I genuinely think this class overall will help me with how I engage with social media in the future. I notice faster when I am doomscrolling, and notice more if the content I am watching is trying to get a response out of me. While I don't think I can fully quit social media (namely Instagram and Twitter), I do think I can be more cognizant. However, I may go into the settings for both apps now and go through it very deeply to make sure I am not being tracked as much as usual, and turn off things like targeted ads.

I swear I have heard this exact same argument for a multitude of things relating to technology. When google and wikipedia started getting used more in school, I heard my teachers saying the fact that we can look things up to answer our questions would make us not actually learn the content. This actually made me pause about my current opinion of AI. I am very much against AI usage, mainly on how it trains on unconsenting individuals for both text and art. However, arguments I have heard are that it'll cause people to not actually learn the content (which I think can apply to writing/video/searching too, if you just then input the answer and don't actually read), causing people to become stupider. Is the issue more people aren't actually engaging with the content it states, rather just say "it's done," and paste in the answers to whatever they are working on?

Taking all of this into account: it worked. Whenever I meet new people in my classes, we don't ask for each others' numbers unless it is a close design team, we ask for each others' instagrams. Instagram was bought out, instagram added stories like snapchat. Now, I genuinely can't get rid of the app. I message most of my classmates and friends on there, and people do not like the alternatives (once had someone say numbers are too personal). Instagram copied the format of TikTok, and now people are addicted to instagram the same way they are TT. Instagram added a shop function, and now people buy things on there (however, this one is still extremely uncommon through the instagram shop itself, rather people link to external sites). I have so many posts saved and liked, and talk to too many people on there, that I feel like I cannot delete it. It helps me keep in touch with friends. I "can't" lose that.

Right now the main thing I am seeing about capitalism/other funding models in the United States is food prices. Everyone needs food to eat, that is a basic human necessity. However, there are no caps to the amount this food can cost, and food is largely through major corporations. It has become extremely expensive to eat, but wages are not increasing at the same rate to compensate. Right now, I have to take out loans to be able to afford housing and food, since I cannot afford to eat on the money my parents and I make.

I think there are a lot of situations where reconciliation is not possible. While you may be able to move forward, you don't necessarily have to forgive. Sexual assault, genocide, pedophilia, abuse, etc. A lot of these things come down to the victims themselves, and it isn't the place of most people to try and forgive the acting person.

I think some of these constraints contradict themselves. For proportionality, let's say an individual assaults one person within their group, but is very good friends with everyone else. Cutting them off benefits one person mainly, and has a negative consequence for more people. What counts as an abusive tactic? Doesn't most shaming involve tactics that could be classified that way? I think some things should be permanently stigmatized.

I wouldn't say full on harassment, but I do think it can be used in a useful way very rarely. For example, if a public figure is found out to have done horrible acts such as engage in pedophilia, crowd harassment is going to occur and reach a large audience of people, warning people about this person. I think it can show a wider scale opinion on subjects that are usually taboo.

Many times, both experiences and witnessed. One major once that came to mind is accounts in highschool to point out other people. For example, my school had an account for anyone with bad posture, which ended with people taking photos of people around them and submitting them to this account, who would then post them. I know I got on there once, and the angle from the photo was from a table with people I did not know. Similar accounts were made frequently, mainly confession accounts, where students could essentially talk bad about each other and post it openly.

I think I was a more active participant of crowdsourcing online when I was younger, but am now a lurker on essentially website I do use. When I was younger I was an active member of my communities, raising awareness, and even doing small events for designers which got donations. Now, I just scroll on my own private accounts ranging from 0-70 followers and like what I enjoy. I sometimes still donate money (crowdfunding), and I buy merch from posts in my fandom communities.

Can this be harmful even if it is framed as a joke? One example that instantly came to my mind is a running joke that women shed their skin once a month as well, to make fun of people (predominantly men) who are unaware of how the female body actually works and functions. Typically videos like this go viral, and most people in the comments section are in on the joke, with the occasional reply being someone unaware asking if everyone is being serious. I never found this harmful, but I'm wondering if it is because I always understood that it is a joke poking at unawareness. Can this cause people to feel inferior for not understanding?

