Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186577416. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
This link mainly explains that in 1993, Loyd Jowers claimed the Mafia and U.S. government were involved in Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and in 1999, a civil trial supported the King family’s belief that there was a broader conspiracy beyond James Earl Ray.
Feeling Powerful: Trolling sometimes gives trolls a feeling of empowerment when they successfully cause disruption or cause pain.**: Trolling sometimes gives trolls a feeling of empowerment when they successfully cause disruption or cause pain.** gives trolls a feeling of empowerment when they successfully cause disruption or cause pain.**
This reminds me of the covid pandemic period, when the global economy declined, and livestream selling on TikTok became popular in China. Many people lost their jobs and were stuck at home due to lockdowns. With growing frustration and anger, some vented their emotions by attacking influencers and streamers on TikTok. For those who felt unsuccessful or powerless in real life, hurting others online and drawing attention made them feel like they had a place or sense of control in the virtual world.
Text analysis of Trump's tweets confirms he writes only theAndroid half was published on. Text analysis of Trump's tweets confirms he writes only the (angrier) Android half. August 2016. URL: http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-tweets/ (visited on 2023-11-24).
The post reinforces the belief that Trump's more combative tone comes through when he tweets from an Android vs. when he tweets from an iPhone, in which he sounds more polished and official, and this distinction suggests different authorship or roles involved in shaping Trump's public voice.
This is not to say that there is no room for appreciating connections that are not fully honest, transparent, and earnest all the time. Social media spaces have allowed humor and playfulness to flourish, and sometimes humor and play are not, strictly speaking, honest. Often, this does not bother us, because the kind of connection offered by joke accounts matches the jokey way they interact on social media. We get to know a lot about public figures and celebrities, but it is not usually considered problematic for celebrity social media accounts to be run by publicist teams. As long as we know where we stand, and the kind of connection being offered roughly matches the sort of connection we’re getting, things go okay.
I appreciate that this accepts that not all online interactions need to be entirely authentic. Even humor and play can lead to real connection, assuming people know what sort of interaction they are having.
Mark R. Cheathem. Conspiracy Theories Abounded in 19th-Century American Politics. URL: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/conspiracy-theories-abounded-19th-century-american-politics-180971940/ (visited on 2023-11-24).
The article discusses how conspiracy theories were common in 19th-century American politics, often used by parties to gain power and spread fear. It shows that political distrust and rumors have long been part of U.S. history.
5.2.1. Email# One of the early ways of social communication across the internet was with Email [e5], 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.
I found the section about early email communication really interesting. It’s fascinating to think that something as simple as sending messages back and forth was once considered a major technological advancement.
Zero-based numbering. September 2023. Page Version ID: 1176111995. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zero-based_numbering&oldid=1176111995#Origin
I found it really interesting that zero-based numbering started mainly for practical reasons in early programming languages like BCPL. It made memory addressing simpler and reduced calculation errors. Dijkstra’s later argument that numbering from zero is more natural also makes sense, especially when dealing with empty sequences or ranges. Even though it can be confusing for beginners, I think this approach shows how programming logic sometimes prioritizes efficiency over human intuition.
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.
I really like this sentence because it shows one of the biggest flaws in utilitarian thinking—how easy it is to ignore people we don’t personally know. It reminds me that moral decisions often get biased when our data or attention is limited to our own social circle. In real life, this happens all the time online, when algorithms show us information that supports our own views and hide the perspectives of others.
Sean Cole. Inside the weird, shady world of click farms. January 2024. URL: https://www.huckmag.com/article/inside-the-weird-shady-world-of-click-farms (visited on 2024-03-07).
I read [c2], which looks at the shady world of click farms. What caught my attention was how this type of work has become almost routine in some places, where people spend hours clicking and boosting numbers for apps or posts. It made me think about the chapter’s description of “human computers.” Instead of seeing it only as a form of automation, this article reminded me that there are real people behind those fake numbers online, and their labor is an important part of how these systems work.
Fig. 3.1 A photo that is likely from a click-farm [c1], 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. See a more modern example here [c2].
That instantly reminded me of what I’ve seen with TikTok, where people literally run hundreds of phones at the same time to push views and likes. Even though it’s technically humans doing it, the outcome feels almost identical to what bots do. It creates this illusion of popularity that isn’t real. What I find interesting is how blurred the line gets between bot activity and human-driven click farms. In both cases, the platform and the users are kind of tricked into thinking certain content is more valuable than it actually is.
Justine Sacco, a PR director at IAC with only 170 followers posted a racist joke tweet right before getting on an 11-hour flight to South Africa Someone emailed the tweet to valleywag.gawker.com. Valleywag wrote a post on it and tweeted the post. Word spread, and Justine’s tweet went viral. Twitter users found other recent offensive tweets by Justine about countries she was traveling in. IAC (Justine’s employer) called the tweet “outrageous, offensive” but “Unfortunately, the employee in question is unreachable on an international flight.” Twitter users, now knowing that Justine is on a flight, started the hashtag #hasjustinelanedyet, which started trending on Twitter (including some celebrities tweeting about it). Twitter users were able to deduce which flight Justine was on. One Twitter user got a photo of Justine turning on her phone after getting off the plane. That user also talked to her father at the airport and tweeted about the photo and their responses.
The Justine Sacco example honestly shocked me because it shows how fast one post can spiral out of control. It made me think about how fragile online reputation is, and you can spend years building trust but lose it in a few minutes. I wonder if platforms should do more to slow things down before people pile on.
Consequentialism
I get why consequentialism is important, but on social media it seems hard to measure the real outcomes. A post might go viral and get tons of likes, but the harm it causes to someone’s reputation or mental health doesn’t always show up in the numbers. That makes me think this framework has some limits online.