As a member of society, we hope you are informed about the role social media plays in shaping society, such as how design decisions and bots can influence social movements (polarizing, spreading, or stifling different them), and the different economic, social, and governmental pressures that social media platforms operate under. We hope you are then able to advocate for ways of improving how social media operates in society. That might be through voting, or pressuring government officials, or spreading ideas and information, or organizing coordinated actions or protests.

As a social media user, we hope you are informed about things like: how social media works, how they influence your emotions and mental state, how your data gets used or abused, strategies in how people use social media, and how harassment and spam bots operate. We hope with this you can be a more informed user of social media, better able to participate, protect yourself, and make it a valuable experience for you and others you interact with. For example, you can hopefully recognize when someone is intentionally posting something bad or offensive (like the bad cooking videos we mentioned in the Virality chapter, or an intentionally offensive statement) in an attempt to get people to respond and spread their content. Then you can decide how you want to engage (if at all) given how they are trying to spread their content.

As most social media platforms are headquartered in a very set of locations (e.g., Silicon Valley in the US, and Beijing China), but used all over the world, it is important for us to look at the concepts and history of colonialism to understand what it means for social media to be controlled in these few places. So let’s start by defining colonialism and some related concepts. 20.1.1. Colonialism Defined# Colonialism is when one group or country subjugates another group, often imposing laws, religion, culture, and languages on that group, and taking resources from them. Colonialism is often justified by belief that the subjugated people are inferior (e.g., barbaric, savage, godless, backwards), and the superiority of the group doing the subjugation (e.g., civilized, advanced). Key figures:

Why do social media platforms make decisions that harm users? And why do social media platforms sometimes go down paths of self-destruction and alienating their users? Sometimes these questions can be answered by looking at the economic forces that drive decision-making on social media platforms, in particular with capitalism. So let’s start by defining capitalism. 19.1.1. Definition of Capitalism:# Capitalism is: “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market” Merriam-Webster Dictionary

While public criticism and shaming have always been a part of human culture, the Internet and social media have created new ways of doing so. We’ve seen examples of this before with Justine Sacco and with crowd harassment (particularly dogpiling). 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:

While public criticism and shaming have always been a part of human culture, the Internet and social media have created new ways of doing so. We’ve seen examples of this before with Justine Sacco and with crowd harassment (particularly dogpiling). 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? (archived copy) Jimmy Kimmel’s Halloween Candy Prank: Harmful Parenting? 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). 18.2.1. Aside on “Cancel Culture”# The term “cancel culture” can be used for public shaming and criticism, but is used in a variety of ways, and it doesn’t refer to just one thing. The offense that someone is being canceled for can range from sexual assault of minors (e.g., R. Kelly, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey), to minor offenses or even misinterpretations. The consequences for being “canceled” can range from simply the experience of being criticized, to loss of job or criminal charges. Given the huge range of things “cancel culture” can be referring to, we’ll mostly stick to talking here about “public shaming,” and “public criticism.”

childhood. In at least some views about shame and childhood1, shame and guilt hold different roles in childhood development: Shame is the feeling that “I am bad,” and the natural response to shame is for the individual to hide, or the community to ostracize the person. Guilt is the feeling that “This specific action I did was bad.” The natural response to feeling guilt is for the guilty person to want to repair the harm of their action. In this view, a good parent might see their child doing something bad or dangerous, and tell them to stop. The child may feel shame (they might not be developmentally able to separate their identity from the momentary rejection). The parent may then comfort the child to let the child know that they are not being rejected as a person, it was just their action that was a problem. The child’s relationship with the parent is repaired, and over time the child will learn to feel guilt instead of shame and seek to repair harm instead of hide.

