According to Wikipedia, a pyramid scheme is a business model where a person or small group of people starts at the top, recruits new members, and then pays those members to recruit more members. This causes the whole structure to grow like a pyramid. Pyramid schemes are illegal in most countries because they are considered a scam, while a few people at the top profit; most of the people in the middle or lower levels lose the money they initially put in and get scammed.

I think that attribution should depend on what the creator of the original content wants, and if no original creator can be found, then the use of the meme or content is free game. If brands are using somebody's content for advertisement, credit alone isn't enough; they should reimburse the creator with money. I think it is courteous to give a creator credit for their work on social media because online, attention is currency, and you can pay them back by sending more people to their channel. Some creators, however, may not want credit so that they aren't subjected to bullying/ harrassment; if this is the case, then it is right not to give them credit or use their content at all.

According to this article, ableism is the discrimination and prejudice against people with disabilities. Ableists define people by their disabilities, and see "able" people as superior to disabled people. I volunteer at a nonprofit organization that is centered around disabled people, so I see and hear stories of ableism all the time. The struggles disabled people have to go through on a daily basis are unimaginable to non disabled people.

Some assumptions Instagram and my device make about individuals or groups using social media which might not be true or cause problems are: * Assuming people can see * Assuming people can read small text * Assuming people can see color * Text placed over images is readable * Users can scroll * Users can use fingers to interact with the app * Users can hear

People who struggle with the things listed above will have difficulty using Instagram.

The Equifax data breach was one of the largest and most destructive data breaches ever. Equifax is one of the major credit bureaus in the United States, and around 150 million total people were effected by this breach. Equifax only ended up paying about 575 million dollars in damages. The company waited around a month to tell the public after they already knew the breach had happened, this led to more legal troubles. The Chief Information Officer and Chief Executive Officer's both left the company and the new CEO promised users free lifetime access and control of their credit data.

My biggest concerns around privacy on social media are strangers, companies, and people with malicious intent getting their hands on my information. I am very unhappy with the amount of data leaks that happen, I know many of my emails and passwords have been leaked, and my social security number is probably somewhere out there for anybody to find. If companies are going to hold information like that I think they should be held responsible for if such thing as a data leak were to happen, and if they aren't confident they can store the data without it getting leaked then they just shouldn't store it in the first place.

According to this article, web tracking is when companies collect your personal data and sell them to other companies. An example of this would be Youtube and Netflix tracking what shows you watch and sending it to Google so that they can tailor ads for you to make it more likely for you to buy the product. Your personal data is tracked through http cookies, first and third party tracking, IP address, and E - Tags.

I think my personal data being sold is an invasion of privacy, and it makes me uncomfortable knowing that other companies are profiting off of my information. I don't need ads tailored to me, and I don't even want ads at all. If I must watch ads for products, just make them random; I am not going to buy any of it anyway.

According to this article, a troll is someone who posts things online with the intention of causing outrage or confusion with the intention to draw an emotional response out of others. Trolls often troll for their own self amusement, to manipulate, or to cause harm. The best way to fight against trolls is to ignore them rather than engage with the trolling, the goal is to deprive them of getting an emotional response out of you.

I think the best way to deal with trolling as an individual is to do your best to ignore it. You could learn about different types of trolling to help yourself better be able to identify online trolls. The best way to deal with trolling as a social media company is to let it happen unless it is causing real harm to a person or group. Trolling creates attention, which keeps users on the app for longer and brings new users in.

Covid-19 is a respiratory illness caused by a virus called Sars-CoV-2.The outbreak started in Wuhan, China, and quickly spread to all parts of the world. Many countries implemented mask/ vaccine mandates, and millions of people died. COVID-19 changed the economy in many countries and also forced people online; companies like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter surged. Because many people were quarantined in their homes, they resorted to online forms of communication to keep in touch with friends and family.