I instantly thought about discord moderators for larger servers. I think it's extremely difficult to make moderation less traumatizing, besides just having a more robust automated moderation bot. In the case of discord moderation, a lot of traumatizing incidents happen directly to mods, like abuse of power. For the case of taking advantage of poor people, that really comes down to the morals of companies themselves. Most companies have the ability to pay their workers fairly, but try to find a workaround to get a larger profit. Only thing I can think of is expanding current laws to include paying international workers by U.S.A. minimum wage standards.

Back in middle school I was frequently reported, however I have never had my account suspended. I was a decent figure in a small online community, with around 15k followers (which was the largest account in this niche community). Whenever I spoke up about certain issues at the time in that space, I got notified constantly that my account was under review. The posts that would get me reported most were discussions about mental health in teenagers, and how online spaces can sometimes have a negative impact on these problems.

An extremely common issue with trauma dumping is adults taking advantage of children online through this method. Adults will trauma dump to children, and since those kids do not typically have a good frame of reference for boundaries, they will try to help the adult through whichever issue that they are talking about. This leads to children feeling responsible for the mental health of their abuser, neglecting their own. An app that perpetuated this was Amino, which has thankfully shut down.

I think this is an outdated definition, or at least the definition has changed meaning with younger generations. While this certainly is a part of doomscrolling, it now includes just mindlessly scrolling through any type of post (usually short-form content) even if the posts themselves are positive. Typically now it is also associated with entering that dissociative state and not remembering what you are viewing. The part that is still correct is to continue to scroll, no matter what your emotional state is. Additionally, there is now the association that doomscrolling is taking away from productivity, and is commonly said in those types of settings (for example, if me and my friends are studying someone will lose focus and start doomscrolling, if I try to call out this behavior a common response is "just a few more.")

This is particularly why I have issues with things such as spotify wrapped type content for apps (I do not have spotify, but a ton of other apps have followed this event). At the end of 2024 I was given a ton of memory type events that showed photos and posts I made throughout the year, and it showed photos such as my childhood pets of nearly 13 years being put down, screenshots of my family members suicide notes (there were multiple of these from deceased family members), and photos of me engaging in substance abuse behaviors. While I don't listen to music, I have had friends say that they form extreme emotional connections with certain songs, and that sometimes associations involve specific songs with breakups or abuse, which then get showed as frequently played in their wrapped even if it was only during a 1 month span. A lot of this is automatically shown to users. I think users should be able to opt-out of these type of events, since 1. a user may not want to be tracked in that way and 2. it could bring up painful memories. Additionally, this opt-out should not be hidden (deceptive patterns/dark patterns), it should be clear and easily accessible.

Overall I think social media algorithm's have me pinned. I frequently get posts about my specific fandoms and interests, as well as humor about my disability, my sexuality, and even a combination of all my identities (example, I recently got a post about being a 21 disabled lesbian woman in engineering). They even have done posts of positions I am currently applying to. While freaky, I don't really hate it since I do enjoy what I see. However, there have been times my feed tries to give me alt-right posts and humor. I wonder if they actually believe I'm right-leaning, or are trying to push an agenda onto me that I don't agree with and have me fall into a pipeline.

While I can't see the video, this reminded me of major cases that happened during covid-19 with a similar situation. Current oxygen readers read O2 levels in blood by shining a light through the skin, however, this works differently for brown and black individuals. This caused them to have higher oxygen readings than they actually did, and created dangerous situations where someone's oxygen levels were too low while in the hospital for covid-19 symptom management, and lead to a few deaths. Skin color is a huge problem in the medical industry, another example being common textbooks used to teach skin conditions only showing examples of how those conditions look on white skin, even when it appears completely differently on BIPOC. Issues like this have only been brought into the light very recently in the grand scheme of things, and we still have a very long way to go.

Universal design also helps individuals who are abled-bodied, not only disabled individuals. For example, let's say you make a ramp or an elevator with the intention of helping disabled individuals navigate through a building. Unintentionally, you could also be helping the following use-cases: people with strollers, people using skateboards/roller skates, people with wagons of stuff/rolling bins, people with rolling suitcases, moving furniture, as well as many other cases. Universal design helps everyone, so we should stride to use it during any case possible.

