This article was very disturbing to me, but honestly not surprising. Steve Krenzel is a former twitter engineer and in this article it explains how he came out and said that he quit after an absurd request to violate users' data. A company wanted to know all sorts of information about users of twitter so that they could use it against competitors. Steve was trying to do this request in a way that still protected users' privacy, but the company kept getting angry and saying that they needed more. They even said they get much more information from other tech companies. Steve says the he is worried the Elon Musk will grossly mishandle users' data and I would agree. I think that all social media companies handle users' data poorly but him specifically will be a terrible person to have that power.

I would say my views on social media are the same as when I came into this class, but they have been reinforced even more. My view on social media is a negative view. I think it is interesting and kind of cool that people across the entire world can share ideas and connect on the internet and social media. Human beings across the world have never been this connected, 100 years ago, even less actually, you would not have been able to communicate with someone in Europe from the United States so easily. We can do it within seconds nowadays and social media is one of the things that can create a collection of ideas from all different countries. That is what I enjoy about social media. But I believe it is made to be addictive and a lot of the time that people spend on social media these days is not productive or helpful. It can suck away the time in a day and make people lazy. It gives instant gratification and the companies behind social medias are not looking for the users best interest. All they want are to maximize the amount of time users' eyes are looking at their app. This view has not changed since reading this textbook and it had been even more reinforced.

I found this definition by Merriam Webster and the first section of this chapter very interesting because they were explaining what capitalism is and the definition of capitalism. I always hear about capitalism but I have never taken the time to really research the meaning, I knew the main idea of it but I found it helpful to get very clarify and clear meaning of capitalism. It is an interesting concept that people can get screwed in and people can do extremely well in.

I think this is the best option for users to be able to make a difference on meta's sites. Facebook and Instagram both rely on users, they would be nothing without the users using the sites and creating everything about the cites. Without users there is no content or social media site at all. If users can all vote to leave a site and do it in an organized way, that could actually hurt meta and make a difference. This would be really hard to coordinate though.

Cancel culture had become a big part of life especially in adolescence in my opinion. I first got a phone during covid so I had never been exposed to social media before that. During covid social media was kind of all we had as teenagers and so I spent a ton of time creating posts and consuming posts. I saw a lot of creators get canceled and shamed for things that they had done. Some had really done bad things and did not deserve to be famous on the platform, some were pretty minor and go blown out of proportion for the sake of entertainment on social media. This always led me to be afraid of being canceled even though I wasn't even famous, but I still would feel like my every step on social media could be criticized. I don't think that overall cancel culture is a bad thing, but it sure has led to a cancel culture in real life as well. In high school if a rumor spread about someone then that was who they were. They were cancelled. Then years later it would turn out that they didn't actually do the bad thing. It's just created a culture that no one wants to look bad or support anything bad, which is a good thing I guess because people want to be good. But it is also not facilitating very much investigation into these accusations and leading to people being cut off from society more easily and often.

This whole article really got my attention and had me captivated all the way to the last paragraph. I felt like the story was unfinished and she has not gotten any justice yet. This is a very disturbing story, the fact that this man was harassing her by contacting employers and friends of hers and making things up to make her look bad is concerning in itself. What is even more concerning to me is that when she went to law enforcement they didn't do anything and said he didn't commit a crime. I don't understand n how pretending to be her email and messaging people fake stuff could possibly not be a crime. He is fully impacting her ability to make money and stealing her identity. I hope that police do not continue with this way of handling cyberstalking cases.

Yes I believe that crowd harassment can be justified in certain situations. Here it defines that crowd harassment can be riots, mob violence, revolts, revolution. Not all of these will be justified all the time, but there are scenarios that require riots, that require revolution. If a group of people are being mistreated, protests and harassment can become necessary to get justice and stop the mistreatment. A revolution may be necessary to fix an issue, one may be necessary soon in our country. This is why I think that somer crowd harassment can be justified and is not always a negative thing. I notice in the comment above me it says it can never be justified because no violence can be justified. Crowd harassment does not have to include violence, not all riots and revolutions result in violence, harassment is not a term that only covers violence. A crowd can harass with their words too.

