18 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. The following tweet has a video of a soap dispenser that apparently was only designed to work for people with light-colored skin.1

      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.

    1. Another strategy for managing disability is to use Universal Design, which originated in architecture. In universal design, the goal is to make environments and buildings have options so that there is a way for everyone to use it2. For example, a building with stairs might also have ramps and elevators, so people with different mobility needs (e.g., people with wheelchairs, baby strollers, or luggage) can access each area. In the elevators the buttons might be at a height that both short and tall people can reach. The elevator buttons might have labels both drawn (for people who can see them) and in braille (for people who cannot), and the ground floor button may be marked with a star, so that even those who cannot read can at least choose the ground floor.

      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.

    1. One of the things you can do as an individual to better protect yourself against hacking is to enable 2-factor authentication on your accounts.

      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).

    2. But while that is the proper security for storing passwords. So for example, Facebook stored millions of Instagram passwords in plain text, meaning the passwords weren’t encrypted and anyone with access to the database could simply read everyone’s passwords. And Adobe encrypted their passwords improperly and then hackers leaked their password database of 153 million users.

      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?

    1. Do you think there is information that could be discovered through data mining that social media companies shouldn’t seek out (e.g., social media companies could use it for bad purposes, or they might get hacked and others could find it)?

      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.

    1. 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.

      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.

  2. Jan 2026
    1. Have you witnessed different responses to trolling? What happened in those cases? What do you think is the best way to deal with trolling?

      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.

    1. Hazing: Causing difficulty or suffering for people who are new to a group

      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.

    1. Where do you see parasocial relationships on social media? In what ways are you in parasocial relationships? What are the ways in which a parasocial relationship can be authentic or inauthentic? both for the celebrity and for the viewer/follower

      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.

    1. We value authenticity because it has a deep connection to the way humans use social connections to manage our vulnerability and to protect ourselves from things that threaten us. When we form connections, it is like all our respective vulnerabilities get entangled and tied together. We depend on each other, so if you betray me I face a loss in wellbeing. But also, since you did that, now you face a loss in wellbeing, as I no longer have your back. That means that both of us have an incentive not to betray or take advantage of each other, for our mutual protection.

      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.

    1. 5.2. Web 1.0 Social Media

      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.

    1. Graffiti and other notes left on walls were used for sharing updates, spreading rumors, and tracking accounts Books and news write-ups had to be copied by hand, so that only the most desired books went “viral” and spread

      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.

    1. Gender# Data collection and storage can go wrong in other ways as well, with incorrect or erroneous options. Here are some screenshots from a thread of people collecting strange gender selection forms:

      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.

    1. As you can see in the apple example, any time we turn something into data, we are making a simplification.1 If we are counting the number of something, like apples, we are deciding that each one is equivalent. If we are writing down what someone said, we are losing their tone of voice, accent, etc. If we are taking a photograph, it is only from one perspective, etc.

      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.

    1. Choose an example social media bot (find on your own or look at Examples of Bots (or apps).) What does this bot do that a normal person wouldn’t be able to, or wouldn’t be able to as easily? Who is in charge of creating and running this bot? Does the fact that it is a bot change how you feel about its actions?

      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).

    1. In 2016, Microsft launched a Twitter bot that was intended to learn to speak from other Twitter users and have conversations. Twitter users quickly started tweeting racist comments at Tay, which Tay learned from and started tweeting out within one day.

      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?

    1. When one of us ran the program, who made those reddit posts (me? you? the bot?)? Notice that there are at least three times of actions for posting reddit post with this bot, one is when the code was originally written, another is when the code was modified, and and the other is when the code is run. These could even be done by different people. How do you divide out responsibility for a bots actions between the person writing the code and the person running the program?

      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.

    1. Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and property

      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).