I remember when the Cambridge analytica scandal blew up, but now algorithms are everywhere. I wonder why algorithms and custom tailored ads are now seen as a neutral or accepted thing and not a privacy issue like before?

This reminded me about the topics of algorithmic biases and the dangers of data scraping which were discussed in INFO 200. We talked about how these inferences are not always accurate, as they are often trained on skewed datasets. I wonder how ethical data mining is for training machine learning and AI.

I think this is an interesting quote from Jean-paul Satre which highlights an aspect of internet use and trolling that we haven't touched on yet: systemic power imbalances. I think often with trolling and with the use of bots for either propaganda or political uses, there are power imbalances which can often be seen through the use of hate speech towards specific groups to further generate "flame wars". It's important to remember just as Satre states, that these people do not come to discuss, but only to polarize and instill fear.

This link goes to a wikipedia article based on Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, which is an ironic post detailing how poor Irish beggars should eat their own young. I think that Swift's article is satirical and could be seen as trolling. However, modern trolling does not usually have the intention of conveying a deeper message; unlike satire.

I think that authenticity is valued in today's culture, but that we also accept inauthenticity and duplicates more in capitalist societies. The ability to acquire and posses objects or concepts (i.e wealth or luxury) for affordable prices used to be seen as wrong, but nowadays dupes have become very popular. Signalling a shift away from authenticity.

I remember when lonely girl15 was released and how much misinformation was out surrounding the show. It wasn't certain if it was real, staged, or all fake. The amount of misinformation drove this show to be more viral than it initially was, leading to many more instances of these "staged" social media users.

Age could be limited to just integers from 1-100. Name would and address could be given a string so that the user could write anything? As there could be too many names and addresses to give a default number of options. However, relationship status would be good to have that default set number of string options. I think it is interesting to see how sruvey formulation influences the type of data we collect, and how thet changes our outcomes.

I've had to look at conditional statements before with SQL injection. However, I am still a little confused on what counts as true conditional statements. Does it change with every language?

I had heard about click farms before, but to actually see the phones strapped up to a desk and seeing human computers manually click on ads or posts was more unsettling than I had initially thought. I also thought it was interesting to see how click farms spread misinformation through digital astroturfing. Creating distortions in our social environment.

I think it is interesting that both Egoism and Utilitarianism often end up having similar end results, yet the ideologies come from opposing values. Egoism is the justification of selfishness in capitalist society. Utilitarianism is the needs of many being met, often through some sacrifice. Although one may look morally more "just" than the other, both utilitarianism and egoism usually justify the sacrifice of some/ the community, or the self for a higher "goal."

I wonder what historical, environmental or societal changes within East Asia at the time caused the break between Confucianism and Taoism. Confucianism and Taoism are both popularized around the same time period, yet Taoism's values appear to be more lax and less about setting up formal rules of how individuals in society should act.

I wonder which wars the author is alluding to. Do religious wars count as an ethical war? To what extent does ethics overlap with belief? Does belief in supernatural beings count as an ethical value, or is that an area of belief separate from morality and values?