I think this is the best example of crowdsourcing. Everyone has access and when people need help this platform gives them a space to ask for it. The number pone thing I think it is helpful for is paying medical bills. Medical bills can be insane in the united states and people often do not deserve to be put in the spots they are put in to have to deal with an injury and pay these bills. I do wonder about any fraud that occurs on gofundme. Are there any cases pop people faking an issue that they need money for and just take peoples money for nothing.

I have always been interested in wikipedia since I was younger. I never really understood how they can filter and edit the edits that are made by people to wikipedia sites. It seems like it would be impossible to filter it but they must do it somehow. When I was younger I would try to edit wikipedia sites to say funny things but I don't think that these edits were ever really on the site because when I would go on my dad's phone and look up the site I wouldn't see my edits. I would love to know how wikipedia deals with filtering good and bad edits by the public.

This brought an interesting thought up and stood out to me as I was reading this. Thinking about the unpaid moderators, I talked about in my other comment how I thought it could be seen as a good thing and a bad thing. Being unpaid may attract passionate people that will do a good job moderating, or it could lead to a bad job because they don't care as much. And I could see how it could be perceived both of those ways. But this source mentioned that it is good for smaller subreddits but when it comes to the larger huge subreddits that are very general, unpaid moderators will have no stake in the content, they can't be passionate about the broader subreddits and so this could lead to bad moderation.

I think it is interesting that they are unpaid because it makes me wonder if the reddit moderators are going to do a good job at moderating if they aren't being paid to do it. I think this could go either way, when reddit doesn't pay moderators in subreddits that could make them unmotivated to do a good job at moderating and could lead to reddit needing to oversee them and kind of ruin the whole point. Or it could be a good thing and by not paying these moderators, reddit only attracts people who are passionate about these subreddits. Since they are passionate enough about it to moderate for free, they will do a good job.

This article caught my eye because I find myself when I'm scrolling on a social media site, I find myself checking the comments on almost every video I watch. I just do it instinctively and I don't think it is a good habit because it lets the comments form my opinion on the video for me. But that's not really what this article was talking about. It was talking about the abuse that takes place in comments and for content creators to not look at the comments because there will always be something negative being said. It goes on to talk about how we need to design these sites to not create negative spaces like a lot of comment sections have created online.

I always relate back to this because this is all I can ever think about when reading stuff or thinking about social media sites and that is the site trying to get its users hooked. Just like this bit of text says here that they don't want the users leaving the social media site because of bad quality content. The flip side of that is that they really want the user to stay on the social media site for as long as possible. With better quality and targeted content they can make a user stay on a social media site for longer than they intended to and make the social media more money.

This wikipedia entry explains that a digital detox is a detox from devices such as smartphones, computers, iPads. I think that this would be really good for people, or even just a social media detox. The entry also explained that it is for a certain period of time. So it could just be one day, see how many times you reach for it. I've tried this and it feels terrible but it's why I try a social media detox.

Doomscrolling. I think that doomscrolling may be the worst part of social media, or what I would call the infinite scroll quality that all social media apps have. That is what leads to doomscrolling, plus since they know so much about you they target every scroll to make you want to scroll again. As you can tell I'm not a fan of it and I think it is a big part of what contributes to social media addiction, and it's starting at earlier and earlier ages.

This article caught my eye because I can remember listening to a podcast when I was younger about a pyramid scheme that someone didn't realize they were apart of. They just thought they were joining a good business to make some money in and then it all fell apart and they got in trouble for it. A pyramid scheme is a business model that asks its employees to pay a certain amount of money when they join and then are told that for every person they can recruit they will get a cut of their payment. This goes on to just make a ton of money for the higher ups in the pyramid and screws everyone else up and is nota legitimate business.

I had an interesting experience during covid when we were all locked indoors of going viral on tik tok and I will never forget it. I was always a bit obsessed with going viral during covid as any middle schooler in the time was. It was right when the video game among us was going viral itself and I decided to try and benefit off of that. I played the game a lot and really enjoyed playing, I decided to create a fresh tik tok account that would post funny among us content. Videos would be 60 seconds and of my game play along with funny sound effects over the gameplay and my videos went pretty viral. I worked up to 170 thousand followers and a total of around 5 million likes and even more views. It was a very fun but also stressful experience because once I reached that viral status, I was constantly worried about keeping it and not going down in views.

