This is an article that explains the connection between trauma and shame, exploring how shame is a common pairing with traumatic experiences, leading to negative beliefs such as believing oneself to be inherently bad. The article goes into how these beliefs and feelings of shame can come from domestic violence or neglect.

The idea of shame being a tool the weak can use against the strong is rather interesting- I can see examples of this in how minorities make a point to speak out against the parts of history that are hidden away for the sake of making history more sanitized for the children of the majority. It's just a shame that the strength of the majority, hubris, pride, prejudice, and quite a lot of other qualities is rather good at drowning out their shame

This Wikipedia page explains what doxing is, defining it as the act of publicly releasing information that is both personal and previously private. It's usually done with hostile intent, such as revenge, humiliation, or meant as a threat.

In theory, it could- It could be seen as a form of justice. However, by nature of what "crowds" are and the harassment that comes from it, namely, that the more people are involved to create a single "united" belief, the more simplistic it becomes, crowd harassment can't truly be justified. That being said, this kind of simplicity works rather well for things like protests because there are some unifying, simple beliefs that can be for good.

This paper, as written by Hollan and Stornetta suggests that physical interactions for human-to-human connection is not entirely ideal and that technology could actually enhance it. As such, in this paper, the authors advocate for computational enhancements as a means for advocating for digital communication tools, thus exploring methods in which technology could be used to surpass traditional communication and the very definition of digital presence.

This is irreversibly true- I think this is evident in how badly the pandemic effected everybody, especially those who lived on their own. I find this idea of how there are various aspects of human experiences like interactions and creation to be irreplicable by machines to be a very applicable topic in the modern day, especially with the rise of Generative AI- Such as how Generative AI is attempting to replace creative arts and generative chatbots are attempting to replace real human-to-human relationships.

In this article, Anil Dash focuses on the idea behind the phrase, "Don't read the comments" in which he critiques how the phrase encourages people to ignore and bypass online abuse, thus perpetuating the issues. He suggests that instead of accepting harassment as something that just comes with being online, calling for internet users to demand for changes that'll make online spaces safer.

Moderation being prevalent across many ethical frameworks makes sense- So much of life is about balance and balance only comes with moderation and yet, when it comes to how that balance should be achieved, the sheer variety of values that people can have and how that can play a role in how balance/moderation is accomplished. It'll be interesting to see how these concepts play into social media and the Internet in general.

In this interview, Terry Gross talks with Bo Burnham about Burnham's experience with anxiety, performance, and filmmaking. Burnham talks about how he's always felt anxious, even as a child, particularly when he's in front of an audience, leading to him feeling rather depressed even when he became famous on the Internet. He mentions how social media is kind of like having an invisible audience that's always watching you.

I agree with this sentiment- I think that a big part of social media is how it's a double edged blade. The fact that it connects people far beyond what it probably "should" is both a pro and a con- On the plus side, connecting far beyond the limitations of what's immediately in a person's experience means that they can see more experiences than they would've ever and meet more people much easily. On the negative side, seeing far past what's immediately in a person's experience can be overwhelming as our minds aren't really supposed to ever be flooded with this much input all the time to the point where this overload of information kind of overrules the immediate which is where this sense of dissociation comes from, I imagine

This article revolves around the saying "The truth has not yet put on its boots and the lie has circled half the world". It specifically goes into the saying's origins where Dr. Oliver Teller debunks the common but inaccurate attribution of this quote to Churchill. In short, the saying is about how lies are easier to spread than the truth which urges people to think more critically about the information they receive- Potentially to assume that the first piece of information is more likely to be a lie (as it travels faster)

It's rather interesting to think about memes in the context of evolutionary theory, especially with the dialogue I've heard circulating the internet's "attention span" and how things don't typically last very long. This just seems to be an add on to that notion which is interesting to think about. In this way, it'll be rather curious to study the specific "traits" of a meme that makes it more likely to last- Especially age old memes like the rick roll.

This article introduces a different and much kinder and more fair way of looking at disabilities- Less of a stroke of misfortune or a fault in the disabled person themself and more of a failure of society. I find myself agreeing with this idea because really, would these people be unable, i.e. disabled, if the way the world worked and the way society functioned was more accommodating for more than just one or two "ideal" bodies or mindsets?

This is such a prevalent issue that really resonates because this is such a cyclical, makes itself worse kind of an issue in that, by placing the burden on disabled people to manage their disabilities, they become even more unable to "keep up" and this distance between disabled people and the "normal" people keep growing larger and larger which is rather awful

This article reveals that even if users' personal information are exposed, companies like Facebook may choose to not alert them which very well may mean that legal obligations are valued more than ethical responsibility. In which case, perhaps said legal obligations should be adjusted to align with ethical responsibility though it is troubling to think that social media companies need to be bound by legal obligations in order to do the right thing.

How much is "partially" and how applicable is describing what we do in the modern day "giving up" our privacy in the current day? From surveillance capitalism to the digital panopticon, I wonder if anything that's online or otherwise digital can be considered private anymore. Furthermore, if something is easily accessible, could it really be considered private? (i.e. If a door to a room can't be locked by the person who owns that room, is that room really private to that person?)

