- Oct 2024
-
social-media-ethics-automation.github.io social-media-ethics-automation.github.io
-
Online advertisers can see what pages their ads are being requested on, and track users across those sites. So, if an advertiser sees their ad is being displayed on an Amazon page for shoes, then the advertiser can start showing shoe ads to that same user when they go to another website.
Personally, I do not like such targeted advertisements, because it is a violation of privacy to let advertisers know too much about users' privacy. Advertisers are using social media to collect our information and make profits for themselves. I think the advertising push on social media can only refer to the age and gender information in each user's profile.
-
Social media platforms then use “data mining” to search through all this data to try to learn more about their users, find patterns of behavior, and in the end, make more money.
This is very true, and I believe almost all people who use social media can experience it. A social media will detect users' reactions when watching different types of videos, such as whether a video has been played completely, or if they swiped away at the moment they saw it; or whether they frequently liked certain types of works; even the frequency of leaving comments in others' posts. Social media will push the content that different users are most interested in based on the collected information. To be more specific, if I like food, then social media may often push some videos about food reviews and cooking tutorials to me. This mechanism has two sides. On the one hand, people can see the content they like more frequently, and on the other hand, this mechanism also limits the information that everyone sees.
-
-
social-media-ethics-automation.github.io social-media-ethics-automation.github.io
-
Why troll?
Regarding this issue, I believe the main objectives of trolling are roughly two. Firstly, trolling may be aimed at attracting the attention of internet users and gaining more followers for one's account. Specifically, many account operators will post controversial topics to attract more attention to their works. Some people may follow the operators' accounts to engage in arguments in the controversial topic. When the operators think their accounts have gained enough followers, they may delete the previous controversial topic and change the account's nickname, posting advertisements or other works to earn money. Secondly, trolling may also be aimed at diverting public attention. For example, when a star has negative news, it is very likely that the star's company will troll in order to protect the star's reputation. The company will register many accounts to post controversial topics to gain popularity, while diverting people's attention away from the star.
-
Trolling is when an Internet user posts inauthentically (often false, upsetting, or strange) with the goal of causing disruption or provoking an emotional reaction. When the goal is provoking an emotional reaction, it is often for a negative emotion, such as anger or emotional pain. When the goal is disruption, it might be attempting to derail a conversation (e.g., concern trolling), or make a space no longer useful for its original purpose (e.g., joke product reviews), or try to get people to take absurd fake stories seriously.
While most things have two sides, trolling does not seem to have its positive side. There are many users or bots on the internet today who constantly post controversial topics or posts, such as those related to gender opposition; racism, or spreading false information to defame others. Their purpose is simply to bring negative emotions and arguments to internet users. I think that most social media platforms should ban accounts that continuously post controversial topics in order to stop the spread of negative emotions.
-
-
social-media-ethics-automation.github.io social-media-ethics-automation.github.io
-
One of the early ways of social communication across the internet was with Email, which originated in the 1960s and 1970s. These allowed people to send messages to each other, and look up if any new messages had been sent to them.
As a Chinese student, I was shocked to read this text, I did not think that in the 1960s and 1970s, there were already E-mail boxes in the world. In my opinion, the 1960s and 1970s seemed to be the period when China vigorously developed industry and agriculture, and such things as E-mail and computers seemed very remote to China at that time.
-
-
social-media-ethics-automation.github.io social-media-ethics-automation.github.io
-
Graffiti and other notes left on walls were used for sharing updates, spreading rumors, and tracking accounts
This is an interesting example of how social media doesn't have to depend on technology, in fact some notes; Graffiti walls; Bulletin boards and other things that can be used as carriers of information transmission can also be called "social media". From this perspective, technology only increases its functions and improves the efficiency of information transmission for social media, and its basic form has been finalized before the emergence of software and smart phones.
-
-
social-media-ethics-automation.github.io social-media-ethics-automation.github.io
-
One classic example is the tendency to overlook the interests of children and/or people abroad when we post about travels, especially when fundraising for ‘charity tourism’. One could go abroad, and take a picture of a cute kid running through a field, or a selfie with kids one had traveled to help out. It was easy, in such situations, to decide the likely utility of posting the photo on social media based on the interest it would generate for us, without thinking about the ethics of using photos of minors without their consent. This was called out by The Onion in a parody article, titled “6-Day Visit To Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture”.
This paragraph makes a point that I really agree with. It is something that I have not considered before, but I have experienced personally. More specifically, many elders around me like to use their children's pictures as their social media profile pictures, and I didn't care about their behavior when I was young because I didn't use social media at all. But now I think it was really inappropriate, because it was really embarrassing to watch my childhood self wearing some funny clothes and being seen by everyone on social media. I think you need to be careful before using a particular image, or get permission from the people in the image.
-
Now, there are many reasons one might be suspicious about utilitarianism as a cheat code for acting morally, but let’s assume for a moment that utilitarianism is the best way to go. When you undertake your utility calculus, you are, in essence, gathering and responding to data about the projected outcomes of a situation. This means that how you gather your data will affect what data you come up with. If you have really comprehensive data about potential outcomes, then your utility calculus will be more complicated, but will also be more realistic. On the other hand, if you have only partial data, the results of your utility calculus may become skewed. If you think about the potential impact of a set of actions on all the people you know and like, but fail to consider the impact on people you do not happen to know, then you might think those actions would lead to a huge gain in utility, or happiness.
This text points out the impact utilitarianism may have on moral decision-making. In other words, utilitarianism has certain limitations. In detail, if the data is not complete in the process of data collection, then its final result will have a certain bias. For example, only considering the impact of people you know and like on yourself, and ignoring the impact of people you don't know on yourself, then the results of the experiment are not comprehensive enough.
-