This article shocked me. It talks about Target and says that they keep a profile on customers to keep track of what they buy and notice trends in what they buy. They do this tracking so that they can do targeted advertising and send coupons to people for things they think the person may be interested in buying in the future. Specifically this article talks about how Target can figure out when someone is pregnant and they send coupons of baby stuff to the persons house. They did this with a high school girl and her dad got upset about it because he thought it was insensitive to send baby stuff to a high schooler. It turned out the girl was pregnant and her father did not know yet. It is crazy to think that Target was able to figure out that she was pregnant before her dad and that was the reason he found out. I think it is really weird though that they keep track of people's purchases in this way, there is no privacy anymore.

This recommendation algorithm may seem like something helpful but I think it is part of and facilitates the evil side of social media in my opinion. The evil side of social media that I how found is the addictive side and the way that social media companies go about creating their apps is to make them addictive. The more time users spend on their app the more they can sell ads for and so they want to keep people's attention as long as possible. This recommendation algorithm aids in this by recommending posts to users that it thinks will keep them on the app and get their attention the most.

This article is about a woman who can see more colors in things that most people don't see. I think this is the coolest thing, I would love to see as many colors as possible. Now I want to take the test that they mentioned in the article to see if I have any special color seeing ability. I always think about if everyone sees colors the same way, I'm really interested in learning if the same scene that I'm looking at with my friend is being viewed in the same way as me.

While reading this week's chapter this section and this line specifically stood out to me. Companies may not fully understand someone's disability when designing a system to help them. I think it should be the standard that someone who is part of that disabled group to be a part of the design and thought process of a system. It should be required to at least get their opinion on it before the update is released and even better if they can actively take part in the designing process.

This article just reinforces my worries about social media companies and my privacy. The article explains that Facebook accidentally stored millions of passwords for people in plain text that thousands of employees could access. Usually passwords are supposed to be stored in an encrypted way so people can't see what they are. If Facebook was dumb enough to let something like this slip through, I don't trust that they are taking care of all the information that they have collected on me.

I have a lot of fears around privacy on social media. I worry that social media companies are constantly listening and tracking what I say and do. I worry that they have a profile on me with everything about me. And I believe they are doing these things because I will be talking about something with my friends or parents, and then I will get an ad for it on instagram. I didn't plug anything into instagram to make them know that I was thinking about it yet they will somehow know. This is the kind of thing I don't like about social media.

Reading this article had me very surprised. But also kind of not. It was about how Facebook tracks and stores data on people that aren't even users on the Facebook platform. I had no idea about Facebook tracking people even if they didn't have a Facebook account. But I totally believe it and it makes sense to me. These social media companies cross so many boundaries just to try and get a little more money. It disturbs me hearing that Facebook can track people that aren't Facebook users and I can't believe this is normalized.

This is something I did a school project on in high school and has always really interested me ever since I did that project. I really don't trust and I dislike all social medias now because I know that they are constantly working to make me addicted. And I can feel that it works, try deleting all social media for a day and count how many times you go on your phone and try to click the spot that the app usually is. And then the feeling afterwards when you remember that you deleted it, it really is an addiction. Social media companies know us better than we know ourselves and I am always trying to work to not let that be the case.

I found this article very interesting. I wouldn't have thought that someone would dedicate their study to trolls, but I guess there is an expert on everything out there somewhere. I would like to hear more about the in person interactions with trolls because it said that she met and conversed with 30. I want to know how these conversations go, does she pretend that she is also really into trolling and then at the end tell them that she is investigating them and almost troll them herself. I would watch a show that was along the lines of that.

I think the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them. I know it says in the text that ignoring doesn't work because they just come back stronger and more hostile. Even if they do continue I think it is still the best option because it doesn't satisfy them, when they get no reaction at all to their trolling they are left unsatisfied. From here you can block them, report them, or restrict them in some way so that you don't have to keep hearing from them.

