I find it interesting how social media impacts people mental state but also their ideologies that impact the world. The fact that tech companies are able to control so much of our lives such as how we think about certain issues such as gender equality and homosexuality is strange. There isn’t enough customization in order to truly form your own opinions but also notice other ideologies in order to truly form a complete viewpoint.

I think this class has helped me form my own judgement on how social media works. I’m glad that I can further understand how they control my emotions and mental state considering how much time I spend on the platforms. It is helpful in it’s communication and spreading information, but is easily manipulated in order to take over how someone thinks.

The idea that parents shouldn’t lie about anything is easy to take literally. There are obviously things that shouldn’t be told to children that might cause more harm than good. I personally think that with smaller things such as the example of pretending to take candy from their kids should be stopped. Unfortunately, the world is so complicated and huge that making kids think about it at such a young age would be unfair to them.

This change has definitely affected a wide audience. The stark jumps that companies make are seen all over the place, mainly with major criticism. An example I can think of is companies changing logos which the public usually hates so they are forced to live with the negativity or change it back such as the Cracker Barrel logo. I’ve noticed these subtle changes with the Youtube UI where they change the font or symbols for different buttons. I usually dislike it for about a day and am forced to live with it until they inevitably change it again.

The article explains how a child might see a harmless situation such as a parent lying about eating all of their Halloween candy as dire. The understanding to a toddler would show distrust towards a parental figure because of the effort they went through in order to retrieve the candy. Personally, I think it’s really weird how people laugh at kids for expressing emotions such as crying or anger. It might seem innocent for anyone who understands that Halloween candy isn’t that big of a deal but ultimately, this can affect a child’s developing mind to hide their efforts away from people. The worst part about this is the world-wide display of a child crying and the laughter from it. This would be it’s own thing that might affect a child but the fact that a child crying is being seen by millions of people across the globe is slightly dystopian.

The interesting difference is the level of how this might affect a person. Even though they are quite similar in their feeling, they are quite different in execution. While guilt is the feeling of certain actions that they regret, shame is an overarching feeling of self. While most shame is felt as a result of many guilty actions, it can truly impact how someone carries themselves. People can hide how they truly feel about things by masking themselves or just shutting the world out in fear of messing up.

I find this topic very interesting. On one hand, public images are important and a negative connotation could lead to a large amount of backlash and hate. The way social media works means a constant stream of polarized opinions on controversial topics. On the other hand, some people might say things just to say things. Without the knowledge of most situations, people think that they know everything, especially when they don’t. Most situations or circumstances are not cut and dry and even though people are open to free speech, most people are not informed enough to try to make someone else change their mind.

While the level of convenience of social media has made it easy to positively communicate with others, it also makes it easier to harass people. Because of anonymity on the internet, it makes it easy for someone to send hurtful comments or damaging posts and get away with it easier.

While it is a really sweet story of a stranger saving their life, it is a little personal to try to get the entire internet try to find someone who might not want to be seen in a public light. While I don’t know the exact context of how that person felt, I think it’s a bit too public and it could be upsetting for someone who might not be a fan of being seen by others.

This is a really interesting and saddening case. There are many people on the internet who want to play hero and use their online anonymity to try to find bad people in their own form of justice. Unfortunately, it is really difficult to make these judgement calls and the way the internet works makes people follow suit to things that are popular like harassing this person. While there are cases where people online have done much more work to find/catch criminals than real life officers, there are also cases where things go too far towards people who were not at all related to what they were originally looking at.

This game proves how difficult it is to correctly identify the context of each scenario. While it could be easy to see a broad baseline of keywords or language that an AI moderator could flag down, humans understand how the world works and it forces moderators to stay informed on what is going on in the world. This game pretty much makes the player blind unless they use the “look further” button which might not be feasible in the endless amount of media that is created every second of the day.

I think it’s interesting when people say that Wikipedia is an unreliable source because anyone can alter the page no matter your own knowledge of the subject. While it’s true that there is nothing that is stopping a random user from sharing fake information about someone or something, there is a solid amount of research seen by many editors that use many credible sources in order to find accurate information.

