I chose this source to check out because when I was reading section 3.2.1 Friendly Bots, and saw “See a new photo of a red panda every hour,” I was intrigued by what that meant. I was not expecting it to be an X account that actually posted a new red panda photo every single hour. I love this example of a “friendly bot,” because it is so harmless and lighthearted that it is cool to see people think of something like this. I think if I saw this on my X feed, I would be really happy, and I love that that happens to others. It is also interesting to see our Bluesky bot assignment in a real instance, where someone created a bot that does what we did on Bluesky on X. Scrolling through the account, I thought about the code that was written for it, and they used something similar to sleep(). At first, I was confused about why the Bluesky bot was something we needed to do because I never thought of a use for it. Seeing this red panda X account was a funny and simple way to see our assignment brought to life.

This is interesting that social media management programs that schedule posts and other tools are considered bots. I never really thought about how it worked or what it would be considered. As a marketing major and someone who has worked with social media management tools, I always saw them as a tool for planning content in advance and looking at post analytics, but not as a bot. I've personally used Meta Business Suite the most because it is tied into Instagram and from Meta itself, so I think that's cool that Meta made a bot to help Instagram users, especially businesses. I think of it more as a supportive tool, so I wonder what other applications I use that might be bots that I do not realize. I also wonder how many other businesses or users are using social media management tools without knowing how they are created and what it means to use a bot.

This goal matters a lot to me, especially as technology and social media become more ingrained in everyday life. In INFO 200 last quarter, we learned a lot about the consequences and privacy concerns of social media and technology, including Joy Buolamwini's Unmasking AI. That book discussed a lot about how we unknowingly let technology systems control us and our biases without knowing it, as well as how that can endangers users. Another class I learned about privacy concerns in was COM 200, where we learned about the digital panopticon and how that heavily affects how users and people interact, especially online, with the ability to hide themselves. So, INFO 201 and COM 200 taught me a lot regarding how social media and technology affects user's privacy and how to mitigate it. I am excited to see how INFO 103 will connect ethics and past ideals into this new relevance of modern age with social media.

Reading the ethics in this section, something I noticed was that there wasn't much mention of Christian ethics besides in the footnote about the Divine Command Theory. Then, as a Catholic, I was interested in what ethics of Catholicism are relevant to social media. What I found was Catholic Social Teaching, which are principles that the Catholic Church has practiced since the late 1800s. In summary, it is working for the common good and solidarity with others. To society, this means not judging others and understanding how to treat people, especially the poorest or most vulnerable people. In the context of social media, this would mean the ways that platforms protect vulnerable users, like influencers in the limelight or younger demographics, and if they solely use them for profit.