This wikipedia entry caught my eye because I have a personal interest in scrolling, specifically scrolling on social media. This wikipedia page starts by explaining what scrolling is. I think everyone in this day and age knows what scrolling is, but it was interesting to read about it in the most basic, kindergarten level way of thinking. That scrolling is sliding text, images, or video across a screen vertically or horizontally. It gives the example of movie credits, which is interesting to me because all I think about when I hear the word scrolling is physically scrolling on social media. There was also section dedicated to infinite scrolling which is what I really wanted to read about. I learned that Aza Raskin is the person who created this feature in 2006. And that he regrets creating it because he thinks it contributes to smartphone and social media addictions. I agree with him on that.

The use case I thought of was learning a new skill. And I thought YouTube would be the best social media platform to do this on. It would be relatively easy to do on almost every social media though too. The user would have to have created an account, provided age, email, and make a password. Then they would need to navigate to the search bar and look up a how to on the skill they want to learn. I think that success would look like finding a video that explains the skill in a way that the user can understand and implement. If I wanted to do this I would use YouTube because there are the most in depth videos on YouTube, but I could probably find something on instagram or tik tok that has a short video explaining the skill as well.

This source talks about bots on X, formerly known as twitter. Specifically it talks about bots activity during the Super Bowl in 2024. Elon Musk claimed that there had been billions of views and activity during Super Bowl Sunday, but it was uncovered that more than 70% of this and been bots. What interests me the most is advertising revenue, the more views a social media site like X gets, the more they can charge advertisers. So what happens if those views are by bots and they would never actually buy the thing being advertised. It takes away the platforms credibility completely and it makes me wonder what kind of consequences there are for it.

I think that age would be relatively simple to store. I would constrain it to whole numbers from 1 to 110. I think its fair to put the cutoff at 110, there no-one that is going to be signing up for a social media that is older than 110. Applying this constraint to the response makes it so that there are no false submissions. For something like address the user would be given an open string to type what they want. There could also be the option of typing street address but giving a set of options for country, city, and zip code.

I can think of a couple reasons that user may want to be able to make bots. One reason is that bots could boost their engagement. If a person wants more views, wants more likes, wants to feel famous or portray themself as so. This person will be inclined to use bots, there are websites that sell fake followers or the person could try and make them on their own. Not all bots have to be cynical though, another reason for wanting bots is advertising or sponsorships. If someone gets paid to promote a brand and they are getting paid to post a certain number of posts over a certain amount of time. A bot could help them out greatly in pre planning these posts and posting it for them. A tweet would be the easiest, but they could prerecord videos to be posted by a bot as well. A third reason for wanting bots is another more cynical one. And that is to push their own agenda, whether it involves politics or not. You could make it appear that a lot of people agree with a certain view when in reality it is just bots.

This was the first source that I clicked on and it was not what I was expecting. I was expecting an article or something of that sort, but this was a website trying to sell me something. It is a site that is advertising that you can buy social media followers and likes there. It has the option for Tik Tok, Instagram, and all the rest. This really shocked me because I didn't think that someone could legally advertise that they make bots. They even say in the description for the site that the bots they make have profile pictures and photos posted so "there is no risk that someone would figure out that you’re using our service." I don't understand how they do this and I think this is a very strange website.

I think that people that make such advanced tech just do not think about the consequences it can have because all they are trying to do is push the limits of technology. in the cases of social media companies like Twitter or Facebook I think money is a big factor. They don't really care about fake news or abuse that happens on their sites because it just makes for more engagement. They want to maximize the amount of time that every single person spends on the site.

Another ethical framework that I learned about was the common good approach. The common good approach is just what it sounds like in the title, it prioritizes the common good of a community. With the common good approach people are expected to contribute to the community in some way to benefit the whole. The well-being of the community is what's most important. The common good approach was not created by one individual person. It is a product of centuries of development and contributions from multiple people. Plato and Aristotle contributed way back in the 4th century BC, with more recent contributions from Jean-Jacques Rosseau and John Rawls in the late 20th century.