Sarah T. Roberts. Behind the Screen. Yale University Press, September 2021. URL: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/9780300261479/behind-the-screen (visited on 2023-12-08).
After reading a small part of this book, I noticed that the moderators are facing a situation we cannot imagine. They provide users with a clean online environment, but they have reviewed so much inappropriate content that it may even traumatize their mental health.
What is your take on the ethical trade-offs of unpaid Reddit moderators? What do you think Reddit should do?
I think for unpaid Reddit moderators, they maintain their subreddit based on their interests, and they may not care too much about the financial payback. However, Reddit could offer the unpaid moderators some honors without actual monetary value to encourage them.
15.1. Types of Content Moderator Set-Ups
I think the introduction of different types of content moderators is engaging. By reading the following types of content moderators, we can find the advantages and disadvantages of various types of content moderators. I also notice that for companies that need to review a large amount of posts, they will invest more than small websites to avoid the potential legal risks.
Spamming. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1187995774. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spamming&oldid=1187995774 (visited on 2023-12-08).
By reading several incidents related to spamming, I find it is hard to make a clear boundary between "spamming" and "free speech" for people who send spam emails. They may argue that what they did is to defend their free speech right, but their behaviors actually bring other users trouble.
Sites like 4chan and 8chan bill themselves as sites that support free-speech, in the sense that they don’t ban trolling and hateful speech, though they may remove some illegal content, like CSAM.
I think the definition of free-speech is varied between different groups. As mentioned, 4chan and 8chan will not ban the hateful speech as they might consider it part of "free speech". However, will this attract more people to make the whole website full of hateful content, or will it help all users to discuss the content more objectively?
Have you ever reported a post/comment for violating social media platform rules?
I reported several posts that violate social media platform rules, such as supporting hate crimes and other unfriendly comments. I think it is important for us to report the inappropriate content online because nowadays more and more minors have access to the internet, and the inappropriate content may lead them to biased values.
Meme. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1187840093. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meme&oldid=1187840093#Etymology (visited on 2023-12-08).
By reading the wikipedia I learned the why memes are called memes, and understanding a viral word with the biological explanation is very interesting. Before reading the article, I thought the memes were just pictures we share online, but after learning the theory of memes, I realized that these online pictures are also a form of evolution.
Finally, social media platforms use algorithms and design layouts which determine what posts people see.
I think nowadays the algorithms will only provide information that people are interested in, which helps people have better access to the information they need. However, this also prohibits people to have a wider access to all type of information.
We can even consider the evolutionary forces that play in the spread of true and false information (like an old saying: “A lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.” [l5])
I think the consideration of the role of evolutionary forces in spreading true and false information is meaningful. Especially nowadays the internet allows the efficient spread of information, and it is hard for people to tell the reality of information online.
Web tracking. October 2023. Page Version ID: 1181294364. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Web_tracking&oldid=1181294364 (visited on 2023-12-05).
By reading this Wikipedia, I understand how web track works and how the data collected in web tracking can be used. From my personal opinion, I think the web tracking is highly related to users’ privacy. It’s important for the tech companies to protect the data they collected.
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”
This paragraph provides an excellent example of data mining, the researchers can use data they collected from the seemingly irrelevant incidents to find what exactly they need.
Twitter. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1187856185. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter (visited on 2023-12-01).
By reading this Wikipedia, I have a better understanding of Twitter. I think the overall history of Twitter is interesting, and Twitter is a social media platform with a huge global user base, making it a very influential platform.
Because all data is a simplification of reality, those simplifications work well for some people and some situations but can cause problems for other people and other situations.
I think the choice of the desired range is essential when we create a dataset. Choosing targeted groups effectively can help us get a clear dataset and complete our tasks with higher efficiency.
Binary consisting of 0s and 1s make it easy to represent true and false values, where 1 often represents true and 0 represents false. Most programming languages have built-in ways of representing True and False values.
This paragraph introduces the importance of True and False values. It helps us to build a basic understanding of programming. I took a course using R Studio, and I found out that if I made some mistakes in my code, the results will be False.
What do you think is the responsibility of tech workers to think through the ethical implications of what they are making?
I think tech workers should consider whether their work is safe, fair, and respects users' rights. For example, software that collects data should be designed with privacy protections in mind, not just functionality. Similarly, machine learning models or automated decision systems can unintentionally reproduce or even amplify social biases unless someone takes responsibility for questioning how training data is chosen and how outputs are used. Personally, I think big data helps different software to attract their users' interests, such as Instagram reels and TikTok. However, sometimes I don't feel comfortable seeing things I talked to my friends about in real life frequently appear on my phone. It gives me a feeling of being "watched."
What financial motivations does Twitter have? How does that influence Twitter’s design?
I think one of the financial motivations Twitter has is to attract more users, especially those who did not use Twitter but now want to participate in this event, and they have to join Twitter. New users can bring Twitter more financial revenue by selling advertisements to the users and the companies that notice that Twitter is a huge platform with billions of users.