19.2.1. Surveillance Capitalism# Meta’s way of making profits fits in a category called Surveillance Capitalism [s37]. Surveillance capitalism began when internet companies started tracking user behavior data to make their sites more personally tailored to users. These companies realized that this data was something that they could profit from, so they began to collect more data than strictly necessary (“behavioral surplus”) and see what more they could predict about users. Companies could then sell this data about users directly, or (more commonly), they could keep their data hidden, but use it to sell targeted advertisements. So, for example, Meta might let an advertiser say they want an ad to only go to people likely to be pregnant. Or they might let advertizes make ads go only to “Jew Haters” [s38] (which is ethically very bad, and something Meta allowed).

Jeremy Schneider [@J_Schneider]. Please know, if you’re someone who brings a book to the bar… nobody likes you. February 2022. URL: https://twitter.com/J_Schneider/status/1490416476569968643 (visited on 2023-12-10).

For an example of public shaming, we can look at late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s annual Halloween prank, where he has parents film their children as they tell the parents tell the children that the parents ate all the kids’ Halloween candy. Parents post these videos online, where viewers are intended to laugh at the distress, despair, and sense of betrayal the children express. I will not link to these videos which I find horrible, but instead link you to these articles: Jimmy Kimmel’s Halloween prank can scar children. Why are we laughing? [r4] Jimmy Kimmel’s Halloween Candy Prank: Harmful Parenting? [r5] We can also consider events in the #MeToo movement as at least in part public shaming of sexual harassers (but also of course solidarity and organizing of victims of sexual harassment, and pushes for larger political, organizational, and social changes).

Yes, You're Racist [@YesYoureRacist]. UPDATE: Cole White, the first person I exposed, no longer has a job 💁‍♂️ #GoodNightColeWhite #ExposeTheAltRight #Charlottesville. August 2017. URL: https://twitter.com/YesYoureRacist/status/896713553666871296 (visited on 2023-12-10).

Social media then allows new ways for crowd harassment to occur. Crowd harassment includes all the forms of individual harassment we already mentioned (like bullying, stalking, etc.), but done by a group of people. Additionally, we can consider the following forms of crowd harassment: [Dogpiling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpiling_(Internet) [q4]): When a crowd of people targets or harasses the same person. Public Shaming (this will be our next chapter) Cross-platform raids (e.g., 4chan group planning harassment on another platform [q5]) Stochastic terrorism [q6] The use of mass public communication, usually against a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism which are statistically probable but happen seemingly at random. [q7] See also: An atmosphere of violence: Stochastic terror in American politics [q8]

BBC. Reddit apologises for online Boston 'witch hunt'. BBC News, April 2013. URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-22263020 (visited on 2023-12-08).

Wikipedia [p12]: Is an online encyclopedia whose content is crowdsourced. Anyone can contribute, just go to an unlocked Wikipedia page and press the edit button. Institutions don’t get special permissions (e.g., it was a scandal when US congressional staff edited Wikipedia pages [p13]), and the expectation that editors do not have outside institutional support is intended to encourage more people to contribute. Quora [p14]: An crowdsourced question and answer site. Stack Overflow [p15]: A crowdsourced question-and-answer site specifically for programming questions. Amazon Mechanical Turk [p16]: A site where you can pay for crowdsourcing small tasks (e.g., pay a small amount for each task, and then let a crowd of people choose to do the tasks and get paid). Upwork [p17]: A site that lets people find and contract work with freelancers (generally larger and more specialized tasks than Amazon Mechanical Turk. Project Sidewalk [p18]: Crowdsourcing sidewalk information for mobility needs (e.g., wheelchair users).

ShiningConcepts. r/TheoryOfReddit: reddit is valued at more than ten billion dollars, yet it is extremely dependent on mods who work for absolutely nothing. Should they be paid, and does this lead to power-tripping mods? November 2021. URL:

Wikipedia [o5] is an online encyclopedia that is crowdsourced by volunteer editors. You can go right now and change a Wikipedia page’s content if you want (as long as the page isn’t locked)! You can edit anonymously, or you can create an account. The Wikipedia community gives some editors administrator access [o6], so they can perform more moderation tasks like blocking users or locking pages. Editors and administrators are generally not, paid, though they can be paid by other groups if they disclose and fill out forms [o7] Wikipedia exists in multiple languages (each governed somewhat independently). When looking at the demographics of who writes the English Wikipedia articles, editors of Wikipedia skew heavily male [o8] (around 80% or 90%), and presumably administrators skew heavily male as well. This can produce bias in how things are moderated. For example, Donna Strickland had no Wikipedia page before her Nobel. Her male collaborator did [o9]:

Catherine Liao, Rita and Shu. Great Wall of porn obscures China protest news on Twitter. TechCrunch, November 2022. URL: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/great-wall-of-porn-obscures-china-protest-news-on-twitter/ (visited on 2023-12-08).

Another category is content that users or advertisers might find offensive. If users see things that offend them too often, they might leave the site, and if advertisers see their ads next to too much offensive content, they might stop paying for ads on the site. So platforms might put limits on language (e.g., racial slurs), violence, sex, and nudity. Sometimes different users or advertisers have different opinions on what should be allowed or not. For example, “The porn ban of 2018 was a defining event for Tumblr that led to a 30 percent drop in traffic and a mass exodus of users that blindsided the company” [n3].

