The idea of a meme, or at least what can be found to be most interesting about it, is fascinatingly tied to a human desire far older than print. To think that we all just want to share a common experience, finding joy within a communal feeling, is so fantastic. With the advent of print technologies however, cultural impacts can be condensed into a physical image or common phrase in a far more accessible manner. I wonder how this anthropological habit will evolve with new technologies?

Just by using the mediums of content consumption in typical ways. TikTok, Instagram, and youtube all care for the data of views and likes, so when I see things or interact with things typically I'm directly adding to the virality. Engagement monetization leads to consumption taking place in mass chunks, so it's not entirely uncommon for me to have watched the same video as many of my peers. My favorite content creators, a statement that implies the point in itself, are platforms that I and many others dedicate time to consuming, thereby dedicating time to make them viral.

The pervasiveness of personal data extraction from private entities is really astounding. To create a profile of an individual that matches certain archetypes of folks so efficiently scares me. To that point, marketing organizes people like that in the first place purely for the sake of keeping you around and buying their product faster. Regardless of the intent of the individual, information can be still be gleamed. It's weird that there's so much crossover between target and criminal profiling.

There have been some instances while scrolling on social media websites like tiktok or instagram have yielded exactly the kind of content in chunks that I was looking for. I could engage with a single video I quite enjoyed for just enough time that afterwards, whether in their respective search engines or just a feed, The content mirrored it quite well. I would stay on things for just long enough that it would curate exactly the tangential media influences as well.

There's an entire constitutional amendment in America that creates the avenue for privacy protections, but there's still somehow close to zero concrete laws guaranteeing this right to privacy in a majority of circumstances. There's precedent involving governmental oversight limits or a degree of laws covering private interactions resembling stalking, but that doesn't cover many contemporary bases that evolve faster than the law can adapt. Many private companies also have a stake in evaluating private data as a commodity to trade on the market, so it's very hard for our own government to care to change that quickly.

Despite the obvious inclination towards following the law to avoid punishment the personal private gain gained from selling data is highly valuable. This is directly because data and how to correctly sell things to folks, to get information on any given area, and to gain some sort of political advantage are all directly tied to performance to many entities. The egoist understanding that a private company can survey and sell otherwise invisible commodities for very little effort, simply owning a venue in a way, is exactly why they'd want to.

It seems that concepts like this stem from a business oriented mentality. To sell something to you using the greatest communication invention humanity has ever made seems to be exactly what any business would want. Customized ads ideally drive up view rates of the product without needing to cold call out to general audiences. From the perspective of the "buyer" though, I'd rather not have my communication and media consumption medium have an infiltration of private interest tracking me, changing my feed, and influencing my experience to make someone a profit. I'm of the belief that the internet in most cases must prioritize the user given the inherent power difference between developers or investors and the layman.

While the convenience of the feature may have presented a product that I would have otherwise never known about at least once, I'm entirely uncomfortable with my information being constantly sold to advertisers for their benefit. The invasive nature of it, given that I'm a casual internet user for the most part, stems from the fact that I don't even want ads in the first place, let alone have them be an entire function of my search engine. This medium should not have this function for the benefit of it's users, especially not the developers.

Truly the bane of all attempts at socialization and intellectualism. To purposefully pollute the waters of the medium of communication as a whole removes the purpose and any grounds of authority from interaction. If everyone operated in good faith, it's only natural that the world would simply work -- but the promise of unequal gain at the expense of the greater whole to the detriment of authenticity is far too attractive for those that would mean to selfishly gain. It's now only at its easiest in the digital age, so one only wonders of authenticity is something humanity will ever value normatively in spaces of little consequence.

Easily just doing the elementary school tactic of telling the teacher. As crit hulk explained just a second ago, relying on heavy moderation and accountability mechanisms is what folks ought to be using platforms for anyways in times of distress. Accountability from a higher authority that could just rebuke all power from the trolls at once is perfect. Blacklisting is also a wonderful tactic, particularly due to the fact that trolls that still hold resentment cant even use the tools of abuse anymore -- a punishment befitting of the crime.

