willing to share about)?

      Yes, I have witnessed it myself. Back in high school, one of my classmates who was a tiktok video maker herself suffered from harassment on it. There were individuals who kept leaving malicious remarks under her videos and in ways of DMs too, which eventually stopped her from updating any more videos sadly.

    1. Do you believe crowd harassment is ever justified?

      No, I don't think so personally. Crowd harassment as a form of assaulting others intentionally with a group of people should never be justified no matter what reasons it could be originated from, as it would only get someone hurt and get things aggravating much worse.

    1. Do you think there are ways a social media platform can encourage good crowdsourcing and discourage bad crowdsourcing?

      Yes, of course. For example, when users manage to contribute something conducive to the platform, there could be announcements that express compliments and give out awards. On the other hand, when a large number of users are tending to do things bad like leaving malicious comments behind intentionally, there could also be related announcements and perhaps ban wave regarding this group of people to stop bad crowdsourcing from growing rampant further.

    2. In what ways do you think you’ve participated in any crowdsourcing online?

      For instance, I have personally helped edit Wikipedia myself, answer homework-related questions on pertinent websites for other users, as well as crowdfunding for the game Star Citizens.

    1. In unmoderated online spaces who has the most power and ability to speak and be heard? Who has the least power and ability to speak and be heard?

      In such spaces ordinary users would undoubtedly be harmed most without appropriate power and rights to speak for themselves, while people such as the administrators who have great access to that online space possess the most power to manipulate, speak and be heard.

    2. Have you ever reported a post/comment for violating social media platform rules?

      Yes, I definitely have experienced that myself. For example, when I 'm browsing youtube videos, I sometimes would find and then report them or comments below for being very offensive, a scam or other reasons to the social media platform for violating its rules.

    1. Select one of the above harms that you think is important to address. Then write a 1-2 sentence scenario where a user faces difficulties because of the harm you selected. This represents one way the design could harm certain users.

      I will go for harm 1. For instance, when a user of the social media site posts videos or comments, they could then be responded maliciously and bullied by others, making them potentially inclined to doing the same thing themselves in the future, which undoubtedly consists of severe harm imposed on a person's mental health.

    2. How might the mental health of different people or groups be harmed by this social media site? List as many as you can think of (bullet points encouraged).
      1. They may be commented badly and bullied by other users online.
      2. There may be content that are inappropriate and thus harmful for teenagers in their minority.
      3. They may be misguided by unhealthy content posted on site.
      4. Certain topics could cause severe stress, anger, depression, and other unhealthy emotions to specific groups of people.
  3. Oct 2023
    1. Would you like something you do or say to go viral?

      I would say both yes and no, which often is hard to tell. For instance, if the virality of that thing could enable to get rich, famous, etc, I think the answer should probably be positive; however, in the meantime if such virality is also severely violating my regular routine, customary lifestyle as well as privacy, my answer could then be negative again, so it may just depend upon different circumstances as far as I'm concerned.

    2. In what ways have you participated in helping content go viral?

      Well, for example, when watching interesting videos on Tiktok or Youtube, I would usually leave a comment and a like behind for them before leaving, which in my opinion contributes to the virality of those contents. Same things also happen when I'm using other social media platforms, including Twitter, Discord and so forth.

    1. What experiences do you have of social media sites making particularly good recommendations for you?

      Good recommendations from those sites include interesting and inspiring posts as well as videos put forward that are liked by a lot of people, potential users who are probably related or are friends to you, as well as people and things recently happened near your location and etc.

    2. What experiences do you have of social media sites making particularly bad recommendations for you?

      Such bad recommendations include unexpected showcase of boring, stupid ads. For example, when I'm browsing through Tiktok or Youtube, they often bother users with a lot of so-called ads from sponsors and make bad recommendations regarding either boring or useless things.

    1. What assumptions do the site and your device make about individuals or groups using social media, which might not be true or might cause problems? List as many as you can think of (bullet points encouraged).
      1. My browser automatically accepts all the default privacy settings by the site. This could result in harmful reveals of privacy that I personally don't want to be taken.
      2. I would be interested in all the ads they are showcasing on my computer screen, which usually proves to be totally wrong.
      3. I'm a person who does not have any visual disabilities, such as color blindness, which could fail to work well for that group of people.
      4. I do not have any hearing disabilities neither, because there are not any subtitles available for most of the videos on site. This could prove difficult concerning people who are unable to hear very well.
    1. Another way of managing disabilities is assistive technology, which is something that helps a disabled person act as though they were not disabled.

      I would like to add a few more examples regarding different kinds of assistive technology. This also includes wheelchair for people who are unable to walk on their own, audiphones for people who have hearing disabilities, guide dogs for blind people as well as magnifiers specially designed for elder people who are not capable of looking at things very clearly.

    1. What incentives to social media companies have to violate privacy? What incentives do social media companies have to be careless with privacy?

      The reasons for them to violate varies. For example, it could be due to an extremely big profit made when selling their users' personal information to other companies, which is mainly for their own interest in most cases. Reasons for them to stay careless with privacy include the high cost possibly generated when ensuring their cyber security, or potential inconvenience caused by utilzing a more complex security system.

    2. What are your biggest concerns around privacy on social media? What incentives do social media companies have to protect privacy?

      Personally, I suppose that the main concern I have over my privacy on social media is the leaking or misuse of my personal information, including name, age, address, passwords, etc. If a social media company could protect their users' privacy well, it would be able to gain more trust from them, thus increasing the number of users to a large extent and making accordingly much more profit.

    1. Reflections on Data Mining

      I would definitely say yes. Data mining has enabled so many websites to easily collect my data, analyse and simply conclude my personal inforation. As far as I'm concerned, basic info includes ages, genders, etc. should be collected in order to provide the most appropriate treatment for their users; however, things include real names, address ought never to be mined, for these are quite sensitive issues and could lead to severe consequences when getting hacked or used for malicious purposes.

    1. Reflection

      After a small glance at my google profile, I'm really astonished by the amount of data about me collected by the browser. It accurately records down all websites and everything I looked up throughout the past few weeks, and manages to generate an expectation of my interests with a variety of ads. Although some I would say is quite inaccurate, it predicts most right through data mining and also successfully pinpoint the range in which my age falls. I suppose this really discomforts me a bit because I'm feeling no privacy at all all of a sudden...

    1. Fake Pronunciation Guide

      Well, this trolling guide certainly serves the purpose for fun again. Viewers who know the actual pronunciation for this word would benefit, as they could always get some amusement while listening to it. However, kids, especially students or adults who are still unable to distinguish its actual fun-based purpose and even believe the pronunciation would unfortunately be harmed I'm afraid.

    2. In 2011, Amazon users started leaving parody reviews of a banana slicer on Amazon

      As far as I'm concerned, the potential pros for banana slicer reviews served the purpose for some sort of amusement. Buyers who often browse reviews for fun would definitely benefit from it. However, this could affect the seller's sales due to these trolling remarks, either as people didn't pay attention to the authentic product any more or they might simply feel stupid and funny to purchase and use it.