Ted Chiang. Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey? The New Yorker, May 2023. URL: https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey (visited on 2023-12-10).

If you could magically change anything about how social media sites operate as businesses, what would it be?

Merriam-Webster. Definition of CAPITALISM. December 2023. URL: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism (visited on 2023-12-10).

In what ways do you see capitalism, socialism, and other funding models show up in the country you are from or are living in?

Trauma and Shame. URL: https://www.oohctoolbox.org.au/trauma-and-shame (visited on 2023-12-10).

18.1. Shame vs. Guilt in childhood development# Before we talk about public criticism and shaming and adults, let’s look at the role of shame in childhood. In at least some views about shame and childhood[1], shame and guilt hold different roles in childhood development [r1]: 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 [r1], 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.

Doxing. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1189390304. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doxing&oldid=1189390304 (visited on 2023-12-10).

Harassment can also be done through crowds. Crowd harassment has also always been a part of culture, such as riots, mob violence, revolts, revolution, government persecution, etc. Social media then allows new ways for crowd harassment to occur. Crowd harassment includes all the forms of individual harassment we already mentioned (like bullying, stalking, etc.), but done by a group of people. Additionally, we can consider the following forms of crowd harassment: [Dogpiling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpiling_(Internet) [q4]): When a crowd of people targets or harasses the same person. Public Shaming (this will be our next chapter) Cross-platform raids (e.g., 4chan group planning harassment on another platform [q5]) Stochastic terrorism [q6] The use of mass public communication, usually against a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism which are statistically probable but happen seemingly at random. [q7] See also: An atmosphere of violence: Stochastic terror in American politics [q8] In addition, fake crowds (e.g., bots or people paid to post) can participate in crowd harassment. For example:

Spamming. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1187995774. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spamming&oldid=1187995774 (visited on 2023-12-08).

14.6.1. Activity: Try reporting a comment# Go to a social media site and try to find spam or some other disallowed comment and report it. YouTube comments can be a place to find these, particularly replies to comments. It’s hard to know where the spammers are currently getting away with spam, but you might try the latest honest trailer from ScreenJunkies [n13], sort comments by “newest first” and then look for replies and see if any are spam. If you find one, try reporting it. What did you think of the options you were given for reporting spam?

The Selfish Gene. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1188207750. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Selfish_Gene&oldid=1188207750 (visited on 2023-12-08).

A meme is a piece of culture that might reproduce in an evolutionary fashion, like a hummable tune that someone hears and starts humming to themselves, perhaps changing it, and then others overhearing next. In this view, any piece of human culture can be considered a meme that is spreading (or failing to spread) according to evolutionary forces. So we can use an evolutionary perspective to consider the spread of: Technology (languages, weapons, medicine, writing, math, computers, etc.), religions philosophies political ideas (democracy, authoritarianism, etc.) art organizations etc.

Zack Whittaker. Facebook won't let you opt out of its phone number 'look up' setting. TechCrunch, March 2019. URL: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/03/facebook-phone-number-look-up/ (visited on 2023-12-07).

When social media platforms show users a series of posts, updates, friend suggestions, ads, or anything really, they have to use some method of determining which things to show users. The method of determining what is shown to users is called a recommendation algorithm, which is an algorithm (a series of steps or rules, such as in a computer program) that recommends posts for users to see, people for users to follow, ads for users to view, or reminders for users. Some recommendation algorithms can be simple such as reverse chronological order, meaning it shows users the latest posts (like how blogs work, or Twitter’s “See latest tweets” option). They can also be very complicated taking into account many factors, such as: Time since posting (e.g., show newer posts, or remind me of posts that were made 5 years ago today) Whether the post was made or liked by my friends or people I’m following How much this post has been liked, interacted with, or hovered over Which other posts I’ve been liking, interacting with, or hovering over What people connected to me or similar to me have been liking, interacting with, or hovering over What people near you have been liking, interacting with, or hovering over (they can find your approximate location, like your city, from your internet IP address, and they may know even more precisely) This perhaps explains why sometimes when you talk about something out loud it gets recommended to you (because someone around you then searched for it). Or maybe they are actually recording what you are saying and recommending based on that.

Color blindness. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1188749829. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Color_blindness&oldid=1188749829 (visited on 2023-12-07).

Another way of managing disabilities is assistive technology [j13], which is something that helps a disabled person act as though they were not disabled. In other words, it is something that helps a disabled person become more “normal” (according to whatever a society’s assumptions are). For example: Glasses help people with near-sightedness see in the same way that people with “normal” vision do Walkers and wheelchairs can help some disabled people move around closer to the way “normal” people can (though stairs can still be a problem) A spoon might automatically balance itself [j14] when held by someone whose hands shake Stimulants (e.g., caffeine, Adderall) can increase executive function in people with ADHD, so they can plan and complete tasks more like how neurotypical people do. Assistive technologies give tools to disabled people to help them become more “normal.” So the disabled person becomes able to move through a world that was not designed for them. But there is still an expectation that disabled people must become more “normal,” and often these assistive technologies are very expensive.