Individual harassment (one individual harassing another individual) has always been part of human cultures, bur social media provides new methods of doing so. There are many methods by which through social media. This can be done privately through things like: Bullying: like sending mean messages through DMs Cyberstalking: Continually finding the account of someone, and creating new accounts to continue following them. Or possibly researching the person’s physical location. Hacking: Hacking into an account or device to discover secrets, or make threats. Tracking: An abuser might track the social media use of their partner or child to prevent them from making outside friends. They may even install spy software on their victim’s phone. Death threats / rape threats Etc.

Have you experienced or witnessed harassment on social media (that you are willing to share about)?

What do you consider to be the most important factors in making an instance of public shaming bad? What do you consider to be the most important factors in making an instance of public shaming good (if you think that is possible)?

Some ad hoc crowdsourcing can be part of a social or political movement. For example, Social media organizing played a role in the Arab Spring revolutions in the 2010s, and Social Media platforms were a large part of the #MeToo movement, where victims of sexual abuse/harassment spoke up and stood together.

When social media users work together, we can consider what problem they are solving. For example, for some of the Tiktok Duet videos from the virality chapter, the “problem” would be something like “how do we create music out of this source video” and the different musicians contribute their own piece to the solution. For some other examples:

When social media users work together, we can consider what problem they are solving. For example, for some of the Tiktok Duet videos from the virality chapter, the “problem” would be something like “how do we create music out of this source video” and the different musicians contribute their own piece to the solution. For some other examples:

You can also have people moderate their own spaces. For example: when you text on the phone, you are in charge of blocking numbers if you want to (though the phone company might warn you of potential spam or scams) When you make posts on Facebook or upload videos to YouTube, you can delete comments and replies Also in some of these systems, you can allow friends access to your spaces to let them help you moderate them.

One concept that comes up in a lot of different ethical frameworks is moderation. Famously, Confucian thinkers prized moderation as a sound principle for living, or as a virtue, and taught the value of the ‘golden mean’, or finding a balanced, moderate state between extremes. This golden mean idea got picked up by Aristotle—we might even say ripped off by Aristotle—as he framed each virtue as a medial state between two extremes. You could be cowardly at one extreme, or brash and reckless at the other; in the golden middle is courage. You could be miserly and penny-pinching, or you could be a reckless spender, but the aim is to find a healthy balance between those two. Moderation, or being moderate, is something that is valued in many ethical frameworks, not because it comes naturally to us, per se, but because it is an important part of how we form groups and come to trust each other for our shared survival and flourishing. Moderation also comes up in deontological theories, including the political philosophy tradition that grew out of Kantian rationalism: the tradition that is often identified with John Rawls, although there are many other variations out there too. In brief, here is the journey of the idea:

First let’s consider that, while social media use is often talked of as an “addiction” or as “junk food,” there might be better ways to think about social media use, as a place where you might enjoy, connect with others, learn new things, and express yourself.

