I think I would change how reactive people are. I understand that most of this is pushed, manipulated and exploited by the algorithms of these sites however most people also allow themselves to be very reactive and susceptible to what they see on social media, hence the power of intentional polarisation.

My views on ethics has changed drastically. After learning of the different ethics frameworks I think I have a better understanding of how people think and also how to perceive things from different perspectives, whether I agree with them or not. I also understand that there's no true right or wrong (unless you were a Deontologist), however there are ethics and morals that should be adhered to, no matter the framework you decide to use.

I think on paper this sounds good as users would hypothetically know best how to create a welcoming platform but when you think about the number of users and the multitude of ideas and intentions, it would make the process way more complicated than anyone can figure out what to do with. For example, which users get a say in the direction and plan of the site and how much say? Would they need any qualifications to have a say? How would you decide who gets what say? Although many greedy politicians and businessmen have taken the concept and ran with it, I still believe money and profit are important driving factors in society and hence having a shareholder-governed business model is still valuable, but government regulations need to be the mediating factor (especially with anti-trust laws).

In an ideal world, I think this would prove to be effective, however, as with Wikipedia, we know that most users prefer to have things be as convenient as possible; to be able to just click on the app and have everything laid out for them. I do not think people would want to bother with crowd-funding for a social media site. Linking this idea back to Wikipedia, from the site itself, "There are currently 46,501,339 Wikipedia accounts, of which 122,469 have made at least one edit during the last month." Hence, I think it is unlikely that a site like this would take off and even if it did, crowd-funding would still play into the capitalism aspect where those who donate more would have a larger say and hence sway the direction of the site which could lead to adverse effects.

I think a retract button would actually do more harm than good as it goes against the idea of liability. Anyone would feel like they have this safety blanket of the "undo" button when this isn't the case in real life. It is as if a person were to blurt out a slew of slurs and then say, "Oops, I take that back." The hurt has been done and saying you want to retrieve your sentence would feel like salt on the inflicted wound. I understand mistakes happen and people can grow (hence, an apology), but realising and then growing would be far better in my eyes than a rescindment of adverse actions.

Although I find these constraints somewhat logical, they are also not very concrete in my eyes. All these factors are bendable in way one or another. For example, how would proportionality be measured? How do you truly know the consequences of shaming someone? Say a political candidate with some influence is shamed, would the proportionality be curved down as compared to someone with less influence?

I think this is quite a measured response and intelligent way of going about minimising toxicity on a platform. People become a lot less loaded and full of themselves when directly confronted with and by not allowing people to hide behind their community and directly replying to the author, they would be less inflated and inflammatory. This overall, I think, would lead to a better and healthier platform for all users.

Despite its being in the word, I think "harassment" can be justified in extreme cases. The majority of time, I think crowd harassment cannot be justified as this means the abuse of a single person by a large congregation of people. However, I also believe in karma and getting what you pay for. In cases of nefarious people, I think harassment can be justified. Outside of the legal and ethical sphere and solely focusing on justification, I would equate it to this story of a prisoner killing his child molester cellmate in prison. https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/imprisoned-murderer-gets-life-sentence-for-strangling-child-molester-cellmate-who-bragged-of-crimes/

As discussed previously with moderation, I feel as though the bulk of responsibility lies with the platform and the way they structure the site and lay the essential foundations on which users then use the platform. I do not believe that a user can easily abuse or exploit a platform unless given the grounds and means to. On the other hand, I also believe that if someone really wants to act negatively, they can and will. Such as how people can easily abuse a seemingly harmless and wholesome subreddit.

One prominent example of crowdsourcing that comes to mind is the case of a food worker stepping on lettuce. https://www.today.com/money/feet-lettuce-photo-hits-internet-gets-burger-king-employees-fired-893175 Moments after the photo was posted on 4chan, the employee was discovered by appalled 4chan users using EXIF data as the geo-location had not been stripped. Facebook users also spread the news like wildfire to several news sites, doxxed the person and got him terminated. It is still astonishing to me how a congregation of determined strangers on the Internet can be so effective at "solving a problem" despite how impossible it may seem.

I am not the biggest user of Reddit so am unsure of the implications and connotations surrounding unpaid moderators, however, I would assume it is similar to volunteer moderation in Twitch. A lot of controversy and discussion have surrounded Twitch streamers not paying their moderator(s), especially with those that make a large sum of money and stream several hours a day, the same number of hours their moderators will have to work, viewing and moderating comments and the chat. Personally, I think as long as someone is taking hours of their day to "work for" someone else's benefit, when the other party is earning money from the worker's effort and time, they should 100% be compensated, at least the minimum wage. There is no excuse for a large streamer who makes money from contribution from their moderators to not pay their team, despite it being "voluntary" or otherwise. This is all the more reason to pay.