I was talking about this exact topic earlier with a professor in HCDE casually during my DRG. What happens when a phone is stolen and someone can no longer get into their account? In the case we were talking about, a UW student had their phone stolen and was then locked out of accessing essentially anything connected to the UW Net ID. They tried going to IT (could not contact them since they could not log into their UW Email), and not much could be done at the time. While this does help a lot, it could be slightly dangerous since someone with your device could potentially then get access to major information commonly stored on a device (ex. banking information).

I have heard multiple cases/instances of this happening but never heard of any follow up about this, at least in the cases of social media. Were people's accounts then hacked? What came from this? I'm aware it's bad to generalize based on your own experiences, but I was only ever hacked once on instagram (my account started posting scam advertisements and changed my profile picture), but I just changed my password and the problem went away. Was it a similar case for different users? Did anything serious come from these cases?

This question immediately make me think of TikTok's new data policy. Essentially, they keep track of thinks like sexual orientation, gender, and immigration-status / visa-status. A lot of users were immediately considered, especially with current events such as ICE involvement. I think keeping track of citizenship/visas/etc is vile, and is a one-way ticket to tracking down individuals through social media. None of this really shocked me, I was very aware that social media has me pinned and knows exactly who I am and what I like. I've gotten posts about birthdays near my birthday, posts about what exact age I am, my major, what I enjoy and my hobbies, what I am currently doing professionally and personally. As much as I like my FYP, it is scary. Additionally, one aspect that freaks me out a bit more is that I could be having a spoken conversation with friends or family and the same topic appears on my FYP within 10 minutes. If they do keep track of audio/video through my camera and microphone, I believe that is a severe invasion of privacy and should not be happening.

I find myself in a love hate relationship with this. I frequent social media (specifically instagram and twitter), and both of the algorithms have me down. When I think about it very briefly, I love it, I get to see exactly what I want to see and find very relatable posts or art that I enjoy. However, if I think about it longer, it's kind of scary knowing that they KNOW me. I get frequent posts about lesbianism, being disabled with eds/pots, I even get posts centered around topics that I am currently applying for (example, I am applying to be an RA and suddenly started getting RA culture reels). Their strategy worked, I like my FYP and so I stay.

I have been on twitter for years, and have seen countless ways of trolling. However recently, a lot of trolling is being done by presumably bot accounts in mass numbers. I will frequently see a post and the entire comments section is poking fun at the poster, all with blue checkmarks. When I check the accounts themselves (to block them, I block every blue checkmark I come across that seems off), usually they are very generic and seem fake. Also, a huge new form of trolling on twitter is to just get grok to make a response, change a photo, etc, in mass numbers. Some posters just hide the comments, some just let it be and not interact with them. I always block every blue checkmark I see that I do not like, it keeps my feed the way I want it.

I don't really think of hazing as trolling. Satire and practical jokes make sense, since it only goes after the emotional/mental aspect of causing harm. Hazing is a different level, especially in physical settings. Hazing can go to lengths to cause physical harm and physical discomfort, so I think it's a step above being considered a form of trolling.

I am very deep into fandom spaces, and I see very frequently parasocial relationships festering. Typically, I see parasocial relationships forming in children and teenagers the most in these spaces, typically also consisting of fandoms with a large neurodivergent population. Usually this happens with creators that have their face on screen or a lot of time to communicate with their viewers, the main example being streamers and their chats. Being able to receive a reply in real time is like a conversation, which can lead to someone believing they are friends with the streamer they are typing to. I'm sure I have some parasocial relationships currently and don't really realize it. I know in the past I had a few with streamers I watched, however I always kept a degree of separation in my head: I do not truly know these people.

