This feels like an ancient parallel to modern concerns about how social media might weaken our ability to think critically and remember deeply. I wonder if some of the same philosophical concerns apply to our current struggles with social media overload, and whether Plato’s warnings can still teach us something today.

How do social media platforms balance helping users share authentically while also managing the risks of context collapse? It feels like this tension is at the heart of how we interact online—and a big reason why sometimes it’s easier just to post nothing at all.

One detail that stood out to me in the Stanford entry was their discussion of how colonial ideologies shape contemporary global inequalities, particularly in terms of economic dependency and political instability.

This makes me wonder: to what extent can former colonies truly recover from the long-term impacts of colonial rule, and what role should wealthier nations play in addressing that legacy?

The contrast gets me to wonder about the value in reading beyond dictionary derivations to truly get the range of issues and consequences in economic systems. I’d be curious to know whether the chapter authors brought another, different definition, such as Marxist or socialist critiques, to the discussion to present a more balanced picture.

I wonder if the authors of the chapter considered how capitalism can sometimes erode its own competitive basis, and whether regulatory frameworks can help balance these outcomes.

What I found particularly compelling was the idea that shame can be “stored” in the body, and unless it’s addressed through safe relational repair or therapeutic processing, it can remain stuck and continue to influence behavior in harmful ways. This resonates with some of the course themes about the role of community in healing. It makes me think we need more conversations not just about individual recovery, but about how groups and institutions can either perpetuate shame or help alleviate it.

It makes me wonder: can a society lean too hard on one or the other? What would it look like if we could balance both—acknowledging wrongdoing without branding people as bad forever?

One important point from the book is that initially, doxing wasn’t framed in political terms—it was about dominance in the online world—but its motivations and impact have changed, particularly as it has been weaponized for political, social, and activist purposes. This historical context provides necessary nuance to the Wikipedia article’s summary of doxing and reminds us that the ethics of online culture can change as larger social stakes become involved.

This is a little bit trauma for me because I’ve been through bullying stuff and I think, especially in today’s society when Internet powers become bigger bully also go wild easily

This prompted me to consider more critically the morality of crowdsourcing: While it’s effective and democratic on paper, do we end up normalizing unpaid work or devaluing expert opinion as well? Howe’s piece isn’t afraid to raise that tension, and I believe that’s an aspect that needs more highlighting in the Wikipedia entry.

Reading about crowdsourcing made me think about how powerful it can be when large groups of people collaborate, especially in online spaces. I personally remember contributing to a fan-subtitling group for anime when I was in high school. None of us were professional translators, but we split the work—some translated, others timed the subtitles, and someone else checked for consistency. It wasn’t perfect, but we got full episodes out within a day. This experience connects directly to the chapter’s point: the individuals weren’t tied to the original production, but they still had real impact.

That being said, I do wonder how quality is controlled in crowdsourcing initiatives when nobody is in charge. Wikipedia, for instance, occasionally contains contradictory data on contentious issues. That makes me doubt whether accuracy based on crowdsourcing is possible for more personal or technical data.

One of the things that stood out most to me is how underappreciated and invisible this work is—even as it is necessary for the running of social media and online sites. Roberts brings an emphasis on the psychological costs and abysmal working conditions of the workers themselves, many of whom have to go through gruesome or horrific content every day. It shifted how I saw the stuff I see on the internet—I’m not just seeing the result of an algorithm doing its thing but people making judgments in high-pressure situations. It connects back to the notion in the chapter that even small websites have legal or ethical jeopardy hanging over them unless they moderate. There is a larger question that Roberts’ book brings up: if moderation is so necessary for keeping sites safe, then given its importance, why is the labor behind it disposable?

What hit me hardest in this section was a small forum I used to browse that began as a welcoming niche community but quickly descended into chaos when it wasn’t moderated on a regular basis. Initially, it felt like a free and open place, but as it gained more visibility, spam and even offensive content took over. It taught me that even with the intent for good, an unmoderated online place ends up getting out of hand with some form of gatekeeping or moderation. It also brings up the significant question: how does one balance openness with control when one is running a small site and lacks the resources necessary to constantly monitor one’s sites? It relates back to the question of digital responsibility—even a small digital space has the potential for real-life repercussions if dangerous content is left up.

One of the sources mentioned in the Wikipedia article is Spam Kings by Brian S. McWilliams (2005), which deals with the growth of spam operations and the individuals involved in them. Something that caught my attention among review and summary descriptions of this book is how spam is not merely a technical problem—it’s a human one. McWilliams tracks real-life spammers and anti-spammers alike, demonstrating the cat-and-mouse game that developed in the early 2000s. Something that surprised me in reading descriptions of this book is that a number of spammers lived with a sense of pride and even regarded themselves as entrepreneurs, not scammers. It challenged me to consider how ethics of online practice might differ profoundly based on perspective and how some individuals might justify nefarious digital practices as innovative or innocuous business tactics. It also relates back to coursewide topics of online regulation and the fuzzy line between “free enterprise” and exploitative practice online.

