When social media platforms show users a series of posts, updates, friend suggestions, ads, or anything really, they have to use some method of determining which things to show users. The method of determining what is shown to users is called a recommendation algorithm, which is an algorithm (a series of steps or rules, such as in a computer program) that recommends posts for users to see, people for users to follow, ads for users to view, or reminders for users. Some recommendation algorithms can be simple such as reverse chronological order, meaning it shows users the latest posts (like how blogs work, or Twitter’s “See latest tweets” option). They can also be very complicated taking into account many factors, such as:

11.2.1. Individual vs. Systemic Analysis# Individual analysis focuses on the behavior, bias, and responsibility an individual has, while systemic analysis focuses on the how organizations and rules may have their own behaviors, biases, and responsibility that aren’t necessarily connected to what any individual inside intends. For example, there were differences in US criminal sentencing guidelines between crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine in the 90s. The guidelines suggested harsher sentences on the version of cocaine more commonly used by Black people, and lighter sentences on the version of cocaine more commonly used by white people. Therefore, when these guidelines were followed, they had have racially biased (that is, racist) outcomes regardless of intent or bias of the individual judges. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act).

10.1. Disability

10.2.1. Coping Strategies

There are many reasons, both good and bad, that we might want to keep information private.

While we have our concerns about the privacy of our information, we often share it with social media platforms under the understanding that they will hold that information securely. But social media companies often fail at keeping our information secure.

While we have our concerns about the privacy of our information, we often share it with social media platforms under the understanding that they will hold that information securely. But social media companies often fail at keeping our information secure.

Data can be poisoned intentionally as well. For example, in 2021, workers at Kellogg’s were upset at their working conditions, so they agreed to go on strike, and not work until Kellogg’s agreed to improve their work conditions. Kellogg’s announced that they would hire new workers to replace the striking workers: Kellogg’s proposed pay and benefits cuts while forcing workers to work severe overtime as long as 16-hour-days for seven days a week. Some workers stayed on the job for months without a single day off. The company refuses to meet the union’s proposals for better pay, hours, and benefits, so they went on strike. Earlier this week, the company announced it would permanently replace 1,400 striking workers. People Are Spamming Kellogg’s Job Applications in Solidarity with Striking Workers – Vice MotherBoard People in the antiwork subreddit found the website where Kellogg’s posted their job listing to replace the workers. So those Redditors suggested they spam the site with fake applications, poisoning the job application data, so Kellogg’s wouldn’t be able to figure out which applications were legitimate or not (we could consider this a form of trolling). Then Kellogg’s wouldn’t be able to replace the striking workers, and they would have to agree to better working conditions. Then Sean Black, a programmer on TikTok saw this and decided to contribute by creating a bot that would automatically log in and fill out applications with random user info, increasing the rate at which he (and others who used his code) could spam the Kellogg’s job applications:

Social media platforms collect various types of data on their users. Some data is directly provided to the platform by the users. Platforms may ask users for information like: email address name profile picture interests friends Platforms also collect information on how users interact with the site. They might collect information like (they don’t necessarily collect all this, but they might): when users are logged on and logged off who users interact with What users click on what posts users pause over where users are located what users send in direct messages to each other 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.

7.4. Responding to trolls?# One of the traditional pieces of advice for dealing with trolls is “Don’t feed the trolls,” which means that if you don’t respond to trolls, they will get bored and stop trolling. We can see this advice as well in the trolling community’s own “Rules of the Internet”: Do not argue with trolls - it means that they win But the essayist Film Crit Hulk argues against this in Don’t feed the trolls, and other hideous lies. That piece argues that the “don’t feed the trolls” strategy doesn’t stop trolls from harassing: Ask anyone who has dealt with persistent harassment online, especially women: [trolls stopping because they are ignored] is not usually what happens. Instead, the harasser keeps pushing and pushing to get the reaction they want with even more tenacity and intensity. It’s the same pattern on display in the litany of abusers and stalkers, both online and off, who escalate to more dangerous and threatening behavior when they feel like they are being ignored. Film Crit Hulk goes on to say that the “don’t feed the trolls” advice puts the burden on victims of abuse to stop being abused, giving all the power to trolls. Instead, Film Crit Hulk suggests giving power to the victims and using “skilled moderation and the willingness to kick people off platforms for violating rules about abuse”

