21.3.2. As a Member of Society# As a member of society, we hope you are informed about the role social media plays in shaping society, such as how design decisions and bots can influence social movements (polarizing, spreading, or stifling different them), and the different economic, social, and governmental pressures that social media platforms operate under. We hope you are then able to advocate for ways of improving how social media operates in society. That might be through voting, or pressuring government officials, or spreading ideas and information, or organizing coordinated actions or protests.

21.2. Ethics in Tech# In the first chapter of our book we quoted actor Kumail Nanjiani on tech innovators’ lack of consideration of ethical implications of their work. Of course, concerns about the implications of technological advancement are nothing new. In Plato’s Phaedrus (~370BCE), Socrates tells (or makes up1) a story from Egypt critical of the invention of writing: Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt, […] [then] came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; […] [W]hen they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit.

19.5. Imagining Alternatives# Now try thinking about different ways online social media could work. Are these alternatives good ideas? 🤷 Reflect on these prompts and try to work out what the consequences would be for different ways of social media working: What if government regulations said that social media sites weren’t allowed to make money based on personal data / targeted advertising? What other business models could they use? How would social media sites be different? What if government regulations were made to encourage a free market by requiring that users could switch social media sites easily (interoperability). How would this work? Would you be able to move all your data? Would you still be able to see the content your friends post on the site you used to be on? What if there were a social media site funded by the government as a government service (e.g., democratic socialism)? What could this social media site do differently? What do you think would work well, what would work poorly? Private companies are allowed to restrict speech in ways government entities are not. How would this impact content moderation if government funds were used? What if social media sites were publicly funded or crowd-funded (like NPR for radio, and PBS for TV, Wikipedia)? Note: Mastodon is trying to do this.

19.3.1. Competition# When Facebook started, there were already other social media platforms in use that Facebook had to compete against, but Facebook became dominant. Since then other companies have tried to compete with Facebook, with different levels of success. Google+ tried to mimic much of what Facebook did, but it got little use and never took off (not enough people to benefit from the network effect). Other social media sites have used more unique features to distinguish themselves from Facebook and get a foothold, such as Twitter with its character limit (forcing short messages, so you can see lots of posts in quick succession), Vine and then TikTok based on short videos, etc. Mastodon (Fediverse set of connected social media platforms that it is part of) has a different way of distinguishing itself as a social media network, in that it is an open-source, community-funded social media network (no ads), and hopes people will join to get away from corporate control. Other social media networks have focused on parts of the world where Facebook was less dominant, and so they got a foothold there first, and then spread, like the social media platforms in China (e.g., Sina Weibo, QQ, and TikTok).

8.3.2. Schadenfreude# Another way of considering public shaming is as schadenfreude, meaning the enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others. A 2009 satirical article from the parody news site The Onion satirizes public shaming as being for objectifying celebrities and being entertained by their misfortune: Media experts have been warning for months that American consumers will face starvation if Hollywood does not provide someone for them to put on a pedestal, worship, envy, download sex tapes of, and then topple and completely destroy. Nation Demands Fresh Celebrity Meat - The Onion

While public criticism and shaming have always been a part of human culture, the Internet and social media have created new ways of doing so. We’ve seen examples of this before with Justine Sacco and with crowd harassment (particularly dogpiling). For an example of public shaming, we can look at late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s annual Halloween prank, where he has parents film their children as they tell the parents tell the children that the parents ate all the kids’ Halloween candy. Parents post these videos online, where viewers are intended to laugh at the distress, despair, and sense of betrayal the children express. I will not link to these videos which I find horrible, but instead link you to these articles: Jimmy Kimmel’s Halloween prank can scar children. Why are we laughing? (archived copy) Jimmy Kimmel’s Halloween Candy Prank: Harmful Parenting? We can also consider events in the #MeToo movement as at least in part public shaming of sexual harassers (but also of course solidarity and organizing of victims of sexual harassment, and pushes for larger political, organizational, and social changes).

Ethics and Harassment# 17.4.1. Moderation and Violence# You might remember from Chapter 14 that social contracts, whether literal or metaphorical, involve groups of people all accepting limits to their freedoms. Because of this, some philosophers say that a state or nation is, fundamentally, violent. Violence in this case refers to the way that individual Natural Rights and freedoms are violated by external social constraints. This kind of violence is considered to be legitimated by the agreement to the social contract. This might be easier to understand if you imagine a medical scenario.