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.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary Fig. 13.1 Tweet on doomscrolling the day after insurrectionists stormed the US Capital (while still in the middle of the COVID pandemic).# The seeking out of bad news, or trying to get news even though it might be bad, has existed as long as people have kept watch to see if a family member will return home safely. But of course, new mediums can provide more information to sift through and more quickly, such as with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle in the 1990s, or, now social media. 13.2.2. Trauma Dumping# While there are healthy ways of sharing difficult emotions and experiences (see the next section), when these difficult emotions and experiences are thrown at unsuspecting and unwilling audiences, that is called trauma dumping. Social media can make trauma dumping easier. For example, with parasocial relationships, you might feel like the celebrity is your friend who wants to hear your trauma. And with context collapse, where audiences are combined, how would you share your trauma with an appropriate audience and not an inappropriate one (e.g., if you re-post something and talk about how it reminds you of your trauma, are you dumping it on the original poster?). Trauma dumping can be bad for the mental health of those who have this trauma unexpectedly thrown at them, and it also often isn’t helpful for the person doing the trauma dumping either: Venting, by contrast, is a healthy form of expressing negative emotion, such as anger and frustration, in order to move past it and find solutions. Venting is done with the permission of the listener and is a one-shot deal, not a recurring retelling or rumination of negativity. A good vent allows the venter to get a new perspective and relieve pent-up stress and emotion. While there are benefits to venting, there are no benefits to trauma dumping. In trauma dumping, the person oversharing doesn’t take responsibility or show self-reflection. Trauma dumping is delivered on the unsuspecting. The purpose is to generate sympathy and attention not to process negative emotion. The dumper doesn’t want to overcome their trauma; if they did, they would be deprived of the ability to trauma dump. How to Overcome Social Media Trauma Dumping 13.2.3. Munchausen by Internet# Munchausen Syndrome (or Factitious disorder imposed on self) is when someone pretends to have a disease, like cancer, to get sympathy or attention. People with various illnesses often find support online, and even form online communities. It is often easier to fake an illness in an online community than in an in-person community, so many have done so (like the fake @Sciencing_Bi fake dying of covid in the authenticity chapter). People who fake these illnesses often do so as a result of their own mental illness, so, in fact, “they are sick, albeit […] in a very different way than claimed.” 13.2.4. Digital Self-Harm# Sometimes people will harm their bodies (called “self-harm”) as a way of expressing or trying to deal with negative emotions or situations. Self-harm doesn’t always have to be physical though, and some people find ways of causing emotional self-harm through the internet. Self-Bullying# One form of digital self-harm is self-bullying, where people set up fake alternate accounts which they then use to post bullying messages at themselves. Negative Communities# Another form of digital self-harm is through joining toxic negative communities built around tearing each other down and reinforcing a hopeless worldview. (Content warning: sex and self-harm) In 2018, Youtuber ContraPoints (Natalie Wynn) made a video exploring the extremely toxic online Incel community and related it to her own experience with a toxic 4chan community. (Content warning: Sex, violence, self-hatred, and self-harm) Note: The video might not embed right, and if you want to watch it, you might have to click to open it in youtube. Since you might not want to watch a 35-minute video, here are a few key summary points and quotes: “Incel” is short for “involuntarily celibate,” meaning they are men who have centered their identity on wanting to have sex with women, but with no women “giving” them sex. Incels objectify women and sex, claiming they have a right to have women want to have sex with them. Incels believe they are being unfairly denied this sex because of the few sexually attractive men (”Chads”), and because feminism told women they could refuse to have sex. Some incels believe their biology (e.g., skull shape) means no women will “give” them sex. They will be forever alone, without sex, and unhappy. The incel community has produced multiple mass murderers and terrorist attacks. In the video, ContraPoints says that in some forums, incels will post pictures of themselves, knowing and expecting that the community will proceed to criticize everything about their appearance and reinforce hopelessness: The truth about incels is that almost all of them are completely normal looking guys. But of course that’s not the feedback they get from other incels. The feedback they get is that their chins are weak, their hair is thin, their skin is garbage and there’s no hope whatsoever, no woman will ever love them, they are truecels with no option but to lie down and rot. ContraPoints then relates this to her experience with a 4chan message board that, unlike other in other online trans communities, consisted of trans women tearing down each others’ appearances, saying that no one would ever see them as a woman (they would never “pass” as a woman), and saying that no trans woman could ever pass. As a somewhat public trans woman, the community often posted about her: For a while I had some stans on the board who basically viewed me as inspiration […] of course that kind of post is frowned upon. If I’m not looked at as a big-skulled manly freak, if my transition is going well, that means that some of their transitions might go well too, and that is an unacceptable conclusion for a community founded on self-loathing and hopelessness. So it was necessary for the rest of the board to explain why I didn’t pass, why I would never pass, and why anyone who looked less good than me shouldn’t even fucking think about it. They shouldn’t transition at all, they should just repress, they should lie down and rot. ContraPoints says she regularly searched these forums to see what terrible things people said about her: And there would be this thrill of going to TTTT and reading other people saying what my deepest anxieties told me was really true. And that was always painful but there was a kind of pleasure too. There was a rush. It’s exciting to burst out of the politically correct bubble and say what you’re really thinking: that personality doesn’t matter because big-skulled Chads get all the girls, that ContraPoints is a big-skulled hon with a voice like nails on a chalkboard. And at first I justified the habit by telling myself I was just doing research. I have to keep tabs on what the bigots are saying, that’s simply my job. But soon I realized it wasn’t just research, and it was infecting me away from the computer. She then describes this as a form of digital self-harm, calling it “masochistic epistemology: whatever hurts is true” (note: “masochistic” means seeking pain, and “epistemology” means how you determine what is true). ContraPoints then gives her advice to these incels who have turned inward with self-hatred and digital self-harm: So, incels. I’m not going to respond to your worldview like its an intellectual position worthy of rational debate. Because these ideas and arguments, you’re not using them the way rational people use arguments. You’re using them as razor blades to abuse yourselves. And I know because I’ve done the exact same thing. The incel worldview is catastrophizing. It’s an anxious death spiral. And the solution to that has to be therapeutic, not logical.

