I feel like this is the main issue with social media platforms. The fact that all huge decisions which concern user data are subject to one or two people's discretion (and the fact that those people are often incredibly financially invested in the profitability of the platform) leads to a higher likelihood of corruption and the exploitation of data.

This reminds me of Simondon's conceptualization of technical objects, where objects can act as an extension of our minds and cultures, and aid us in thinking. I think digital media and technology is very much the same. It serves as an extension of our minds, and the issue arises from companies' monetization of that mind.

I feel like a publicly funded and run internet would do two things better than the private sphere. First, it would not be invested in retention time metrics above everything, as its continued existence would no longer be tied to drawing users from the corporeal world into the digital, at the expense of time spent socially. A public internet could incentivize users to spend time offline more, strengthening community social ties. Second, the platform could be run less anonymously, thus allowing social pressure to be used against antisocial behavior like trolling. On sites like instagram, people are less likely to write hate comments from their personal account, as it has social ties to others inherently. A public internet platform could leverage this, giving one a unique, internet wide "account" tied to one's corporeal identity.

My research concerns this topic, and deals with specifically how behavioral surplus is exploited by platforms for recommendation algorithms. My intervention into Zuboffs argument is that the dominant structures on platforms like TikTok are more dominated by this retention time than by advertising. I wonder if there is a formation of the internet in the future that does not rely on behavioral surplus to some degree, it feels like a pandoras box situation

I've certainly felt this too, in that being perceived (both by the platforms and by other users) is sorta part-and-parcel of digital existence these days. I wonder if there is one day going to be an alternate formation of the internet where the "celebrity pressure" will be eased online, and we can do studies into the psychological effects of this with a true control group.

This part makes me think about sanctions and the termination of relations on a global scale, and how/when it works or doesn't work. In terms of sanctions, it is most effective when the target country and targeting country had previously close relations, and the target country is fully invested in the economic policies of the targeting country. Likewise, shame works better coming from a creator's audience than from an outside group (at least, until the outside group becomes most of society). This is part of why it is difficult to fully "cancel" conservative media figures, despite public outcry, They are still supported by their base, and so they don't broadly care as to the shame imposed by outsiders.

I feel like GamerGate is a great example of this phenomenon, in that it birthed a new form of decentralized harassment. As the chapter later mentions the harassment of MLK by the CIA, and as the government currently has multiple employees of the far right, I wonder if the security apparatuses of today use GamerGate as a blueprint for targeted harassment.

This makes me think about the popularity of location sharing as a feature of social media, and the ways parents use it and how it effects their children. I wonder if there will ever be any research looking into the effects of being under constantly surveillance, either from your parents or your peers.

This site is such a fascinating object of modern labor, and how the processes of the internet abstract humanity from code. So much of the algorithms of Amazon, Google, and YouTube work partly on the basis of human labor, yet because the internet allows asynchronous, atomized labor, we forget this fact and think of the algorithm as a magical bit of technology. I wonder if there is a way to organize the internet which presents the labor that goes into its creation in a way that is unobtrusive to the user.

This makes me think about how forms of the internet focused on geographical vicinity have pretty much been entirely relegated to dating apps at this point. It is unlikely that a source of content (i.e. YouTube videos, TikTok algorithm) is surrounding a sense of place, rather than an account or movement which stands in for the place. I wonder if there is a place for an internet that is based in vicinity outside of dating, such as YikYak back in the day.

This brings to my mind the historical example of the Mechanical Turk, and the current amazon based processes of the same name. Because the internet allows a level of abstraction from the labor which its existence necessitates, there is a lot of violence wreaked on the working classes that is never seen or discussed. I wonder if there is a way of providing compensation for the violence of these images in the jobs of the moderators.

This gets at the ethical consideration of how the internet ought to be split up, and if there should be an overall governing body to the internet. There's a thread of thought in internet ethics that purports the internet as a location which allows free speech for all, but we've seen that allowing sites like 4chan and in some cases reddit has demonstrated real harm and resulted in real violence. The issue reminds me of the tolerance paradox.