I notice myself changing how I express myself in different situations when I switch between different apps. On TikTok, I might say whatever I want, but on Instagram I have to keep more of a representation. On Reddit and YikYak I can really say whatever I want because, for the most part, it is anonymous. On social media related to my school, I may try to sound smarter or more sophisticated in what I post, and on my LinkedIn I might try to sound more professional. I portray a different personality for each of the social media sites I use.

Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, is an instant text based messaging system. It was designed mainly for group discussions, but private chat rooms and file sharing also exist. People connect through a client program to a server within a larger network. IRC had about 10 million users in the 2000s but lost 60% of its users to the growing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter around 2003. IRC is still used in some big platforms today; Twitch uses IRC for its chat system.

The use case I am using is finding information. To perform this use case, the user needs to make a post with details about the information they are trying to find. Say they are looking for a good restaurant near them; they may add their location, price range, and food preference to the post. Then hopefully someone who is familiar with the area sees the post and gives them a solid recommendation. Success means the user finds a credible answer to their question that they are happy with.

One example of pernicious ignorance in social media interaction is when people post pictures/ memes with text on them without text in the description. This makes it impossible for blind people or people with poor vision to consume the media they are trying to put out. This shows up again and again in social media and makes it hard for blind or poor vision people to interact and be a part of the online community.

This article talks about Elon Musk's concerns about Twitter's bot count when buying the company. Elon was in a deal with Twitter to buy the company for about $44 billion, or about $54 per share. Both parties made an agreement that if either one backed out, they would have to pay a one-billion-dollar fee. Elon Musk tried to make the case that Twitter was being misleading about how many bots they had viewing ads; Twitter claimed it was only around 5% while Elon was saying the numbers were more like 20%. Many people think the real reason Elon was making these claims was that, when the deal was going on, Twitter's stock dropped 30%, which meant that Elon was significantly overpaying; this may have urged Elon to bring up the bots so that he could withdraw from the deal without paying the billion-dollar fee.

According to this source, the dead internet theory holds that most of social media, or a large portion of it, is run by bots. Social media organizations may either use these bots to make their sites more addictive to expose people to more ads and make more money, or they may use these bots to heavily influence people's views by what they are consuming on their feeds or what they see "most people" are agreeing with. A third alternative is that these bots are made by third parties who may be trying to push their own agendas/ scams. Whatever the motive is behind making these bots, dead internet theory says that most of the interactions you have or media you see is heavily influenced by bots.

I think social media platforms allow bots to operate for a couple of reasons. First, bots are useful for informing people of information that can be automated, like the news, weather, warnings, etc. Bots are also useful to social media companies so that they can inflate their numbers; bots can make it look like more people are active at any one point and make a social media platform look more successful. The last reason social media companies might allow bots is that enforcing the bots would cost them a lot of money, so allowing them and only moderating the extreme usage of bots would save the companies loads of money.

I think of the relationship between social media and "real life" as social media being a part of real life. Social media is so integrated into our lives that I think recently it has become a part of real life. We all carry phones in our pockets and computers in our backpacks, there isn't really a distinction between being online and offline anymore, I would argue that for the most part we are all online. We check our phones for notifications every couple minutes and sometimes we even have notifications being relayed to us through our headphones when we aren't looking at a screen. The way we receive and send information is for the most part through social media and this has become the new norm. Humans are social creatures, we need connection, attention, and community, and nowadays we are fed all of these things through social media, for that reason I think there is no difference between social media and real life.

Kantianism is my favorite ethical lens because of the infinite number of hypothetical situations it creates for us to analyze. For example, say you come across a problem on whether you should lie or tell the truth in a certain situation. Well Kantianism might prompt you to ask yourself the question "What would life look like if everyone lied?" You would probably come to the conclusion that society would collapse because nobody would be able to trust one another. This would prompt you to then question "What would life look like if everyone told the truth?" and you might discover that these two hypothetical realities look quite similar. From here you would have to ask the more specific question "What would life look like if everyone in my certain situation lied?". This is why I love Kantian ethics, there is an unlimited amount of pondering to be done and hypotheticals to be worked out. I find it fascinating to work out these hypotheticals and see how much the answer depends on how the question is framed.