Comments are a very negative source to try to get genuine advice. If you are a creator trying to figure out what your audience wants, it’s very difficult to get a genuine response by anonymous group because they can say one thing and mean another. People could also just say false things just for no other reason but to gatekeep information for a specific group. Without the sense of accountability like in the real world, comments shouldn’t be the factor of your emotions, positive or negative.

While I think it’s okay how social media platforms let users control the users own moderation in order to let them feel safe, there should be greater levels of moderation from the platforms themselves. A lot of public situations showcase the mismanagement of companies who rely on their PR team to fix mistakes from safety issues for all types of users, especially children.

This is a really insightful approach to how social media has gotten a stranglehold of our culture. Most communication is through social media sites such as Instagram. And on those platforms, you might feel the need to share about the most important things going on in your life almost like performing for an audience. The fact that we are so ingrained to social media makes getting rid of it outright pretty much impossible.

I think the fact that a social media has an outright control on what we see is more positive or negative is slightly unnerving. As seen in the article, so much of a person’s mood is dictated by what they see online. Two chapters ago, we went over how much responsibility falls on human moderation over the computer generated algorithm and I think that this experiment reveals the flaws in the system.

The reason that these types of videos are able to go viral is due to the experimental nature. Because no one is going to personally make something like that, they go online to see others do it for them. It’s interesting to see how people can find a niche like this and create a fan base and online persona.

The ease at which things are able to duplicate and spread across the internet is what creates trends online. Being able to show your friends a funny video allows for more eyes to be on a video which leads to the algorithm picking it up and getting more people to see it.

This is a relatively well-known idea online when people engage with a post, it does better. This causes some people to post about controversial topics to farm engagement and make people comment their disapproval which ultimately spreads the content further.

I feel like algorithms are very on and off when it comes to recommendations. One day, it can help me find a channel that I really enjoy and the other it could feel like there’s nothing that interests me. I think more times than not, it knows relatively what I want to watch but I think its addictive nature is harmful. The amount of time that I spend on Youtube lets the platform learn more about what I want to watch when in order to recommend things to me.

I think it’s interesting how the video points out that ADHD is found from kids before they are 12. I would think if symptoms start coming in later closer to puberty, it wouldn’t be different. I would even think it’s possible for younger kids to have mask traits such as procrastination due to the help of their parents so it might spark more obvious signs when they reach adulthood when there are less people helping them succeed.

I think it’s strange that disabled people aren’t able to design for themselves considering they have first hand experience with most of the issues. One of the first parts of designing is to empathize with a certain demographic so most disabled people would be able to understand the problems. I don’t get how you would need higher qualifications for someone designing a ramp as a disabled person rather than a non-disabled designer.

This is an interesting case of wanting to keep privacy. It depends on how dire the situation goes in order for a site to have to step in. Imagine if two people were planning a crime using the direct messaging system, would it be ethical for the site to step in? Discussing sensitive content should be private but it depends if the conversation can cause direct harm to others. But this brings up another issue in bullying and harassment which is frankly commonplace in sites like these.

This is a really interesting debate. When it comes to parents sharing photos of their kids, it could be seen as sensitive information. It’s a question on if social media can be seen as a trusted way to communicate with friends and family rather than people who might want to use your information for themselves. I’ve seen certain internet personalities share photos of their children which seems strange since with their large followings, it will attract unwanted attention to the kid who doesn’t even know they are being posted to the internet.

I think that overall it’s not great that they know so much about me considering they sell it for profits, but it also personalizes my experience on their platforms. It makes sense that I am not getting recommended videos in other languages or for certain interests that I don’t pay attention to. Overall, it is scary of how much information and control sites like Google have on everyone but it’s not that big of a deal at this point since it is meant for recommendations and interaction more than anything.

The article shows how it is much harder than it seems to correctly access data over a large scale. It is almost impossible to assume that two pieces of data correlate with each other. There have been examples that I was given when I was learning about this concept in Stats class where the consumption of margarine almost identically followed the rate of divorce in Maine. Clearly there is no true correlation between the two but it is a good reminder that it is really difficult to find true evidence of data correlation.

This shows that there is a way that “trolling” can be harmless and seen a very light-hearted laugh for people to enjoy. There is no harm in how the people respond and overall, there is no true negativity which is how we should use the internet.