While I understand why some users or organisations turn off comments completely, I also feel as though this might set a precedent for adversity. We have seen with events like YouTubers having their controversies publicised and then turning off comments to not receive any criticism or not have any potentially incriminating comments spread that this can do more harm than good. Additionally, I feel as though this defeats the purpose of interconnectivity. What is the purpose of publishing someone to the world wide web only to turn off any feedback? I equate this to talking to a brick wall only for the sake of blurting out words.

We see this a lot especially with the rise of Tiktok and how virtually anyone can become "famous". Particularly with Tourette Syndrome where users are faking ticks for financial gain. A popular case would be the one of Tics and Roses where old videos resurfaced of her talking and behaving "normally" with no tic interruptions.

I think this is an interesting point she states as it's a viewpoint I've upheld before. Viewing social media vs the real world in a black and white matter may do more harm than good as in today's world not going on social media is the equivalent of social isolation. Yet having to go on social media and scrolling aimlessly and endlessly will also overstimulate and lead to negative emotions. Rather than either hopping on or off for extended periods of time, I think regulation is key, both with the way in which we scroll and how much.

I feel this statement is particularly insightful. With memes and art/content that happen to become memes, I don't think they can be taken out of their context. Memes are memes because of both the content, individuals remixing it and the community engaging in it. I still think that the original artist should be given credit for their work but in a world where content gets shared so fast and perpetually it would be difficult to moderate content rights. We can also see cases of copyright moderation gone wrong like with YouTube.

I think the system of creating a new post with an existing post like the quote tweet or TikTok duet is quite a smart thing. This allows people to not only look at the original post but other people's reaction to it which may add a lot of interest to the post. Especially with short form content and the desire to consume a lot of content paired with shorter attention spans of this generation, this format helps to keep users hooked, in my opinion.

I perceive polarisation as the `division of people into two contrasting groups'. This may even turn into segregation in extreme cases. Personally, I don't see how this could ever be a positive thing as polarisation in my mind does not equal differing viewpoints. Polarisation is when differing viewpoints become opposite AND extreme. Rather than having differing viewpoints where diverse ideologies can meet and exchange and grow, you have a hostile environment where there is a "vs" mentality.

This is particularly interesting to me because this phrase (encompassed by the tweet above) is thrown around a lot. It is very difficult to "remedy" from an individual standpoint because of the lack of control or power yet on a systemic level things seem untouchable and so unchangeable. Therefore how would an issue like this be rectified? Users feel helpless in a situation like this and although they know and understand individual actions will do little to nothing when you have the system working against you it feels like the only thing you can do because it is the only thing within your control. So I think laws and policies should be in place for this (though we know how bureaucratic and unreliable the system is).

Following Twitter becoming X and the numerous layoffs (one of them being the entire accessibility team), I decided to open the app. 1. The site assumes that the user has full vision as the default font seems quite small. 2. The site also assumes that the user's ability to process stimulus is quite high as videos will play automatically. This includes videos that can be distracting and too much for some such as those with strobing lights.

The concept of universal design has always been interesting to me: the idea of designing not only so everyone is able to use it (accessibility) but also to accommodate different preferences seems like a good concept to adapt. I believe if everyone is able to use things then it would only lead to better economic efficiency despite the "hassle" or "effort" some argue universal design takes. Another concept I think is good or even better than universal design is inclusive design, which rather than trying to group all peoples to make things accessible like in universal design, analyses diversity and the differences between people and designing for this.

Social media companies need to retain users if they want to continue making money, whether it be through ad revenue, subscription services or other cashflows. To do this, they need to create a safe (or at least perceivably safe) environment for users so they feel comfortable continuing usage of the platform. If users feel their privacy may be violated they will likely not return leading to a decrease in profits. However, what social media platforms seem to be doing is only creating an environment of perceived privacy when behind the curtains and in between vague and complicated "privacy policies" violations are not only being let slip through but also sustained by the company for profit (take the bogus "Ask app not to track" feature from Apple).

With the rise of Tiktok and other short form content social media that allow users to blow up so easily, enabling virtually anyone and everyone to have a platform and some form of influence, I see that this "sharenting" problem has inflated drastically. Especially with family channels that target younger audiences by including their children, it all seems so unethical and to a large extent dysfunctional. "Family channels" like the recently arrested 8 Passengers YouTube Mom Ruby Franke are extremely exploitative and, in this case, abusive and should not exist in my opinion. Children who cannot consent should not be plastered onto the Internet where their content will stay forever, no matter how "harmless" the poster thinks their posts are.