This reminds me of John Berger's famous quote about how "men watch women, and women watch themselves being watched" in art. It also reminds me of Raymond William's assertion that culture and society are experienced in the habitual past tense. I wonder if the experience of viewing the self as separate from one's body, as a representation, has any ramifications as to the construction of identity.

This section reminds me of baudrillard's description of simulacrum and simulation, which gestures at the ways symbols have overtaken reality in the modern age. Though Baudrillard wrote in the late 20th century, before the advent of the internet as we know it, I feel like the salience with which the internet sits in our daily lives works off this concept. People imagine their appearance through the selfie-cameras of our phones, their personalities as the conglomeration of their interests which exist on YouTube and TikTok. I've my own experience with this, where simulated reality (in my case, a google doc over writing on a piece of paper) becomes the frame of reference through which i imagine the world. I wonder if there are further issues with simulacrum as it comes to recommendation algorithms

In my research, I've encountered a phenomenon on TikTok where creators make dozens of the same video and upload them one after another. This is not how YouTube channels tend to work, where they typically spend a lot of time on a longer video and release them with large gaps in between. The different recommendation algorithms incentivize creators to post differently. It makes me wonder if there is an ethical responsibility on the part of the platform to favor one or the other, in the interest of preventing overwork from creators.

I feel like recommendation algorithms are a really interesting aspect of this, in that they are all at once systems to which applying systemic analysis makes sense, and also the result of individual behaviors and actions in a way beyond regular society. The collection of surplus behavioral data complicates the distinction. Recommendation algorithms use our addictive tendencies against us, and it makes me wonder if we should legislate them more as gambling than as information systems.

This video (which I've seen before) makes me consider how hierarchies get baked not just into the code of the digital world, but the very infrastructure. Its been well documented that the fact that cameras were designed by people with lighter skin made it hard for black people (especially in the age of film rather than digital photography) to find cameras and filmstock that captured their skintones. I wonder if something similar happens with the digital environment, if the lack of coders and designers from the Global South leads to assumptions in digital infrastructure that goes unnoticed and unchallenged.

This idea of situational disabilities is really interesting, and not one I'd previously considered (even though in hindsight it seems obvious). It makes me think about how our ideas of disability have been shaped since the advent of technology. Because the digital medium inherently privileges sight over all senses, I feel like the internet's widespread adoption has stigmatized blind people more than existed previously, while a disability like hearing loss might be less salient for a populace already used to noise cancellation in public. I wonder what other disabilities have shifted in stigma as a result of the rise of social media.

I think the only incentive that social media companies have to protect privacy is simply because users desire a service which does that. I feel like this incentive is also weak, as privacy as a resource has been regenotiated over the course of the past thrity years of the internet. Things which previously would have been unthinkable, like uploading SSIDs onto documents through email, are now common (I've had to do so to sign leases multiple times in college). I think its only if the underlying logic of these companies (that being profit and the monopolization of digital existence) changes that an incentive to protect privacy could strengthen.

In my capstone research paper I'm writing this quarter, I place a lot of importance on the reification of thoughts and desires that the collection of behavioral data brings. I feel like there is a huge discomfort in the user of the internet at the prospect of encountering a digital world shaped by their thoughts in a way that they perceive themselves to have little to no control over. The right to be forgotten here resonates with that anxiety and discomfort, and I feel like the US model should definitely adopt something similar. It assumes that anonymity is an inalienable right we have, which is something i also hold to be true.

this makes me think about how there are issues with how widespread ChatGPT has become in popular culture that some of the data it trains on is content it wrote itself. I wonder if this will become an issue in the future, especially in data science and any research having to do with the digital sphere. Will future research papers about AI have to take into account a certain orobouros character in the AI, in that its consuming itself and tainting its own processes? are there broader ramifications for the internet writ large?