Harassment can also be done through crowds. Crowd harassment has also always been a part of culture, such as riots, mob violence, revolts, revolution, government persecution, etc. Social media then allows new ways for crowd harassment to occur. Crowd harassment includes all the forms of individual harassment we already mentioned (like bullying, stalking, etc.), but done by a group of people. Additionally, we can consider the following forms of crowd harassment: Dogpiling: When a crowd of people targets or harasses the same person. Public Shaming (this will be our next chapter) Cross-platform raids (e.g., 4chan group planning harassment on another platform) Stochastic terrorism The use of mass public communication, usually against a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism which are statistically probable but happen seemingly at random. See also: An atmosphere of violence: Stochastic terror in American politics

Example Crowdsourcing Tasks# You probably already have some ideas of how crowds can work together on things like editing articles on a site like Wikipedia or answer questions on a site like Quora, but let’s look at some other examples of how crowds can work together. Fold-It is a game that lets players attempt to fold proteins. At the time, researchers were having trouble getting computers to do this task for complex proteins, so they made a game for humans to try it. Researchers analyzed the best players’ results for their research and were able to publish scientific discoveries based on the contributions of players.

6.3.1. “Solving” a “Problem”# When social media users work together, we can consider what problem they are solving. For example, for some of the Tiktok Duet videos from the virality chapter, the “problem” would be something like “how do we create music out of this source video” and the different musicians contribute their own piece to the solution. For some other examples:

15.2.1. Reddit# Reddit is divided into subreddits which are often about a specific topic. Each subreddit is moderated by volunteers who have special permissions, who Reddit forbids from making any money: Reddit is valued at more than ten billion dollars, yet it is extremely dependent on mods who work for absolutely nothing. Should they be paid, and does this lead to power-tripping mods? A post starting a discussion thread on reddit about reddit In addition to the subreddit moderators, all Reddit users can upvote or downvote comments and posts. The reddit recommendation algorithm promotes posts based on the upvotes and downvotes, and comments that get too many downvotes get automatically hidden. Finally, Reddit itself does some moderation as a platform in determining which subreddits can exist and has on occasion shut down some.

Individual User Controls# Individual users are often given a set of moderation tools they can use themselves, such as: Block an account: a user can block an account from interacting with them or seeing their content Mute an account: a user can allow an account to try interacting with them, but the user will never see what that account did. Mute a phrase or topic: some platforms let users block content by phrases or topics (e.g., they are tired of hearing about cryptocurrencies, or they don’t want spoilers for the latest TV show). Delete: Some social media platforms let users delete content that was directed at them (e.g., replies to their post, posts on their wall, etc.) Report: Most social media sites allow users to report or flag content as needing moderation. And there are other options and nuances as well, depending on the platform.

12.4.1. Building on the original intention# Content is sometimes shared without modification fitting the original intention, but let’s look at ones where there is some sort of modification that aligns with the original intention.

Antagonistic to original intention# Sometimes content goes viral in a way that is against the intended purpose of the original content. For example, this TikTok started as a slightly awkward video of a TikToker introducing his girlfriend. Other TikTokers then used the duet feature to add an out-of-frame gun pointed at the girlfriend’s head, and her out-of-frame hands tied together, being held hostage. TikTokers continued to build on this with hostage negotiators, press conferences and news sources. All of this is almost certainly not the impression the original TikToker was trying to convey.a TikToker introducing his girlfriend. Other TikTokers then used the duet feature to add an out-of-frame gun pointed at the girlfriend’s head, and her out-of-frame hands tied together, being held hostage. TikTokers continued to build on this with hostage negotiators, press conferences and news sources. All of this is almost certainly not the impression the original TikToker was trying to convey.

When physical mail was dominant in the 1900s, one type of mail that spread around the US was a chain letter. Chain letters were letters that instructed the recipient to make their own copies of the letter and send them to people they knew. Some letters gave the reason for people to make copies might be as part of a pyramid scheme where you were supposed to send money to the people you got the letter from, but then the people you send the letter to would give you money. Other letters gave the reason for people to make copies that if they made copies, good things would happen to them, and if not bad things would, like this:

For social media content, replication means that the content (or a copy or modified version) gets seen by more people. Additionally, when a modified version gets distributed, future replications of that version will include the modification (a.k.a., inheritance). There are ways of duplicating that are built into social media platforms: Actions such as: liking, reposting, replying, and paid promotion get the original posting to show up for users more Actions like quote tweeting, or the TikTok Duet feature let people see the original content, but modified with new context. Social media sites also provide ways of embedding posts in other places, like in news articles There are also ways of replicating social media content that aren’t directly built into the social media platform, such as: copying images or text and reposting them yourself taking screenshots, and cross-posting to different sites

11.3.1. How recommendations can go well or poorly# Friends or Follows:# Recommendations for friends or people to follow can go well when the algorithm finds you people you want to connect with. Recommendations can go poorly when they do something like recommend an ex or an abuser because they share many connections with you.

Similarly, recommendation algorithms are rules set in place that might produce biased, unfair, or unethical outcomes. This can happen whether or not the creators of the algorithm intended these outcomes. Once these algorithms are in place though, the have an influence on what happens on a social media site. Individuals still have responsibility with how they behave, but the system itself may be set up so that individual efforts cannot not be overcome the problems in the system.

