We hope that if you find yourself in one of these positions, you consider the ethics of what you are doing. We hope you could then bring those concerns into how you design and implement automated systems for social media sites.
As someone aspiring to work in the tech industry, my goal and driving motivation is to help people and so I hope that I can influence where I work to be ethical and moral in their practices.
But even people who thought they were doing something good regretted the consequences of their creations, such as Eli Whitney who hoped his invention of the cotton gin would reduce slavery in the United States, but only made it worse, or Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite (which could be used in construction or in war) and decided to create the Nobel prizes, or Albert Einstein regretting his role in convincing the US government to invent nuclear weapons, or Aza Raskin regretting his invention infinite scroll.
I think that this is a problem that lies not with the inventor, but with the users. Obviously you could argue that not inventing bad things would prevent bad things from happening, but I personally believe that society and users are what take an invention and make it "bad"
Try to purchase the company, or copy their features
This has been a very very common thing that we've been seeing where every social media site is copying another. For example, Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlights, these are all short Vine-like videos that replicate the instantaneous dopamine that you get from scrolling through Tiktok, but the algorithms are not nearly as good as Tiktok's. Snapchat came out with story posts, then Instagram and Facebook had story posts. Every app is competing for user's loyalty, but so far, we haven't seen a copycat outdo the original.
As an example, there is one Seattle City Sewer system, which is run by the Seattle government. Having many competing sewer systems could actually make a big mess of the underground pipe system.
I think that this is a successful system and I could see potential success with furthering government services, if they continue to be for the good of the people.
The consequences for being “canceled” can range from simply the experience of being criticized, to loss of job or criminal charges.
These days, being "canceled" can lead to doxxing and being dropped from sponsors or management (in terms of athletes or influencers). I've seen tiktok find the address, employer, and phone number of people who do "bad" things.
hame 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.
This is interesting because I never really understood the difference and how shame is more of a broad term that encompasses more.
“The majority of the hate and misinformation about [Meghan Markle and Prince Henry] originated from a small group of accounts whose primary, if not sole, purpose appears to be to tweet negatively about them. […] 83 accounts are responsible for 70% of the negative hate content targeting the couple on Twitter.” Twitter Data Has Revealed A Coordinated Campaign Of Hate Against Meghan Markle
This is really interesting because there is so much hate on the couple that it's hard to believe that so little accounts are responsible for all of it.
Cross-platform raids (e.g., 4chan group planning harassment on another platform)
I see this happen on lot where a tik toker is then exposed on their other accounts and cancelled.
Fold-It is a game that lets players attempt to fold proteins. At the time, researchers were having trouble getting computers to do this task for complex proteins, so they made a game for humans to try it. Researchers analyzed the best players’ results for their research and were able to publish scientific discoveries based on the contributions of players.
Making it into a game is really smart. I think that this is a really good way to get a lot of people to volunteer their time.
The people making the contributions generally come from a crowd of people that aren’t necessarily tied to the task (e.g., all internet users can edit Wikipedia), but then people from the crowd either get chosen to participate, or volunteer themselves.
It's interesting that it's possible to get people to work for free, especially when paying a single professional to do the work it would be much more expensive.
“The porn ban of 2018 was a defining event for Tumblr that led to a 30 percent drop in traffic and a mass exodus of users that blindsided the company.”
This makes me wonder why Twitter is still able to have such explicit and inappropriate content. For example, Twitter is the immediate place to go when celebrity nudes leak.
With copyrighted content, the platform YouTube is very aggressive in allowing movie studios to get videos taken down, so many content creators on YouTube have had their videos taken down erroneously.
I remember watching a lot of youtube videos when I was younger and the youtubers would be very cautious about copyright and would always use copyright free music or have very explicit disclaimers.
Some researchers have found that people using social media may enter a dissociation state, where they lose track of time (like what happens when someone is reading a good book).
I definitely enter this state. I have a bad habit of scrolling while eating and in that process, mindlessly eat while mindlessly scrolling. I've also seen people who are so distracted by their phones, they almost cross the street while cars are going by. Our phones are absolutely captivating and it's becoming dangerous.
Fig. 11.2 A tweet from current Twitter owner Elon Musk blaming users for how the recommendation algorithm interprets their behavior.
This is interesting to me because I do understand that interacting with posts keys the algorithm that you like it, but also blaming the users for this seems a bit immature. I think with how far AI has come, there has to be a way to analyze interactions to see if the user is actually interested in the content or complaining about seeing it.
Time since posting (e.g., show newer posts, or remind me of posts that were made 5 years ago today)
This reminds me of how the instagram feed has changed over the years. They have a new algorithm that shows you what they think you want to see from the last 2 or 3 days, then when you scroll through that, you have the ability to see more. The posts are no longer in chronological order and I know that most (if not all) people preferred when it was in chronological order.
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).
These invisible disabilities often result in people assuming and judging others without knowing the full story. For example, a person with an invisible disability may have a service dog or park in a handicap spot and get yelled at because others cannot see their disability, and therefore believe it doesn't exist.
