I think I inherently thought of bots, automation, and AI as harmful, but failed to realize that technology like that is used in basically everything we do online. Seemingly harmful aspects of automation like spam bots can also be used for justifiable purposes, like the instances of protesting that we looked at---goes to show that most stories aren't one-sided, and I've learned to better look at both the pros and cons of things like bots and automation.

My perspective on ethics are a lot more nuanced now, with a greater emphasis on understanding multiple ethics frameworks. If I've taken away anything from the online ethical dilemmas we've covered in class, it's that there's rarely a right or simple answer to the issue---when something is suggested which helps the situation, it usually brings a set of new problems to be considered. That's why it's important to research the topic and understand ethics in a more holistic way.

I feel like this effectively says the same thing, although with a more hands-off tone. There doesn't seem to be much difference between Zuckerberg's goal of "connecting" and bringing the world "closer together," and the ethics of this whole thing seems like it relies pretty heavily on intent vs actual outcome.

Obviously I think of big corporations like Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. In the entertainment scene I think of Disney, which in recent years has seemed to sacrifice quality for efficient profit---cranking up prices for parks, low employee wages, market oversaturation. Not to mention their acquisition of other large corporations like Fox. In terms of their largest source of revenue, entertainment and media, they seem to have also cut back on original content in favor for sequels of live action remakes of existing properties. Disney and other corporations also capitalize on things like pride month to sell more merchandise, which to me seems pretty disingenuous.

The theme of public shaming comes up a lot in sites like YouTube, which is why the term "YouTube apology" is so infamous, often representing a disingenuous apology which seeks to self-victimize or outright deny claims against the person. The biggest and most recent example of this that I've seen is through a YouTuber named Sssniperwolf, who publicly doxed another YouTuber Jacksfilms, after he posted a series of videos criticizing her instances of content theft. Although audiences on both sides are heavily involved in the public perception of this conflict, I think it solely lies in Jacksfilms to accept/reject their apology, as his personal privacy was invaded. Unfortunately, Sssniperwolf issued an apology which was clearly hastily put together and came after a series of posts in which she doubled down on the validity of her actions.

I think public shaming is at its worse when it becomes a violation of privacy. It's one thing to express abusive behavior or stigmatization online, but something like doxing poses a real threat to someone's personal life and physical safety.

I think a lot of it lies in the boundaries that the site instills in its platform. If they make their community guidelines clear, detailed, and comprehensive with appropriate consequences, people should be able to report instances of harassment, and from there it's just a matter of the site communicating well with its users.

In certain situations, I think crowd harassment can definitely be justified, like in scenarios where marginalized communities are being harassed themselves. As for the rich, famous, or powerful, my feelings surrounding crowd harassment are definitely looser, I inherently find myself less sympathetic because I can't relate to their higher status.

This is interesting, especially since I just wrote a comment under the impression that the contributors for sites like Wikipedia were much larger and equally dispersed. It's hard to say if this is inherently detrimental for something like credibility, as on one hand, there's less range of perspective and knowledge, but on the other, the content is more focused and perhaps less hindered by a jumble of external information.

Crowdsourced information sites have always been interesting to me, because while incredibly detailed they aren't verified to be completely credible sources. It also has the unique trait however, of crystalizing information from a diverse range of perspectives, knowledge, and lived experience, which I think is also beneficial in its own way.

Higher pay and and easily available resources for support would be a clear start. I also think that posts could be filtered before reaching content moderators, perhaps by using AI to detect evident violations of harmful content.

Hierarchy within social media platforms oppose relational ethics, specifically American Indigenous Ethics. The same framework also combats propositional claims not founded in lived experiences, so that could act as another means for moderation.

For me, one of the largest detriments of social media is just how much time it consumes, especially with short-form content and doom scrolling. A few times, I've gotten videos through scrolling telling me to "put the phone down" or take a break from the app, but they're usually just from other users and not from the site itself. For me, this usually works and kind of snaps me out of the scrolling trance, so I think it could be beneficial if more social media sites implemented these sort of notifications.

This is probably the largest benefit of social media for me, especially during quarantine. For example, having a Discord server with a group of friends to talk and play games online. Private spaces like these were good at ensuring online safety and even introduced new connections with people through inviting friends of friends.

I've seen a lot of stories about people's reflections on going viral, especially subjects of popular memes. Some feel similarly to Roxane Gay, where the attention from virality is emotionally overwhelming. I think this is particularly harmful for children who go viral or gain a lot of traction on social media. Conversely, many people take advantage of the attention. For example, the subject of the "scumbag steve" meme who tried to capitalize on his popularity by building a social media presence around his accidental virality.

I think one of the biggest factors is how transformative the new content is, and how personalized the original work is to the creator. For example, if someone stitched together a new meme format, (say for example, the Drake hotline bling meme) then I don't think there's any incentive to credit whoever posted that original meme as long as the content is changed. Some more harmful examples I've seen are when people add little insight to existing content, or just flat out steal memes and art altogether, many reaction channels on YouTube and TikTok are notorious for this kind of content.

I think platforms themselves should hold responsibility for their algorithms, which bye extension, directly influence conversations concerning larger social trends. Online echo chambers certainly amplify polarization in a lot of communities, and in this sense, I think the impact of recommendations outweighs the intent. Maybe sites can become more proficient in distinguishing different types of posts, so that users can receive things like art or memes based on their activity, but opinion-based content is a bit more varied.

My Instagram feed seems really inconsistent with what it recommends me. Sometimes it recommends me topics that I've shown interest in, (even outside of the site) but sometimes I'll click on a post once (for example a random meme) and it'll randomly fill my entire feed with posts in that same meme format.

