The amount of power these social media sites have with our data is something to ponder about. Facebook had a recent data breach that allowed certain parties to feed content to certain users that could influence them politically. With social media being prevalent now more than ever, this is especially dangerous. I think that these companies should have harsher consequences when these data breaches happen and there should be a government-adjacent but separate entity that ensures the privacy of all social media users.

The people who have the least power are minorities. Minorities are often harassed on social media, but due to moderation, hate speech is usually reported and taken down. If there was no moderation, I think the amount of hate online, especially towards minority groups, will grow exponentially.

It's very obvious that there is a huge issue with social media and body image issues. When people go to get cosmetic procedures, however, there's no way to tell the reason why someone is getting the procedure (without being very invasive). This rules out the idea of doctors asking patients to think carefully about their decisions. There's also the fact that many people do in fact feel a lot better after getting procedures done. That then brings the question of whether there should be some way to overlook this process from a mental health standpoint.

A few things to note here. First of all, a big company like Facebook having it's own researchers conclude that their app is harming young girls' mental health and still not doing anything about it is insane. They post this research and still fail to make changes for the better of the masses. In addition to that, running experiments as invasive as the ones described here without consent would definitely feel violating and uncomfortable. I am shocked that there isn't any law against this.

I personally don't share my political opinions on social media and I often find it bizarre to see people have whole internet personas based on them. Monica Lewinsky is a good example here. She gets a wide range of reactions from people, love and hate. Lot's of people retweet and comment on her posts. And there are lots of people that even revisit very old tweets with new or updated opinions. This goes to show how a persona created and posted content is basically online forever. People who create such in depth personas might expect it, but there are many cases where people who have newly rose to fame have gotten old tweets from them dug up to then cause them toruble in the present.

I recently watched a TikTok that touched on the reasons for a person's online content to be replicated, and one huge reason is to talk a broader and more widespread message. In this case, the message was to warn people about college alcoholism. This creator also talk about how when your content gets replicated in this manner (this manner being the video getting used to show a bad example), it creates a harmful and non-erasable digital footprint.

This honestly makes a lot of sense. I think a trend on social media these days is influencers gaining traction by rage baiting their audience. People engage with negative content and that negative content keeps coming back, feeding into this negative mindset. Now it's clear to me that it's not only users that are pushing this forward, its also the companies designing these algorithms.

This point honestly shows me how capitalism overpowers morals and transparency. These companies may not want to show the algorithm because it would be revealed just how predatory it might be, though I think the biggest reason is to not let other companies use it. But because they are allowed to not reveal this algorithm, there is also no regulation on this. No regulation can have severe consequences on users of all ages (especially kids).

I think this should make us pause and think about all the consequences of not making the world more flexible and adaptive to disabled people. There are mental health consequences and there are physical consequences when disabled people have to constantly put extra effort into fitting in with normal people to be comfortable. As an alternative solution, society can change the design of settings, tools etc. to be usable by more kinds of people rather than only by people considered "normal".

When reading this, like the title suggested, I thought this woman was someone who had something like a superpower. As I read through the article, I realized that because of this superpower of hers, some settings might be overstimulating due to excessive color (from her perspective). That's when I came to the further realization that some people would consider this a disability as she might need some accommodation to be comfortable in some spaces. This situation made me realize that "disabilities" aren't necessarily always visible and aren't negative. It also made me realize there are so many types of "disabilities" that I might not have ever even heard of.

With great power comes great responsibility. In order to their jobs, I bet some engineers need access to certain data. But how can one determine if that person can be responsible with that data. I think this come down to concrete rules and security around data from everyone, even people inside the company. The negligence here lies in facebooks regulations of people's access to certain data. This really shows how users trust in platforms and companies starts with building a robust security system within the platforms and company itself.

When large data leaks, like the facebook data leak, occur, the people that suffer most are the people whose data got leaked. I am aware that facebook still faces consequences like hurt brand reputation and maybe some compensation losses, however, I don't feel like that is enough of a consequence. I think that in our country, rules and regulations for these big companies are too lax and that puts the greater majority of people at risk.

The discrepancy between the tweets written by Trump himself vs the tweets written/revised by his team has become glaringly obvious. With most political figures, you can't tell the difference. But in this case, you very much can. It paints the President as more unprofessional and causes audiences to lose trust in him as they feel like they are not always getting his true thoughts and feelings in every tweet.

I feel like for most political figures, people don't think about whether the political figure themselves have posted the tweet or if it was their team. This is because their authentic selves are either filtered or match what is expected of them. With Trump however, I feel like people are no longer wondering who wrote what. It is glaringly obvious when he has posted something vs if his team has posted something. Even if some tweets "sound" like him, I feel like I can tell if his team had a hand at editing the tweet. I feel like this discrepancy makes the President seem more untrustworthy and unprofessional. This is to say that discrepancies in how you present yourself cause people to lose trust in you.

This is a very interesting point and something I have noticed more on platforms like TikTok. Some people who make these jokes are appreciated while others are bashed for doing basically the same thing. I've also found that women are always the ones who get bullied more for trying to be humorous, especially if people deem it in-authentic. I wonder if there is a deep rooted misogynistic element to who is allowed to show humor in this way and who isn't.

I think it's a very interesting phenomenon that people post pictures chasing after social rewards without thinking about the ethics of it. Even if people do think about the ethics of it, they may decide that the social rewards are far higher than their moral obligations. This reminds me of when Logan Paul decided to post a video of a deceased person in the woods of Japan, completely disrespecting that person and all subjecting viewers to traumatizing content. In my opinion, any normal person would find that inappropriate to post, but I think at the time, Logan Paul must have thought the social rewards were higher than his moral obligations.

This woman visits Africa and her main comment about it is that her facebook profile will change forever. She also tells her friends that their profile's will also definitely change. She doesn't talk about the nature, the people (not much), or anything else specific. Somehow this reaction feels performative and paints her as a white savior, and doesn't make her seem like someone that actually cares about the people in Africa or someone that appreciates the beauty of Africa.

The creator of the endless scroll feature that many apps use today, Aza Raskin, talks about how regrets creating the feature without thinking much about its consequences. He explicitly says that it was designed to keep people online as long as possible and that he knows that the feature can make users do what "he" wants. The article also talks about the huge jump in teenage depression rates as a potential result of this.

I think one thing to note is how much clearer stand out pieces were here. It took real effort to make something go viral, whereas now, I find that it's a lot easier. Even so, one could argue that even amongst the millions of viral videos, there are still standout viral books, videos, movies, etc. I just think it is definitely a lot more saturated now than before.