For social media content, replication means that the content (or a copy or modified version) gets seen by more people. Additionally, when a modified version gets distributed, future replications of that version will include the modification (a.k.a., inheritance). There are ways of duplicating that are built into social media platforms: Actions such as: liking, reposting, replying, and paid promotion get the original posting to show up for users more Actions like quote tweeting, or the TikTok Duet feature let people see the original content, but modified with new context. Social media sites also provide ways of embedding posts in other places, like in news articles There are also ways of replicating social media content that aren’t directly built into the social media platform, such as: copying images or text and reposting them yourself taking screenshots, and cross-posting to different sites

12.3.2. Variations / Mutations# When content is replicated on social media, it may be modified. The Social media system might have built-in ways to do this, like a quote tweet or reply adding some sort of comment to the original post, effectively making a new version of the post that can spread around. Fig. 12.5 Monica Lewinsky posted this quote tweet that answers a question with a side-eye emoji, which her audiences will understand as referring to her affair with then-US-president Bill Clinton.# Through quote tweeting, a modified version of the original tweet (now with Lewinsky’s emoji response) spread as people liked, retweeted, replied, and put it in Buzzfeed lists Additionally, content can be copied by being screenshotted, or photoshopped. Text and images can be copied and reposted with modifications (like a poem about plums). And content in one form can be used to make new content in completely new forms, like this “Internet Drama” song whose lyrics are from messages sent back and forth between two people in a Facebook Marketplace: 12.3.3. “Natural” Selection# It isn’t clear what should be considered as “nature” in a social media environment (human nature? the nature of the design of the social media platform? are bots unnatural?), so we’ll just instead talk about selection. When content (and modified copies of content) is in a position to be replicated, there are factors that determine whether it gets selected for replicated or not. As humans look at the content they see on social media they decide whether they want to replicate it for some reason, such as: “that’s funny, so I’ll retweet it” “that’s horrible, so I’ll respond with an angry face emoji” “reposting this will make me look smart” “I am inspired to use part of this to make a different thing” Groups and organizations make their own decisions on what social media content to replicate as well (e.g., a news organization might find a social media post newsworthy, so they write articles about it). Additionally, content may be replicated because of: Paid promotion and ads, where someone pays money to have their content replicated Astroturfing: where crowds, often of bots, are paid to replicate social media content (e.g., like, retweet) Finally, social media platforms use algorithms and design layouts which determine what posts people see. There are various rules and designs social media sites can use, and they can amplify natural selection and unnatural selection in various ways. They can do this through recommendation algorithms as we saw last chapter, as well as choosing what actions are allowed and what amount of friction is given to those actions, as well as what data is collected and displayed.

Similarly, recommendation algorithms are rules set in place that might produce biased, unfair, or unethical outcomes. This can happen whether or not the creators of the algorithm intended these outcomes. Once these algorithms are in place though, the have an influence on what happens on a social media site. Individuals still have responsibility with how they behave, but the system itself may be set up so that individual efforts cannot not be overcome the problems in the system.