Making a tool adapt to users# When creating computer programs, programmers can do things that aren’t possible with architecture (where Universal Design came out of), that is: programs can change how they work for each individual user. All people (including disabled people) have different abilities, and making a system that can modify how it runs to match the abilities a user has is called Ability based design. For example, a phone might detect that the user has gone from a dark to a light environment, and might automatically change the phone brightness or color scheme to be easier to read. Or a computer program might detect that a user’s hands tremble when they are trying to select something on the screen, and the computer might change the text size, or try to guess the intended selection.

残疾人经常找到应对残疾的方法，即找到解决他们遇到的困难的方法，并寻找适合他们的地方和策略（无论是否意识到自己有残疾）。此外，残疾人可能会改变他们的行为（无论是有意还是无意）以隐藏他们有残疾的事实，这称为掩盖，可能会对掩盖的人造成精神或身体伤害，而周围的其他人不会意识到这一点。

Hacking attempts can be made on individuals, whether because the individual is the goal target, or because the individual works at a company which is the target. Hackers can target individuals with attacks like:

For example, the proper security practice for storing user passwords is to use a special individual encryption process for each individual password. This way the database can only confirm that a password was the right one, but it can’t independently look up what the password is or even tell if two people used the same password. Therefore if someone had access to the database, the only way to figure out the right password is to use “brute force,” that is, keep guessing passwords until they guess the right one (and each guess takes a lot of time).

One of the main goals of social media sites is to increase the time users are spending on their social media sites. The more time users spend, the more money the site can get from ads, and also the more power and influence those social media sites have over those users. So social media sites use the data they collect to try and figure out what keeps people using their site, and what can they do to convince those users they need to open it again later.

Data mining is the process of taking a set of data and trying to learn new things from it. Fig. 8.1 Clip from movie Everything Everywhere All at Once where the IRS agent talks about what information (“story”) she can mine from tax data.# For example, social media data about who you are friends with might be used to infer your sexual orientation. Social media data might also be used to infer people’s: Race Political leanings Interests Susceptibility to financial scams Being prone to addiction (e.g., gambling)

RIP trolling is where trolls find a memorial page and then all work together to mock the dead person and the people mourning them. Here’s one example from 2013: A Facebook memorial page dedicated to Matthew Kocher, who drowned July 27 in Lake Michigan, had attracted a group of Internet vandals who mocked the Tinley Park couple’s only child, posting photos of people drowning with taunting comments superimposed over the images.

Before the internet, there were many activities that we would probably now call “trolling”, such as: Hazing: Causing difficulty or suffering for people who are new to a group Satire: (e.g., A Modest Proposal) which takes a known form, but does something unexpected or disruptive with it. Practical jokes / pranks

6.6.1. Anonymity encouraging inauthentic behavior# Anonymity can encourage inauthentic behavior because, with no way of tracing anything back to you1, you can get away with pretending you are someone you are not, or behaving in ways that would get your true self in trouble.

While modified behaviors to present a persona or code switch may at first look inauthentic, they can be a way of authentically expressing ourselves in each particular setting. For example: Speaking in a formal manner when giving a presentation or answering questions in a courtroom may be a way of authentically sharing your experiences and emotions, but tailored to the setting Sharing those same experiences and emotions with a close friend may look very different, but still can be authentic Different communities have different expectations and meanings around behavior and presentation. So what is appropriate authentic behavior depends on what group you are from and what group you are interacting with, like this gif of President Obama below:

2003 saw the launch of several popular social networking services: Friendster, Myspace, and LinkedIn. These were websites where the primary purpose was to build personal profiles and create a network of connections with other people, and communicate with them. Facebook was launched in 2004 and soon put most of its competitors out of business, while YouTube, launched in 2005 became a different sort of social networking site built around video.

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.

通过互联网进行社交交流的早期方式之一是与电子邮件，起源于20世纪60年代和1970年代。这些允许人们互相发送消息，并查看是否有新消息发送给他们。

There are many types of list data structures in different programming languages with subtle differences (we won’t worry about those in this book). Python has lists, tuples, and sets. Other languages have a list type called arrays. We will just focus on lists and not worry about the other similar data types.

不同的编程语言中有多种类型的列表数据结构，并且存在细微的差异（我们不会担心本书中的那些）。Python 有列表、元组和集合。其他语言有一个名为的列表类型数组。我们将只关注列表，而不担心其他类似的数据类型。

Metadata is information about some data. So we often think about a dataset as consisting of the main pieces of data (whatever those are in a specific situation), and whatever other information we have about that data (metadata).

Fig. 3.1 A photo that is likely from a click-farm, where a human computer is paid to do actions through multiple accounts, such as like a post or rate an app. For our purposes here, we consider this a type of automation, but we are not considering this a “bot,” since it is not using (electrical) computer programming.

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They don’t even have a pat rehearsed answer. They are shocked at being asked. Which means nobody is asking those questions. “We’re not making it for that reason but the way ppl choose to use it isn’t our fault. Safeguard will develop.” But tech is moving so fast.

Twitter users were able to deduce which flight Justine was on.