I feel like this process results in a specific feeling to usi9ng these platforms which mine user data moreso than is already being mined online. Especially on platforms like TikTok, where the algorithm incorporates so much data in service of retention time, I feel like even if we are not constantly thinking about it, our biology being used in service of retention time leaves us with a feeling of alienation. I wonder if there is any research on this relationship

I think the ramifications of allowing the construction of digital identity almost completely separately from corporeal identity really does feel like one of the hallmarks of our current digital milieu. It makes me think about if there is an alternate digital formation that could have arisen where digital identity was tied to something like a state ID or driver's license, and the freedom (and perceived lack of consequences) of our current internet was different. Would online behavior have shifted? Would trolling or dogpiling have been less common? Would the anxiety and malaise tied to existing on social media have lessened, or increased?

I think this is an interesting take on virality in the age before mass information. I feel like it is important context for how ideas spread to acknowledge how institutional power interacted with virality. In the age when books and news were copied by hands, and said scribes who could do the act worked for the nobility or the church, all written western culture was mediated by the structures of power. In the current day, does this imply platforms like tiktok and youtube have a similar cultural niche and influence as the church/nobility? Are the recommendation algorithms the gatekeepers of virality in the same way?

This is an impetus in my own research! My work deals with the ways in which algorithms shape identity construction, and the role they serve in mediating culture. This importance means that the designers of the algorithm have undue influence over the flow of culture and subcultures that exists on these platforms, despite not being participatory in these subcultures nuances and needs. For example, a white coder who is in charge of some textual aspect of the algorithm might not include autocomplete options which reflect the language nuances of black or brown users. This aspect of coding is in my opinion one of the most important concepts related to digital existence today.

I think this is an interesting data with constraints that shift along cultural axes. While the other data types like age, name, and address can vary from culture to culture (such as characters used to input), the answers will all be relatively similar. People might for example measure their age using different calendars, or by amount of winters experienced, but a full annual cycle is used pretty much worldwide. For relationship status though, there are a lot of variables even in one culture that must be negotiated. Does dating count as different than a relationship? What about new terms like situationship? What about cultures with multiple partners? There's so many value judgements about what counts as a relationship in the act of reifying it in code. It makes me think about the ways in which our cultural ideology is represented in code, more than we often think about.

This is a fascinating idea. I think this is a distillation of the ideal of that fact-checking feature that Meta tried and then abandoned, or the community notes feature on Twitter currently. The ability to add context in real time to an issue which is politically multi-faceted (such as corporations both paying lip service to international women's day while not eradicating the structures of misogyny and patriarchy in their own companies) is something social media ought to be doing, but doesn't. I wonder what factors led to more social media companies not attempting to add or push these features to their platforms. Is it profit? Is it their own political beliefs? Or is it simply not feasible?

I think this concept of a human computer is very thought provoking in a myriad of ways. My own research pertains to how identity is being reshaped along the boundaries of recommendation algorithms, and I feel like this idea of a human computer has a lot of thematic overlap. I know that the first "computers" were people who manually did computation as their job, but to what extent did their status as essentially beings of code shape their lives? Did they (or do they, in the case of modern human computers) see the world differently than I? What do they notice? Does living so in tune with the digital shape their philosophical framework? I feel like the fact that so much of culture and my own time is mediated by retention-based algorithms drastically shapes my ability to imagine another world different from my own. Does the same hold true for human computers?

I find this interesting to consider that tech workers are not considering ethics in their development, as their act of digital creation to me is an inherently philosophical endeavor. I wonder how much of this lack of ethical consideration has to do with the profit motive. If the internet were developed exclusively by researchers or government workers who had certain frameworks that they were required to follow (such as certain ethical frameworks), would the result be more conscious of the ethics of their creation? How much does the ethos of "move fast and break things" just abdicate responsibility for these society-shifting inventions?

This makes me think about how much the older frameworks operated on this assumption. I find it hard to believe that the first time any philosophy assumed an inherent lack of meaning to the world was the 19th century. How many of these frameworks like Confucianism, Taoism, Stoicism, etc also assumed a lack of meaning to the world, and then built their meanings off of that assumption, in order to maintain social cohesion?

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