Sometimes though, individuals are still blamed for systemic problems. For example, Elon Musk, who has the power to change Twitters recommendation algorithm, blames the users for the results:

A disability is an ability that a person doesn’t have, but that their society expects them to have.1 For example: If a building only has staircases to get up to the second floor (it was built assuming everyone could walk up stairs), then someone who cannot get up stairs has a disability in that situation. If a physical picture book was made with the assumption that people would be able to see the pictures, then someone who cannot see has a disability in that situation. If tall grocery store shelves were made with the assumption that people would be able to reach them, then people who are short, or who can’t lift their arms up, or who can’t stand up, all would have a disability in that situation. If an airplane seat was designed with little leg room, assuming people’s legs wouldn’t be too long, then someone who is very tall, or who has difficulty bending their legs would have a disability in that situation. Which abilities are expected of people, and therefore what things are considered disabilities, are socially defined. Different societies and groups of people make different assumptions about what people can do, and so what is considered a disability in one group, might just be “normal” in another. There are many things we might not be able to do that won’t be considered disabilities because our social groups don’t expect us to be able to do them. For example, none of us have wings that we can fly with, but that is not considered a disability, because our social groups didn’t assume we would be able to. Or, for a more practical example, let’s look at color vision: Most humans are trichromats, meaning they can see three base colors (red, green, and blue), along with all combinations of those three colors. Human societies often assume that people will be trichromats. So people who can’t see as many colors are considered to be color blind, a disability. But there are also a small number of people who are tetrachromats and can see four base colors2 and all combinations of those four colors. In comparison to tetrachromats, trichromats (the majority of people), lack the ability to see some colors. But our society doesn’t build things for tetrachromats, so their extra ability to see color doesn’t help them much. And trichromats’ relative reduction in seeing color doesn’t cause them difficulty, so being a trichromat isn’t considered to be a disability. Some disabilities are visible disabilities that other people can notice by observing the disabled person (e.g., wearing glasses is an indication of a visual disability, or a missing limb might be noticeable). Other disabilities are invisible disabilities that other people cannot notice by observing the disabled person (e.g., chronic fatigue syndrome, contact lenses for a visual disability, or a prosthetic for a missing limb covered by clothing). Sometimes people with invisible disabilities get unfairly accused of “faking” or “making up” their disability (e.g., someone who can walk short distances but needs to use a wheelchair when going long distances). Disabilities can be accepted as socially normal, like is sometimes the case for wearing glasses or contacts, or it can be stigmatized as socially unacceptable, inconvenient, or blamed on the disabled person. Some people (like many with chronic pain) would welcome a cure that got rid of their disability. Others (like many autistic people), are insulted by the suggestion that there is something wrong with them that needs to be “cured,” and think the only reason autism is considered a “disability” at all is because society doesn’t make reasonable accommodations for them the way it does for neurotypical people. Many of the disabilities we mentioned above were permanent disabilities, that is, disabilities that won’t go away. But disabilities can also be temporary disabilities, like a broken leg in a cast, which may eventually get better. Disabilities can also vary over time (e.g., “Today is a bad day for my back pain”). Disabilities can even be situational disabilities, like the loss of fine motor skills when wearing thick gloves in the cold, or trying to watch a video on your phone in class with the sound off, or trying to type on a computer while holding a baby. As you look through all these types of disabilities, you might discover ways you have experienced disability in your life. Though please keep in mind that different disabilities can be very different, and everyone’s experience with their own disability can vary. So having some experience with disability does not make someone an expert in any other experience of disability. As for our experience with disability, Kyle has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and Susan has been diagnosed with depression. Kyle and Susan also both have: near sightedness: our eyes cannot focus on things far away (unless we use corrective lenses, like glasses or contacts) ADHD: we have difficulty controlling our focus, sometimes being hyperfocused and sometimes being highly distracted and also have difficulties with executive dysfunction. 1 There are many ways to think about disability, such as legal (what legally counts as a disability?), medical (what is a problem to be cured?), identity (who views themselves as “disabled”), etc. We are focused here more on disability as it relates to design and who things in our world are designed for. 2 Trying to name the four base colors seen by tetrachromats is not straightforward since our color names are based on trichromat vision. It seems that for tetrachromats blue would be the same, but they would see three different base colors in the red/green range instead of two.