Right to privacy. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186826760. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Right_to_privacy&oldid=1186826760#United_States (

While we have our concerns about the privacy of our information, we often share it with social media platforms under the understanding that they will hold that information securely. But social media companies often fail at keeping our information secure. For example, the proper security practice for storing user passwords is to use a special individual encryption process [i6] for each individual password. This way the database can only confirm that a password was the right one, but it can’t independently look up what the password is or even tell if two people used the same password. Therefore if someone had access to the database, the only way to figure out the right password is to use “brute force,” that is, keep guessing passwords until they guess the right one (and each guess takes a lot of time [i7]). But while that is the proper security for storing passwords. So for example, Facebook stored millions of Instagram passwords in plain text [i8], meaning the passwords weren’t encrypted and anyone with access to the database could simply read everyone’s passwords. And Adobe encrypted their passwords improperly and then hackers leaked their password database of 153 million users [i9].

Is It Funny or Offensive? Comedian Impersonates FBI on Twitter, Makes MLK Assassination Joke. January 2020. URL: https://isitfunnyoroffensive.com/comedian-impersonates-fbi-on-twitter-makes-mlk-assassination-joke/ (visited on 2023-12-05).

If the immediate goal of the action of trolling is to cause disruption or provoke emotional reactions, what is it that makes people want to do this disruption or provoking of emotional reactions? Some reasons people engage in trolling behavior include: Amusement: Trolls often find the posts amusing, whether due to the disruption or emotional reaction. If the motivation is amusement at causing others’ pain, that is called doing it for the lulz [g6]. Gatekeeping: Some trolling is done in a community to separate out an ingroup from outgroup (sometimes called newbies or normies). The ingroup knows that a post is just trolling, but the outgroup is not aware and will engage earnestly. This is sometimes known as trolling the newbies. Feeling Smart: Going with the gatekeeping role above, trolling can make a troll or observer feel smarter than others, since they are able to see that it is trolling while others don’t realize it. Feeling Powerful: Trolling sometimes gives trolls a feeling of empowerment when they successfully cause disruption or cause pain.** Advance and argument / make a point: Trolling is sometimes done in order to advance an argument or make a point. For example, proving that supposedly reliable news sources are gullible by getting them to repeat an absurd gross story [g5]. Punish or stop: Some trolling is in service of some view of justice, where a person, group or organization is viewed as doing something “bad” or “deserving” of punishment, and trolling is a way of fighting back.

lonelygirl15. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186146298. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lonelygirl15&oldid=1186146298 (visited on 2023-11-24).

These reactions make sense. Try to imagine the early days of human social life, before we started attaching our welfare to the land in terms of planting crops and building structures designed for permanence. Our nomadic forebears functioned in groups who coordinated in highly specialized ways to ensure the survival of the whole. Although such communities are often pictured as being prehistoric, primitive, and obsolete, we now know that such societies were and are highly sophisticated, often developing and depending on highly specified legal codes, some of which are still in use today in Bedouin communities in North Africa. Other nomadic groups, such as Roma people (which you may have heard derogatorily called ‘gypsies’), live within and around land-based nations and their various borders and laws. To ensure the survival of their ethnicity, cultures, and languages, they depend on being able to trust each other. The nations whose land we are living and studying on here also knew the importance of being able to know who can be trusted. These needs may not always be as obvious in highly individualized societies, like Post-Enlightenment Europe and the United States. The possibility for self-reliance has been created in part by making certain things dependable and institutionalized. You can go get yourself food without feeling like you have to trust anyone because you can just go to the store (which has to adhere to corporate legal requirements) and buy food (the supply of which is made stable by complex networks of growing, manufacturing, and transportation, covered by the assurances of FDA-compliant labeling) from people who work there (and are subject to labor laws and HR regulations, which, if they are not followed, means the staff person does not get paid, so their wellbeing depends on them doing their job). The need to trust other people is obscured by the many institutions that we have created. Institutions have ways, sometimes, of getting around human whims and surprises. But at the end of the day, it is still hugely important to us that we feel clear about who can be trusted, and for what.

Email. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1183374399. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Email&oldid=1183374399 (visited on 2023-11-24).

If you wanted to make a profile to talk about yourself, or to show off your work, you had to create your own personal webpage, which others could visit.

Caroline Delbert. Some People Think 2+2=5, and They’re Right. Popular Mechanics, October 2023. URL:

Botwatch: for the interest and study of reddit bots. URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/botwatch/ (visited on 2023-11-17).

How does allowing bots influence social media sites’ profitability?

How often do you hear phrases like “social media isn’t real life”?

“Rational Selfishness”: It is rational to seek your own self-interest above all else. Great feats of engineering happen when brilliant people ruthlessly follow their ambition.