7.2.2. Origins of Internet Trolling# We can trace Internet trolling to early social media in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in early online message boards and in early online video games. In the early Internet message boards that were centered around different subjects, experienced users would “troll for newbies” by posting naive questions that all the experienced users were already familiar with. The “newbies” who didn’t realize this was a troll would try to engage and answer, and experienced users would feel superior and more part of the group knowing they didn’t fall for the troll like the “newbies” did. These message boards are where the word “troll” with this meaning comes from. One set of the early Internet-based video games were Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs), where you were given a text description of where you were and could say where to go (North, South, East, West) and text would tell you where you were next. In these games, you would come across other players and could type messages or commands to attack them. These were the precursors to more modern Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGS). In these MUDs, players developed activities that we now consider trolling, such as “Griefing” where one player intentionally causes another player “grief” or distress (such as a powerful player finding a weak player and repeatedly killing the weak player the instant they respawn), and “Flaming” where a player intentionally starts a hostile or offensive conversation. In the 2000s, trolling went from an activity done in some communities to the creation of communities that centered around trolling such as 4chan (2003), Encyclopedia Dramatica (2004), and some forums on Reddit (2005).

Inauthentic behavior is when the reality doesn’t match what is being presented. Inauthenticity has, of course, existed throughout human history, from Ea-nasir complaining in 1750 BCE that the copper he ordered was not the high quality he had been promised, to 1917 CE in England when Arthur Conan Doyle (the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories) was fooled by photographs that appeared to be of a child next to fairies

5.6.1. Social Media Connection Types# One difference you may notice with different social media sites is in how you form connections with others. Some social media sites don’t have any formal connections. Like two users who happen to be on the same bulletin board. Some social media sites only allow reciprocal connections, like being “friends” on Facebook Some social media sites offer one-way connections, like following someone on Twitter or subscribing to a YouTube channel. There are, of course, many variations and nuances besides what we mentioned above, but we wanted to get you started thinking about some different options.

5.3.1. Weblogs (Blogs)# In the mid-1990s, some internet users started manually adding regular updates to the top of their personal websites (leaving the old posts below), using their sites as an online diary, or a (web) log of their thoughts. In 1998/1999, several web platforms were launched to make it easy for people to make and run blogs (e.g., LiveJournal and Blogger.com). With these blog hosting sites, it was much simpler to type up and publish a new blog entry, and others visiting your blog could subscribe to get updates whenever you posted a new post, and they could leave a comment on any of the posts.

The first way of combining data is by making a list. So we can make a list of the numbers from 1 to 10: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Do I have enough money in my wallet to pay for the item? Does this tweet start with “hello” (meaning it is a greeting)?

Why do you think social media platforms allow bots to operate?

3.2.4. Registered vs. Unregistered bots# Most social media platforms provide an official way to connect a bot to their platform (called an Application Programming Interface, or API). This lets the social media platform track these registered bots and provide certain capabilities and limits to the bots (like a rate limit on how often the bot can post). But when some people want to get around these limits, they can make bots that don’t use this official API, but instead, open the website or app and then have a program perform clicks and scrolls the way a human might. These are much harder for social media platforms to track, and they normally ban accounts doing this if they are able to figure out that is what is happening.

Deontological thinking comes out of the same era as Natural Rights thinking, and they are rooted in similar assumptions about the world. Deontology is often associated with Kant, because at that time, he gave us one of the first systematic, or comprehensive, interpretations of those ideas in a fully-fledged ethical framework. But deontological ethics does not need to be based on Kant’s ethics, and many ethicists working in the deontological tradition have suggested that reasoning about the objective reality should lead us to derive different sets of principles.

Why do you think the people who Kumail talked with didn’t have answers to his questions?