I'm wondering if this can also be applied to non-humans, such as AI. A lot of content online now, ranging from art to realistic videos, are made using AI. Additionally, these AI generated forms of content are ever improving, and can now trick a lot of users into believing it was made by a human. The AI cannot betray a person, just follow a command given by another human being (for now). AI cannot have the incentive to not take advantage of someone for protection, the AI does not need to be protected. I know I feel a sense of betrayal when I come by AI art, however it is not large if I do not know the person posting it. However, I do feel a huge sense of betrayal when a friend uses AI to make art because I am an artist, it is about the human behind it.

I find it fascinating that the modern day internet still uses these basics as the foundations for every major social media platform. Almost all social media has a way to make a profile, message others, and ways to interact with the public through threads or comments sections. This makes up the bulk of social media now, just a bit more tech orientated with some additional features such as sharing images, music, videos, etc. In HCDE I am currently learning about prototyping, and how it is a continuous process that keeps looping from user feedback. I can see how this base ended up being modern day social media, adding user feedback into the mix, iteration. Super cool.

If this is considered social media, I still believe this is very frequently used even when we are in an era with a lot of internet access! Especially in larger cities. Whenever I go out graffiti is still being made, very frequently being political symbols and slogans to spread awareness and voice issues that the general public has.

Gender is a hard one to create a drop down for, since gender is a social construct and can mean something different to every person. In the first example they use terms like female and male, but those are generally seen as terms to identify sex and not gender. In recent times there are now government forms who don't ask about gender whatsoever, and only ask about your biological sex (the FAFSA form does this now! My friend put male as his sex, but since it didn't match his birth certificate (F) his application was flagged and had to go under review). I've seen gender drop downs that separate transgender from man/woman, why is there a specification? Are they not "actually" the gender they say they are in the eyes of the programmers/data collectors? Food for thought.

I think this is important both when considering data but also just considering social media as a whole. People tend to only post the positives in their life, and even in those positive posts a lot of information is being left out of the context. If someone only posts a single photo from a concert with a lyric as a caption, it does not explain what the set was or how the experience as a whole was like for that person.

The example I have for this is kinda silly, I'm a frequent twitter user for fandoms and an extremely common bot in fandom spaces are daily accounts for specific characters or accounts that post a frame an hour for animated shows. While a normal person could still do this, it would become extremely tedious very fast. Additionally, would not be able to post during sleeping hours/unavailable hours. A bot can do this very easily with little upkeep. Usually the people who make these bots are fans of the content, with a personal fandom account linked. My feelings about it's actions are mixed I suppose. I know that there is someone behind this bot feeding it images, most likely a fan, so it doesn't feel completely ungenuine. However, it does sort of make me sad that someone isn't putting a lot of thought into which images they post (at least for a daily character bot).

This immediately reminded me of what happened with Twitter's Ai Grok specifically, but has been seen in other Ai's as well. I'm more curious about the behavior behind the humans that feed these types of comments into chatbots to corrupt them. What is the motivation? We briefly talked about internet and real-life, how are these behaviors shown online versus in-person? If there were a bot in real life that would learn from conversations it had with people, would it go a different direction? Would people still try to teach it outlandish things?

All technology and automation has a human behind it (at least up until recently, the rest of my comment is going to exclude ai). Whatever team is behind a bot is responsible for the actions since the humans behind it are the "true" posters. For dividing out responsibility between the two (coder and publisher), I think both people are responsible to a certain extent and the degree of responsibility can vary. For example, lets say the coder makes a bot of their own thoughts and opinions and the publisher just publishes it. I would say the coder has more responsibility in that action, since they are the one writing out the posts themselves. If it is an automated bot taking quotes from a show or something similar, the publisher is the one checking over if the content follows guidelines and would have more responsibility.

Offering general summaries of ethics does provide a general of the framework itself, but in practice is a different story. John Locke by philosophical beliefs disagreed with slavery, but in practice he had direct involvement in enslavement. Additionally, Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner of over 600 in Monticello and wrote that while slavery was abhorrent, that Black individuals are still inferior to White individuals. Ethics have done a lot of good, but it should be remembered that it has also been used to justify racism, misogyny, ableism, etc. by dehumanizing minorities through violent language (ex. "All men are created equal" -> Black people were not seen as "fully human" from an evolutionary standpoint, therefore excludes them).