My sister is deaf so accessibility for her has always been really important. I think many sites have had vast improvements over the past few years with captioning and alt-text, especially for sites like Tik-Tok and other short-form content. Although, auto-generated captioning is still an issue a lot of the time on things like YouTube and even streaming services sometimes.

One thing I noticed about Instagram's accessibility settings is that they seem to have any options for manipulating visuals like scaling color contrast to make photos more visible to people, another thing I've seen is the use of emojis ASCII symbols which don't translate well from text to speech.

Looked into this a bit because I was curious about how they collect data. Facebook can collect non-user information through installing cookies on browsers if they visit sites with Facebook "like" and "share" buttons.

Similarly to the previous chapter about data mining, I think social media companies have incentive to violate privacy as a means to make money or gain traction. For example, looking at things shared over dms, and then recommending a user ads based on those messages.

I think data mining can be useful through its automation. Analyzing large sets of data might help identify things like bots and fraud. Although, I think it's also important for big sites to have extreme transparency with their users, and not applying data mining with the sole purpose of generating more money.

Definitely strange and a little unnerving to see how social media platforms track information across different services. I looked at my Twitter interests page, and saw specific topics that I've never interacted with on Twitter, but I have on other sites. Also interesting to see the real scope of what Twitter considers when recommending me stuff, as it was a really thorough list, and pretty accurate to what I consume.

Similar to the idea of code switching discussed in the previous chapter. This aptitude for recognizing patterns is also why it's easy for a troll to disrupt the stability of those practices. Interesting to see how this notion of "trolling" can be used to disrupt structures that may be seen in a negative light, such as the K-Pop protest example. Despite its inherent connotations, many things on social media such as trolls and bots come down to perspective, which is why considering multiple ethical frameworks are beneficial.

I see trolling most prominently through video games, often in real-time whether it be through chat functions or over voice chat. In these cases, trolls usually antagonize people for amusement (possibly by intentionally doing poorly in a game) or to emphasize their superior skill in some way.

I see parasocial relationships a lot through video-sharing sites like YouTube, TikTok, and especially Twitch, where content creators and their audience are actively engaging with each other in real-time. I see a lot of stories of fans harassing or making creator's uncomfortable because they're disillusioned by their perception of their "relationship," but I've also seen instances of creator's developing parasocial relationships with their audience, like in the recent controversy surrounding YouTuber Colleen Ballinger.

For me, my public image on social media is very easily malleable, which isn't to say it's inauthentic. Sites like Instagram inherently allow people to control how their followers see and perceive them, like posting photos that paint them in a positive light. To me, this isn't inherently inauthentic as long as what's posted isn't a direct misrepresentation or contradiction of yourself. If I sort through a few photos of myself and only post the best one, that's still authentic, but if I photoshop that photo and advertise it as true, I feel like that borders the line.

This was interesting to me as I initially viewed "high friction" with a negative connotation, since I associate it with ads or other unwanted elements that detract from the ease of using the platform. However, examples like this show how high friction, in many ways, can have ethically just outcomes. Another example I can think of is "sensitive content" warnings on platforms like Instagram, which blur out images and videos which may be controversial or harmful for some viewers, and thus give the user a preliminary option as to whether they want to view it or not.

I see a lot of possible parallels between social media and many relational ethics such as Ethics of Care, Ubuntu, or American Indigenous Ethics. The focus on humanity, lived experience, and investment in relationships (even with strangers) sounds a lot like the types of inherent connections we create on social media. Although, like we saw with the "Antisocial Media" page, those ethical frameworks might not always be so applicable in practice.

The notion of considering all data sets and perspectives reminds me of our discussion about different ethical frameworks and our exercise in considering each one when approaching an ethical dilemma. It's interesting that utilitarianism seems to be the most logical framework to approach data as opposed to something like Taoism, which might be less relevant in considering data because it's not as quantitatively focused as utilitarianism. Just an example of how different frameworks can be applied to different situations.

This explanation/example of metadata helped a lot with my understanding. I've always heard the term thrown around, especially in things like video games where people might go into the game's metadata to extract certain information and secrets that the developers stored within it. I have a better grasp now of what that actually means in the context of data as a more holistic concept.

This was actually surprising for me because around the time that this movie came out, I had a perception that more closely mirrored the false narrative that the politically motivated humans or bots were pushing. I thought that the negative backlash towards this film far outweighed the positive or neutral feedback on Twitter specifically, so it's interesting to see that the situation was far less one-sided, goes to show how much bots can influence public perception and engagement of a certain topic.

I found an Instagram growth tool called "Kicksta" which for a username target, will like a couple photos of each of that username's followers on your account's behalf. Essentially it's a way to use automation to increase followers by targeting users who seem interested in your content. I'm curious about the conversations about ethics and privacy surrounding this as well as social media algorithms in general.

When a social media story like this reaches this point of publicity, I feel like it's in the nature of many people to contribute and inflate the situation to a point of arguable absurdity (taking photos of her, finding flight numbers, the hashtags) almost because it's funny, or at least gratifying to be "in on the joke" and gaining the attention and solidarity of many other people communally agreeing that someone is morally wrong. Delivering justice to situations like this also makes people feel morally upright in comparison, encouraging more people to double down on the punishments, I see this a lot on social media through things like cancel culture.

I find existentialism and Jean-Paul Sartre's interpretation of it really interesting. Similarly to what's summarized here, Sartre poses that "existentialism is humanism" which dictates that without a "God" there is no set framework for the ideal, morally perfect human. Thus, we must create and define purpose ourselves. In one of his most famous works Huis Clos, Sartre emphasizes that without a higher power, concepts such as hell are constituted by those we surround ourselves with, and those who argue their own moral judgement. It's a notion that (like nihilism) comes off as inherently pessimistic, but also one that I find uplifting in some ways, particularly in the idea that we are solely responsible for creating value and meaning in the lives of ourselves and others.