Amanda Baughan. Make Peace with Social Media. Medium, May 2022. URL: https://amandabaughan.medium.com/make-peace-with-social-media-113877582006 (visited on 2023-12-08).

Doomscrolling is: “Tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing. Many people are finding themselves reading continuously bad news about COVID-19 without the ability to stop or step back.”

Meme. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1187840093. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meme&oldid=1187840093#Etymology (visited on 2023-12-08).

When physical mail was dominant in the 1900s, one type of mail that spread around the US was a chain letter [l7]. Chain letters were letters that instructed the recipient to make their own copies of the letter and send them to people they knew. Some letters gave the reason for people to make copies might be as part of a pyramid scheme [l8] where you were supposed to send money to the people you got the letter from, but then the people you send the letter to would give you money. Other letters gave the reason for people to make copies that if they made copies, good things would happen to them, and if not bad things would, like this:

Elon Musk [@elonmusk]. Trashing accounts that you hate will cause our algorithm to show you more of those accounts, as it is keying off of your interactions. Basically saying if you love trashing *that* account, then you will probably also love trashing *this* account. Not actually wrong lol. January 2023. URL: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1615194151737520128 (visited on 2023-12-07).

What people near you have been liking, interacting with, or hovering over (they can find your approximate location, like your city, from your internet IP address, and they may know even more precisely) This perhaps explains why sometimes when you talk about something out loud it gets recommended to you (because someone around you then searched for it). Or maybe they are actually recording what you are saying and recommending based on that. Phone numbers or email addresses (sometimes collected deceptively [k1]) can be used to suggest friends or contacts. And probably many more factors as well!

We could look at inventions of new accessible technologies and think the world is getting better for disabled people. But in reality, it is much more complicated. Some new technologies make improvements for some people with some disabilities, but other new technologies are continually being made in ways that are not accessible. And, in general, cultures shift in many ways all the time, making things better or worse for different disabled people.

Emma Bowman. After Data Breach Exposes 530 Million, Facebook Says It Will Not Notify Users. NPR, April 2021. URL: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/09/986005820/after-data-breach-exposes-530-million-facebook-says-it-will-not-notify-users (visited on 2023-12-06).

From a security perspective there are many risks that a company faces, such as: Employees at the company misusing their access, like Facebook employees using their database permissions to stalk women [i10] Hackers finding a vulnerability and inserting, modifying, or downloading information. For example: hackers stealing the names, Social Security numbers, and birthdates of 143 million Americans from Equifax [i11] hackers posting publicly the phone numbers, names, locations, and some email addresses of 530 million Facebook users [i12], or about 7% of all people on Earth

For example, social media data about who you are friends with might be used to infer your sexual orientation [h9]. Social media data might also be used to infer people’s: Race Political leanings Interests Susceptibility to financial scams Being prone to addiction (e.g., gambling) Additionally, groups keep trying to re-invent old debunked pseudo-scientific (and racist) methods of judging people based on facial features (size of nose, chin, forehead, etc.), but now using artificial intelligence [h10].

Spaghetti-tree hoax. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1187320430. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spaghetti-tree_hoax&oldid=1187320430 (visited on 2023-12-05).

Some reasons people engage in trolling behavior include: Amusement: Trolls often find the posts amusing, whether due to the disruption or emotional reaction. If the motivation is amusement at causing others’ pain, that is called doing it for the lulz [g6]. Gatekeeping: Some trolling is done in a community to separate out an ingroup from outgroup (sometimes called newbies or normies). The ingroup knows that a post is just trolling, but the outgroup is not aware and will engage earnestly. This is sometimes known as trolling the newbies. Feeling Smart: Going with the gatekeeping role above, trolling can make a troll or observer feel smarter than others, since they are able to see that it is trolling while others don’t realize it. Feeling Powerful: Trolling sometimes gives trolls a feeling of empowerment when they successfully cause disruption or cause pain.** Advance and argument / make a point: Trolling is sometimes done in order to advance an argument or make a point. For example, proving that supposedly reliable news sources are gullible by getting them to repeat an absurd gross story [g5]. Punish or stop: Some trolling is in service of some view of justice, where a person, group or organization is viewed as doing something “bad” or “deserving” of punishment, and trolling is a way of fighting back

lonelygirl15. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186146298. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lonelygirl15&oldid=1186146298 (visited on 2023-11-24).

How do you think about the authenticity of the Tweets that come from Trump himself? Do you think it matters which human typed the Tweet? Does the emotional expression (e.g., anger) of the Tweet change your view of authenticity?

4chan. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186572457. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=4chan&oldid=1186572457 (visited on 2023-11-24).

The book Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years [e1] by Tom Standage outlines some of the history of social media before internet-based social media platforms such as in times before the printing press: 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

Shannon Bond. Elon Musk wants out of the Twitter deal. It could end up costing at least $1 billion. NPR, July 2022. URL: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110539504/twitter-elon-musk-deal-jeopardy (visited on 2023-11-24).

So all data that you might find is a simplification. There are many seemingly simple questions that in some situations or for some people, have no simple answers, questions like: What country are you from? What if you were born in one country, but moved to another shortly after? What if you are from a country that no longer exists like Czechoslovakia? Or from an occupied territory? How many people live in this house? Does a college student returning home for the summer count as living in that house? How many words are in this chapter? Different programs use different rules for what counts as a “word” [d19] E.g., this page has “2 + 2 = 4”, which Microsoft Word counts as 5 words, and Google Docs counts as 3 words.