This is the sentiment that I’ve seen both growing up and circulating online. One of the most common ways that celebrities successfully deal with hate on the internet is by not responding and allowing for people to tire themselves out. If they constantly try to defend themselves, they only shed more light onto the situation.

Brand twitter is a quite ridiculous part of marketing where a lot of accounts that are meant to advertise a certain company/product try to interact with others on the platform. There are many examples of this on the internet where certain brands would either poke fun of one another or post a strangely specific/realistic scenario that the brand itself could not experience. It was popularized around 2018 since it is a way to make the brand seem more human but it has made some people upset. Some believe that it is a cheap cash grab and seems like brands are trying too hard to be relatable while others think it’s just a fun way thing to come across online.

I feel like the way that you change yourself based on the people that you are with. Personally, I am very different between my family, friends, peers, teachers, etc. I don’t believe that I am pretending to be someone else in most of the scenarios, it’s just that I am different in those environments. In a way, they might compromise my authenticity but overall, it is just the way I perceive myself in those situations since I still have underlying traits that make me who I am.

It’s interesting seeing how the different social media sites can create connections between multiple people. I feel like it’s one of the most important aspects of social media which makes it interesting seeing how different some sites are. Some don’t have formal connections, some offer one way connections such as subscriptions or followers, and others have long forums with a certain topic that allows many to speak about such topic.

The man who created endless online scrolling understands the addictive nature of social media and how he affected it with his creation. Social media has been heavily present in the last few decades but it has recently been ramped up due to such tactics. Infinite scroll makes it super easy to want to look at the next thing on your page since it is such an easy action. Eventually, you keep scrolling, trying to search for a dopamine rush but you just waste minutes, if not hours, of your time.

This is an interesting dilemma that I’ve noticed on example such as standardized testing or websites. The most noticeable solution is to place the first letters of your name and let the other identifying features such as your social security number or address let people know your full name. Though, it still is unfair that people have to deal with this since it could make people feel like their ancestors is weighing them down.

These examples of unclear examples are hard to understand and therefore answer. My parents immigrated from China to the US when they were extremely young which makes this question hard to decipher. A better way to ask this is where is your current residence which might still be confusing if you were on vacation but it should make enough sense for people to answer correctly.

I believe the goal for tech workers is to develop technology safely. It seems like there is a slippery slope that we are inching closer than ever towards. At this point where we have, as Kumail Nanjiani mentions, altering videos that could affect the reputation of public figures. The goal of tech workers should be to create the technology at a rate that is beneficial towards society while preventing any type of danger faced. An example of this could be harvesting materials such as wood, the goal should be to replenish the trees that are being garnered by lumber companies and machines.

In the article, it describes a Chinese worker constantly operating around 100 iPhones in order to inflate the amount of reviews and downloads for certain apps. It is a dystopian photo seeing how the woman is seen wearing a thick-layered yellow jacket and concealing her unused hand in a blanket sat on her lap. It shows how poor the working conditions are and how cold it must be inside the room she is in. According to the article, she is supposedly uninstalling and re-installing apps on each of the phones in order to increase the amount of downloads for certain apps. These increased downloads and artificially high ratings can give the app developers around $65,000 per week which is why this business is taking place.

I think most people’s expectations with bots are meant to be very face value and specific. There are usually particular usages for most bots on the platforms such as sending spam messages in the comment section or tweeting an advertisement to a crypto-platform. But this leads to people ignoring the bots almost like they aren’t even present. In my personal experience, I’ve seen the bots that copy and paste another person’s compliment to the video and creator and I disregard the text. On the other hand, I try to listen to other humans that are on the platforms. Sometimes you can see similarities in people’s comments but most people online have unique backgrounds and perspectives that can make listening to them more interesting. The main point that people’s expectations for bots and “normal” users are different is through the unpredictability of humans compared to bots.

The idea that something is right or wrong because God(s) claimed it to be does not see how the world has evolved over time. For example, the Bible, which is what many point to when referring to the Divine Command Theory, was believed to be written thousands of years ago. There are some moral truths stated but overall the amount that things have changed over multiple centuries is paramount. Similarly, the interpretations can be taken in many different directions because of how much of religious text is up for interpretation. It is unfair to strictly focus on the words written in religious text due to their age and lack of clarity in specific examples.