This article provides an example of what kind of information can be drawn and the conclusions that that information can come to as a result in which an online user's sexual orientation can be guessed or otherwise predicted based off of who they're talking to

I wonder what the procedure for making sure that the discovered correlation isn't spurious would be then. Because obviously, in the shown example. there's hardly any if any way the divorce rate in Maine could correlate with the consumption of margarine but what about the correlations between two things that are less obvious? What would the procedure there be?

This article goes over a past experience that occurred on the Internet in regards to a banana slicer that was being sold on Amazon. During this time, the banana slicer was abruptly flooded by a large quantity of reviews that comedically and sarcastically overexaggerate its usefulness

In an earlier part of the reading, where trolling was defined as something that's largely used to cause a negative emotional reaction, I thought about whether or not it'd be possible for trolling to induce a positive emotional reaction or have some other kind of, more or less, positive results. I found this to be a rather lovely example of how trolling can be used for good- As a matter of fact, I can think of a few examples that have happened in the last few months that are similar to this in response to the current administration

This article talks about an instance in which a Twitter account that's supposedly run by a scientist who died from COVID is revealed to be fake. This article reminds me of a phenomenon that I've heard is pretty prevalent in the publishing community with authors pretending to be a different race than they are to get diversity points and I think I remember there being an author who did fake their death in a similar manner to this scientist so it seems like this issue is prevalent across communities with how easy it is to do something like this behind the anonymity of being online

This is rather interesting to think about- I agree that this is true for people but it just makes me wonder about online concepts like ragebaiting and the notion that some people post purposefully inflammatory content for the sole purpose of farming engagement and people fall for it without even stopping to think if it's authentic or not. If this value is truly so deeply ingrained in us, how is it that something online like a ragebait post, comment or other false inflammatory content manages to bypass this need for authenticity?

A recount on the friendship turned rivalry turned friendship again between Adams and Jefferson during the early years of America's founding where their political differences drove them apart before they eventually found themselves writing letters to each other as friends again shortly before dying a few days after the other.

This reminds me of a book I've read once, The Age of Magical Overthinking, where the introduction touches on how people seem to inherently desire to think "magically" through superstition or other means for a variety of reasons from absolving responsibility to making sense of what doesn't make sense. This makes me think that this particular trait extends beyond the superstition and into why people seem so interested in rumors and conspiracy theories inherently

This seems... rather simple, small-minded, and performative. I don't quite understand what this woman means when she says that her visit changes her "Facebook Profile Picture" and why it's portrayed/written as something to be revered though I'm not surprised. A big part of social media is performative allyship, a claim towards radicalization or change. I understand it as an alternative to ragebait- Touting appealing terms like shifts in perspective that the intended audience sees as good or applause worthy so that they'd interact with the post. It's just something interesting to think about when it comes to how social media appears to make things less genuine. If it's online, then it is no longer sacred.

If I understood this correctly, metadata is kind of like data about data- So data within data itself. This is rather interesting to think about, especially in the context of how data is being scraped and sold off. Would this mean that there is a hierarchy to data? As in, there are types of data that are more valuable than other types?

This reminds me of topics that I've learned in previous classes- Specifically surveillance capitalism and the digital panopticon. These notions, in relation to the ethics of bots, creates a rather interesting contrast because on the one hand, the argument can be made in favor of the bots as the bots themselves are nothing more than programs that are following a code while surveillance capitalism is a form of business done by advertisers and scientists with express disregard for privacy. Both should definitely be regulated, especially based on how they're used.

I imagine social media platforms allow bots to operate because they make certain tasks easier, as stated before, whether that be for engagement or blocking people- Menial, repetitive tasks that is better suited for a computer program than a person which is likely why there are attempts to manage the creation and presence of bots with having registered bots

Out of all the ethic groundwork shown, I think I agree with this one the most because I see it everywhere. Money, at the most basest level, is paper but it means something because society has deigned to give it value. Oftentimes, especially now, I hear people wondering why others don't care about various crises happening all around the world as well as America. But I can understand why many would reject it or otherwise struggle with existentialism. Society and people require order and this line of thought doesn't have much of that. Furthermore, it is personally and individually empowering and frightening as it gives all of the responsibility and power into the hands of the individual.

While I haven't heard this specific phrase all that often, this phrase does remind me of a similar line of thought in relation to fiction- "Fiction isn't real life" as a means to devalue stories and the time spent on analyzing them when really, the stories, while not "real", don't exist in a vacuum. They were made by a real person who wrote it under very real biases or experiences that came from a very real world in which the implicit or explicit effects can have a very real impact. This kind of thinking can be rather harmful as I doubt that anything exists in a vacuum and thinking this way can lead to overlooking something that could be irreversibly detrimental.

This entire situation seems like a textbook example of a snowball effect in which a small thing, like the tweet then the "someone" emailing the tweet to Valleywag, and so on and so forth leads to this entire situation. I'm not sure how the Twitter algorithm works but this kind of attention- This rise in interactions could have an impact on how so many people saw it because I imagine that the more people see it and interact it, more and more see it.