If a building only has staircases to get up to the second floor (it was built assuming everyone could walk up stairs), then someone who cannot get up stairs has a disability in that situation. If a physical picture book was made with the assumption that people would be able to see the pictures, then someone who cannot see has a disability in that situation. If tall grocery store shelves were made with the assumption that people would be able to reach them, then people who are short, or who can’t lift their arms up, or who can’t stand up, all would have a disability in that situation. If an airplane seat was designed with little leg room, assuming people’s legs wouldn’t be too long, then someone who is very tall, or who has difficulty bending their legs would have a disability in that situation. Which abilities are expected of people, and therefore what things are considered disabilities, are socially defined. Different societies and groups of people make different assumptions about what people can do, and so what is considered a disability in one group, might just be “normal” in another.

There are many reasons, both good and bad, that we might want to keep information private. There might be some things that we just feel like aren’t for public sharing (like how most people wear clothes in public, hiding portions of their bodies) We might want to discuss something privately, avoiding embarrassment that might happen if it were shared publicly We might want a conversation or action that happens in one context not to be shared in another (context collapse) We might want to avoid the consequences of something we’ve done (whether ethically good or bad), so we keep the action or our identity private We might have done or said something we want to be forgotten or make at least made less prominent We might want to prevent people from stealing our identities or accounts, so we keep information (like passwords) private We might want to avoid physical danger from a stalker, so we might keep our location private We might not want to be surveilled by a company or government that could use our actions or words against us (whether what we did was ethically good or bad) When we use social media platforms though, we at least partially give up some of our privacy. For example, a social media application might offer us a way of “Private Messaging” (also called Direct Messaging) with another user. But in most cases those “private” messages are stored in the computers at those companies, and the company might have computer programs that automatically search through the messages, and people with the right permissions might be able to view them directly. In some cases we might want a social media company to be able to see our “private” messages, such as if someone was sending us death threats. We might want to report that user to the social media company for a ban, or to law enforcement (though many people have found law enforcement to be not helpful), and we want to open access to those “private” messages to prove that they were sent.

Some governments and laws protect the privacy of individuals (using a Natural Rights ethical framing). These include the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which includes a “right to be forgotten”, and the United State’s Supreme Court has at times inferred a constitutional right to privacy.

ding 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. Social media sites then make their money by selling targeted advertising, meaning selling ads to specific groups of people with specific interests. So, for example, if you are selling spider stuffed animal toys, most people might not be interested, but if you could find the people who want those toys and only show your ads to them, your advertising campaign might be successful, and those users might be happy to find out about your stuffed animal toys. But targeting advertising can be used in less ethical ways, such as targeting gambling ads at children, or at users who are addicted to gambling, or the 2016 Trump campaign ‘target[ing] 3.5m black Americans to deter them from voting’

Are you surprised by any of the things that can be done with data mining? 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)? Do you think there is information that could be discovered through data mining that social media companies should seek out (e.g., they can’t make their platform treat people fairly without knowing this)?

Revisit the K-Pop protest trolling example in section 7.3. Take your list of ethical frameworks from Chapter 2 and work through them one by one, applying each tool to the K-Pop trolling. For each theory, think of how many different ways the theory could hook up with the example. For example, when using a virtue ethics type of tool, consider how many different people’s character and flourishing could be developed through this? When using a tool based on outcomes, like consequentialism, how many different elements of the outcome can you think of? The goal here is to come up with as many variations as you can, to see how the tools of ethical analysis can help us see into different aspects of the situation. Once you have made your big list of considerations, choose 2-3 items that, in your view, feel most important. Based on those 2-3 items, do you evaluate this trolling event as having been morally good? Why? What changes to this example would change your overall decision on whether the action is ethical?