It got me thinking about the thin line that social media sites have to balance between ensuring a safe and interactive space and freedom of expression. It makes sense that they ban spam and misinformation, but it makes one wonder who gets to define “off-topic” or “misinformation.” I have observed the same tension in the real world when individuals complain if their message is deleted or flagged—even when they feel that they’re merely sharing an opinion. It’s a close decision given the escalation of AI-generated postings and bots that have the potential to overwhelm platforms with seemingly valid content. I find myself pondering: how can platform sites stay open and equitable and yet guard its users against manipulation and clogging?

I enjoyed reading this because it offered direct fossil evidence connecting whales to land mammals with hooves—particularly indicating transitional species like Ambulocetus, which possessed limbs to support it on land but still exhibited aquatic adaptations. Most amazing to me was how much information fossils can tell us—not only about how an animal appeared, but how it locomoted and existed. It made the evolution of whales seem much more tangible and earthy and not merely theoretical. I enjoyed how paleontology is both biology and storytelling—following how animals millions of years ago incrementally evolved into something as specialized as whales today.

It raises questions in me: if genes are so “selfish,” why do we have acts of kindness to strangers or altruism without any genetic reward? Is it possible that some behaviors we perceive to be altruistic today were actually beneficial to the survival of cooperative groupings in the past, so they do not die with the individual where they were expressed?

The Wikipedia entry “Social model of disability” (Page Version ID: 1184222120) is informative in its explanation of not only the role of medical conditions in shaping disability, but also of the role of society and exclusion in shaping disability. One element that resonated in particular was the focus on the way that environments and societal attitudes may disable individuals more completely than physical and cognitive limitations themselves. This is closely in line with the argument of the chapter that disability arises from design and systems rather than from individual deficits. This conclusion is supported further by the discussion of the social construction of disability in which shifting policy and infrastructure can dramatically decrease the experience of disability.

One thing that was most salient to me in this chapter is that disability is not just about the body or mind of a person, but what society expects individuals to be able to do. That really changed my mind. For instance, the effectiveness of the stair example opened my eyes to how likely we are to design space with only one type of body in mind. Having never had to give a second thought to taking the stairs or looking at a picture book, I realize now how much privilege I’ve taken for granted. Along with that, it also causes me to think about all of the things in daily life that could be so easily altered to be more accessible—such as putting in ramps, captions, or auditory description. It’s not the body of the person that is the issue—it’s the system that doesn’t account for them. This was similar to the social model of disability we read about in class earlier in the semester that also points to how structures and environments can cause disability.

The Wikipedia article about Private messages shows how far private communication has come due to the development of technology. It was interesting to me that even though private messaging platforms are intended for one-to-one or small group interactions, they're still at risk of being breached, leaked, or even surveilled by the platform. It made me think of how just because something feels private — such as a DM on Instagram or a Discord message — it's not always necessarily private because the platform may have access. It made me think more deeply about what I want to say on the internet even on places that feel "safe."

Learning about all the varying reasons for keeping things private really made me understand just how complicated privacy really is. It's not simply a matter of "hiding something bad," as people assume. For instance, I keep my live location private on the web for security reasons and not because I am doing anything wrong. I also linked this to our previous discussions regarding context collapse — when two audiences crash (like colleagues seeing your Facebook postings about family vacations), it actually makes sense that people would want to control where and how information gets distributed. It's not about secrecy; it's about shielding various aspects of our identity within various places. I do wonder, though: could anything be completely under our control regarding privacy these days, considering how much information gets surveilled by default?

The Wikipedia entry on Web tracking (2023) is quite an eye-opener to the extent that websites and third parties are able to monitor user activity via cookies, fingerprinting, and even pixel tags that are not visible. One feature that jumped at me was fingerprinting that can recognize users solely by their browser settings, without even the use of cookies. This utterly surprised my perception that availing private browsing modes or deleting cookies will ensure anonymity online. It validates the extent to which web tracking can be persistent and stealthy and why more robust digital privacy measures are essential

Reading that platforms monitor even the little things—like what people pause over, say—personally feels intrusive. I get that there’s a business justification, but, as a user, I feel like I’m under surveillance all the time. And I wonder just how much of what I do online is actually "my" behavior, and how much is influenced by what platforms assume I’m interested in seeing. It relates to what we were discussing previously regarding algorithmic bias—these algorithms don’t just monitor us, they shape us, sometimes without us knowing

The comedian impersonating the FBI and making a joke about Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination not only incited a reaction, it reopened many deep wounds of emotion. It put me in mind of the thin line between satire itself and being insensitive on social media. It is connected to the trolling discussion in the chapter, as even if the comedian meant it as a joke, the effect is the same as trolling, which is to upset and provoke with controversial content.