Although I have personalised ads off across most, if not all social media (including Google) I notice that this seldom is the case as I still get personalised ads. This, again, is nothing short of uncanny. With Google, I could be looking at TV stands on the Ikea site and then immediately upon opening a fresh Google tab, I would be bombarded with ads for TV stands. This happens regularly. I wonder if there are any legal boundaries this false sense of security and privacy huge social media companies give users would bring up. Surely this cannot persist?

I've experienced this before and this feels nothing short of uncanny. To have data tracked so meticulously and ubiquitously and to a large extent unavoidably is quite scary to me. Even to a worse extent, I have just learnt of apps and websites tracking activity throughout your mobile device across all other apps or websites. I understood that Apple has their privacy policy of "ask app not to track" activity, however, I still found that my activity seemed suspiciously linked across all apps. Upon further investigation, I stumbled upon a Business Insider article where a former Apple engineer stated that the privacy policy is a "dud" and "gives users a false sense of security." Confirming my suspicions, this feels so unsettling and even more so knowing little can be done about it (unless I stop using all my devices altogether).

I think this concept is as intriguing as it is sad. From trolling to griefing to flaming, these practices still occur today and although it has gotten better, particularly with women in the gaming sphere (although sexist behaviour still happens regularly), the idea of a group not being made up of certain people, but a group being defined by everyone it excludes is rather interesting. This, I think, plays back into the aforementioned sense of belonging. Users will turn to the internet to have a sense of community and perhaps to fill the void they lack in real life people will choose to pick on others online to better cement their place in whatever group they think they belong to online.

Reading through the several reasons listed for trolling, I feel as though empowerment is a common principle among all of them. Trolling gives people a sense of power, be it real or perceived. As with the first case study we saw of Justine Sacco's racist tweet and people feeling a sense of security behind the screen, trolling, in my opinion, uses the same idea. People feel they can do whatever online without consequence and use this as a weapon for self-interest and gratification, perhaps as a substitute for satisfaction they may not get in real life.

When looking at UI and ethics the first thing that popped up into my head was the infinite scroll, as now more than ever the format has caught on and almost all social media sites have caught on to this along with the short form content format. The ethical implications of these two things are quite unclear to me. On the one hand, companies are profiting from having people glued to their phones and amplifying this with whatever algorithm they're using, on the other hand, how would something like this be regulated?

Seeing the evolution of social media from something fairly complicated (having many steps for setup or communication) to something someone can do in mere minutes to disseminate content is rather intriguing. It does, however, bring up concerns due to how easy it is to spread (mis)information and in this influencer-run world today, I wonder if any of the principles of past social media could be applicable today to mitigate this problem.

I think the display name should be readily available (username may or may not be included), time posted, number of interactions (likes, comments, shares, saves), while viewing things like comments and likes should require a click action. It would also be helpful to have a short status readily available while a longer description can be accessed with another button on the corner of the post (like YouTube short's three dots).

I had never thought of the impact of developer choices on inclusivity and ethics before and had only thought of things like user interface affecting surface-level usability and user experience. The concept of data being a simplification of reality and hence developers wielding the power to essentially shape their platform's space is quite interesting.

I had never thought of computer programming in terms of mundane actions before as computers and humans have lived very mutually exclusive lives in my mind. However, this comparison is quite accurate and upon reading the rest of this section, being a newbie to coding, the process does not seem as intimidating or complicated as I previously thought, particularly the part on conditionals and code blocks.

Upon reading this introduction I was fairly surprised to see something this outrageous looking. I had never heard of click farms before and this raises various ethical questions. Deciding to read a blog post on it, I found out that there are no laws against this, despite its being a clear violation of fair competition and advertising regulations. Additionally, it seems these click farms operate in the grey economy in less economically developed regions, resulting in poor working conditions and further questionable ethics. It would be intriguing to see if anything is done about this practice in the future.

Being brought up in a Confucianism-oriented household, this point was especially highlighted. In particular, the practice of "filial piety" was stressed. Unwavering respect, harmony and devotion in family are all important parts of Confucianism. With this, however, comes the essence of gender stereotypes. In Confucianism, the husband's role is to provide for and protect the family in order to create the aforementioned family harmony, while the wife serves her husband and takes care of the family in order to bolster said harmony.

There are several iterations of this quote that have been repeated throughout my life and although I largely agree with it, I do wonder when this practice is inapplicable as no two people are the same. In what cases does "treat others how you want to be treated" not apply?