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

6.6.3. Is authentic self-expression good?# We can next ask if authentic self-expression is a good thing or not. But that depends, what is the authentic thing about yourself that you would be expressing? Are you authentically expressing hate or cruelty? If so, perhaps authentic self-expression is morally bad. Are you part of an oppressed or marginalized group that has been restricted from self-expression? Then perhaps expressing yourself is morally good. (See Trans Twitter and the beauty of online anonymity)

How do you notice yourself changing how you express yourself in different situations, particularly on social media? Do you feel like those changes or expressions are authentic to who you are, do they compromise your authenticity in some way?

he user interface of a computer system (like a social media site), is the part that you view and interact with. It’s what you see on your screen and what you press or type or scroll over. Designers of social media sites have to decide how to layout information for users to navigate and decide how the user performs various actions (like, retweet, post, look up user, etc.). Some information and actions will be made larger and easier to access while others will be smaller or hidden in menus or settings. As we look at these interfaces, there are two key terms we want you to know: Affordances are what a user interface lets you do. In particular, it’s what a user interface makes feel natural to do. So for example, an interface might have something that looks like it should be pressed, or an interface might open by scrolling a little so it is clear that if you touch it you can make it scroll more (see a more nuanced explanation here) Friction is anything that gets in the way of a user performing an action. For example, if you have to open and navigate through several menus to find the privacy settings, that is significant friction. Or if one of the buttons has a bug and doesn’t work when you press it, so you have to find another way of performing that action, which is significant friction. Designers sometimes talk about trying to make their user interfaces frictionless, meaning the user can use the site without feeling anything slowing them down. Sometimes designers add friction to sites intentionally. For example, ads in mobile games make the “x” you need to press incredibly small and hard to press to make it harder to leave their ad:

In the 1980s and 1990s, Bulletin board system (BBS) provided more communal ways of communicating and sharing messages. In these systems, someone would start a “thread” by posting an initial message. Others could reply to the previous set of messages in the thread.

Because all data is a simplification of reality, those simplifications work well for some people and some situations but can cause problems for other people and other situations. Thus, when designers of social media systems make decisions about how data will be saved and what constraints will be put on the data, they are making decisions about who will get a better experience. Based on these decisions, some people will fit naturally into the data system, while others will have to put in extra work to make themselves fit, and others will have to modify themselves or misrepresent themselves to fit into the system.

Data points often give the appearance of being concrete and reliable, especially if they are numerical. So when Twitter initially came out with a claim that less than 5% of users are spam bots, it may have been accepted by most people who heard it. Elon Musk then questioned that figure and attempted to back out of buying Twitter, and Twitter is accusing Musk’s complaint of being an invented excuse to back out of the deal, and the case is now in court.

Google: “Most useful Instagram bots” Google: “Funniest Twitter bots” Read through the Reddit “botwatch” subreddit Read through a list of registered bots on Wikipedia

We also would like to point out that there are fake bots as well, that is real people pretending their work is the result of a Bot. For example, TikTok user Curt Skelton posted a video claiming that he was actually an AI-generated / deepfake character:

The photo above shows the ENIAC computer (built with US Army funds in 1945, this was the first electronic general-purpose computer), being programmed by three of the six women who were the original programmers on this computer: Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Meltzer, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman.

Being and becoming an exemplary person (e.g., benevolent; sincere; honoring and sacrificing to ancestors; respectful to parents, elders and authorities, taking care of children and the young; generous to family and others). These traits are often performed and achieved through ceremonies and rituals (including sacrificing to ancestors, music, and tea drinking), resulting in a harmonious society.