The definition of trolls I read about within this chapter was disturbing yet intriguing to me. It caused me to think about how many times I’ve witnessed individuals on the Internet—particularly on websites such as Twitter or Reddit—engage in arguments or emotional downturns due to a troll post. It is frustrating how quickly a single fake post will destroy a space for discussion. For myself, I feel it is significant for websites to inform users regarding trolling behavior, because then users will not fall for the trap if they know what to expect. I do also ask myself, should websites become more aggressive about moderating trolls, or would this damage freedom of speech?

It was fascinating to learn from the Lonelygirl15 Wikipedia page because it gave more context as to how revolutionary this web show really was. Something I did notice particularly is how it is described as being one of the first "web series" attempts and an early example of interactive storytelling. I'm surprised by how something that began as seemingly just a vlog turned out to shape all of online video content. It makes me wonder—which would happen today, or have we become desensitized to blurred lines of fiction versus reality on TikTok and Instagram?

I thought there was something particularly interesting about lonelygirl15's story in that it illustrates how much responsibility there is to being authentic online. The fact that "humans don't like being fooled" really resonated with me—I have certainly felt that way when I discovered something I had considered to be true later turned out to have been staged or manufactured. And, I have to admit, I also think that something is sort of interesting in that despite the revelation of truth, the channel just kept growing. People may have been upset initially, but they also realized that the narrative being told really was good, and they still wanted to know what occurred. It makes me wonder if, even though we appreciate authenticity, we just sort of love a good story even if it isn't "real."

Tom Standage’s Writing on the Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years is an interesting take in that he contends that social media is not newly developed, but rather follows a long lineage of disseminating information socially. One point that was particularly interesting to me was his description of handwritten letters and copied books serving as early forms of "viral posts," only reaching their destinations if people deemed them helpful enough to replicate. This completely changed my way of looking at social media—it's not only an internet product, but an ingrained human behavior.

This made me think about just how similar today's internet and social media landscape is to that of the pre-centralized media era. It’s so easy to assume that distortion is a new phenomenon, but that quote demonstrates that it’s always been an aspect of people’s communication—it’s just with different mediums. It’s got me wondering if the problem isn’t so much stopping rumor, but educating people to think critically regardless of the platform.

One of the details that impressed me was that Twitter has undergone a large number of structural and policy changes after Musk's acquisition, including changes to content moderation standards and user verification mechanisms. This made me realize that the operating policies behind a data platform are themselves important “metadata” that affect the quality and usability of the data. For example, if I download a certain type of speech data from Twitter today, I must consider whether it has been affected by policies during a particular period, otherwise the analysis conclusions may be distorted.

That makes me think of the color correction process when I would edit photographs using Photoshop in the old days. Previously, I would simply adjust the RGB values according to my gut feel, but now I realize that it is actually the most elementary data structure that operates in the background. I believe that knowing these concepts can enable us to view how images get digitized as well as how their analysis is done even more rationally in applications like image recognition or AI-created imagery."

That made me realize that the distinction between data and metadata is not absolute but rather relative to the research objective and perspective. Earlier on, I would regard the means of collection or the moment in time as "incidental information", but now I appreciate that these are actually significant metadata that can affect the analysis result.

This text made me deeply realize that beneath algorithms and leaderboards, a lot of artificially created “illusion” can actually exist. The article paints a picture of something shocking: a worker handling close to 100 iPhones just to increase the download count of a particular app. This form of “human algorithmic manipulation” is identical to the click farm we discussed in the chapter, both of which deploy human labor to mimic automatized behavior and manipulate social or platform statistics. It made me realize that the authenticity of the data is not necessarily secure, and so-called “popularities” could be madeup. It also made me question whether the trends recommended to me in app stores or social media sites are actually authentic.

I was particularly impressed by this sentence, since it reveals the wit and strategy of the protest. Employing a donkey as a means of disseminating a political message not only evaded police repression directly, but also ridiculated the ridiculousness of the police. The kind of creativity here is reminiscent of today's "meme politics" on social media: people employ humorous and ridiculous means to articulate serious stances, which can also serve the function of communication but not get censored directly. This reveals that in a setting with limited information, protesters devise very sophisticated means of expression.

This sentence made me realize that the “people” we encounter on social media may actually not be people at all. Thinking about the fact that I used to argue with “people” for a long time under certain topics, only to find out that it was probably an automated program speaking, made me doubt the authenticity of social media. At the same time, it also raised a question: if a bot can imitate human interaction habits, will the foundation of our trust in “identity” and “speech” also be shaken?