But our society doesn’t build things for tetrachromats, so their extra ability to see color doesn’t help them much.
This is really interesting because in this case, the majority of the popular is actually lacking an ability, so society caters to the majority that is technically "disabled". If society was able to do this for the minorities, we would be much better off.
Facebook stored millions of Instagram passwords in plain text,
Learning this makes me really apprehensive about giving platforms my information because I feel like I genuinely have no idea how they're using that information.
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.
I think that this is an interesting concept, because there have been many cases of "leaked" messages that result in celebrities or influencers getting cancelled. People seem to say and do things because they think that their privacy is enough to keep them safe and out of consequences.
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.
Additionally, Tiktok, which has become famous for capturing hours and hours of attention, uses the data to curate a feed specifically for the user. This results in timeless scrolling because the content you're seeing is exactly what you want to see.
One particularly striking example of an attempt to infer information from seemingly unconnected data was someone noticing that the number of people sick with COVID-19 correlated with how many people were leaving bad reviews of Yankee Candles saying “they don’t have any scent” (note: COVID-19 can cause a loss of the ability to smell):
This example shows how easy it is to find a relationship between two completely unrelated variables. Commonly, this happens a lot when people are reaching to say something is bad, by forcing a relationship with an unrelated negative thing.
Hazing:
I never realized that hazing could be considered trolling. Hazing is really interesting to think about, especially in college settings where many people have gotten hurt due to hazing in greek life
lulz.
This is funny. I think the authors meant LOLs?
A knock-off designer item does not offer the purchaser the same sort of connection to the designer brand that an authentic item does
Reps and knock-offs these days are becoming increasingly popular as designer brands are making their items inaccessible. Take Hermes, for example, only through a rigorous purchasing schedule and roster can you maybe be offered a Kelly or Birkin bag and it will likely not be the one you're looking for. Or, Nike shoes are another example. Nike shoes like Dunks and Jordans drop online and thousands and thousands of bots are coded to join the queue and buy the shoes for their reasonable retail price. Then, these shoes are sold for a crazy resell price and people without bots often find themselves paying 200-300% more than the retail price. This is all insane to me and it makes me understand why people would gravitate towards reps and knock-offs, especially because the quality of them has gotten quite good in recent years.
People get angry when they find they have been duped. These reactions are even more heightened when we find we have been duped simply for someone else’s amusement at having done so.
I wonder why being duped is such a frustrating thing. To be quite honest, who really cares if that youtube girl was lying or not? Her content was interesting. I guess the idea is that, if it's a dupe, people want to know beforehand (ie knowing a movie is a fictional story before watching it) instead of believing that the content is "real" and being shocked later.
Facebook was launched in 2004 and soon put most of its competitors out of business, while YouTube, launched in 2005 became a different sort of social networking site built around video.
It's interesting to think about how Facebook and Youtube were two very different platforms with different measures of success. Both are still very relevant and popular today and it's interesting that two different services have come so far.
In 1997, the internet service provider AOL introduced a chat system called AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) that anyone could join and maintain a list of friends. You could then see what friends were currently available, and start sending them messages.
I think that AOL is really interesting because my most used application is probably Snapchat which is, by virtue, very similar to AOL in which it's used mostly for messaging and communicating with friends. I think that while other platforms have come out to be more about posting about yourself and seeing others post, AOL is a messaging service that allows you to connect directly with others.
So, for example, when Twitter tells me that the tweet was posted on Feb 10, 2020, does it mean Feb 10 for me?
I think it's also confusing when different countries use different formats. How does twitter know which format to use and how to convert for each user?
Fig. 4.3 The “data” of a tweet consists of the tweet text and the photos. The “metadata” of a tweet is all the rest of the information about that tweet, such as who tweeted it, and when, and how people responded.
I'm curious as to what category the # of comments, likes and retweets would fall under.
Bots might have significant limits on how helpful they are, such as tech support bots you might have had frustrating experiences with on various websites.
I ALWAYS have trouble with those tech support bots that give you a menu with options but none of them apply to what you're actually looking for. I understand that for some people, these bots are faster in responding than a real person who can respond organically but I've found them to be extremely unhelpful as well as really frustrating. I am curious to learn if using AI for these tech support bots makes them something different than a bot (classification wise?)
Social Media managing programs that help people schedule and coordinate post
I never realized that these programs could be considered bots. I wonder if this applies to the actual in-app features of social media applications (such as Instagram) that have the affordance of scheduling a post or if the programs mentioned here are referring to external programs that you might link to a social media account.
That is, What is moral is to do what makes the most people the most happy.
I disagree with this framework and idea because I believe that there is an argument to be made about actions that might not really make people "happy" as in bringing joy, but are the (objectively?) "right" thing to do (ie taking out the trash, chores, recycling, supporting sustainable and more expensive brands over fast-fashion)
This means that media, which includes painting, movies, books, speech, songs, dance, etc., all communicates in some way, and thus are social.
I found this really interesting because I had never considered the true meaning and various interpretations of the term "social media"