The idea of a persona is so fascinating to me, mostly due to it's widespread but often unconscious use. In holding up this mask of alternative representation, it speaks both to the lie that you're trying to sell, as well as something more prevalent to why you are wanting to have it represent you in the first place. The medium of the internet allows for this subconscious adaption of humans to want to fit into whatever space they're in to manifest as a possibly conscious effort. To lie about your personality, who you are, or inflate certain parts of yourself can work only when the "mask" is a barrier in physical allocation that our brains could otherwise cross.

I try my best in any given social situation to show as much of me as possible so that it's not surprising when, in different groups, I may prioritize different aspects of myself for my comfort in a scenario. Though, there are times where I find myself switching into something representing the space I'm participating in subconsciously, even if it's not a part of who I'd call me. For instance, a way of speaking in certain online spaces my socially imply that I be more formal, or use language that signals I've honestly committed effort to participate -- like in fandom spaces or niche communities surrounding a single concept or IP.

The genesis of much of what the internet is infamous for and still a cesspool of either few cute passionate fans or mostly hatefarming pornography addicted antisocialites. The nature of a specially organized set of boards for a still inspiring number of niches can be at times wonderful. There's good that's come for 4chan and there's still those who use it as casually as one would use any other social media cite, just with a more intimate connection to what you and others love. However, the format and anonymity leads to a feedback loop of those who find themselves akin to the hateful and the lonely, creating echo cultures that either relish in stretching desires otherwise frowned upon by the greater society in a blanket of the platform. That intimacy I spoke of appeals to a deeper part of human antisocial social groups in an absurd detachment to reality -- and the site will likely never change that.

The use case I chose was validating your views. It usually means and is enabled by the idea of community niche regulations or expectations that, especially given the size of the internet, create spaces where ideas are almost parroted to one another for validation. These echo chambers give a sense of belonging that most humans crave to extent of associating with anything regardless of depravity or harm that an ideology can cause. A success would be to feel as though you're surrounded by your own opinion and huffing on our own fumes.

"since Musk's take over, 80 percent of the company's Trust and Safety team's engineers have been laid off, along with half of the company's content moderators." One needs only go as far as to see one's actions in moments of opportunity to see the reason they take advantage of it in the first place. Not to be a tinfoil hat guy, but I swear musk's take over of twitter was just meant as the means for him and any other big name distributor to themselves have control over the largest social media conglomeration in the world. It's entirely understandable why they would from their perspective, but isn't the degree of private pervasive action just horrifying in what was once seen as a digital agora? Musk is all that I truly despise when it comes to how tech and social media and the abuse of it for private interest has become one of the greatest rots of our modern world.

I think this one should be pretty simple in both communicating relevant meta data and disregarding sponsors or other private interest groups' wants in the matter. this would mean obviously implementing all relevant facts of date, time, maybe medium, and account name. But more importantly, seeing whether the site considers it a bot, considers it AI content whether randomly generated or recycled and automated, alongside any information regarding sponsorship or brand affiliation to a given account or post. I don't want to be digitally solicited in a way.

First it's that idea of the donkey protester mentioned a moment ago. There's a detachment between awareness and execution of actions when in the case of bots, given their standing as more of a tool then an entity. It would be critiquing a hammer for pounding a nail wrong, when the one using the tool could not be identified. There's also the degree of ability in sheer quantity of action, since a bot could take over an entire thread in seconds while it would require substantial manual effort to do so for a human.

The idea of a digitally incesteous ouroboros is so disturbing and in equal measures fascinating! the source touches on the advent and contemporary analysis of bots feeding content into one another as they're both producing and reacting to content divorced from any human involvement. Especially with the evolution and abundance of AI now adays to the layman, the barrier for entry to add to this rotting hell is on the floor, so it's only going to get worse!

I imagine they think of the act of technological advancement for either the means to simply see what it can do, or more realistically, to establish themselves as the forefront of the market. There's a profit incentive playing it's role as the primary inspiration for progress, and given that technological advancement is so penetrative to every facet of modern life, it's a bottomless well of money that many work towards without acknowledging that part of technologies nature and the profound harm it could do on such a large scale.

A further aspect of Confucius tradition is the idea that through the practice of ritual, one would develop (kind of like a social expectation pressure) a sense of introspective shame towards themselves. Rather than a series of punishments and outcomes, you create a social expectation that one must continually adhere to or feel as though they must correct it themselves without need for punishment. Its the nature of humans to be virtuous, so create the means and expectation to do so through ritual and society will be harmonious.