This sort of behavior of privately owned businesses is exactly why government intervention and regulation is necessary in a capitalist society. Though an unregulated economy would allow corporations to (potentially) make the most profit, the harmful actions such as selling our data to misleading/hateful advertisers may show a increase in violence and more negative effects.

In modern society, it is hard to find "pure monopolies" in industries such as social media or technology. This is due to the sharing of design, service, and customer demands through companies. However, some companies seem to function as monopolies by setting the price of their goods which affects that goods and behaviors of other companies. For example, whenever Apple introduces a price hike or new change to their products (removing headphones and charging brick), other competitors follow.

Especially when talking about repentance in social media with the existence of cancel culture, it can be hard. Social media figures who have gotten cancelled in the past do not repent, they may just create an apology video, be hated on for a couple of years, and then go viral again. For example, Logan Paul was cancelled for his video made in the suicide forest in Japan but nowadays, he has regained his fame and fortune and even went on to create a brand that brought in more than a billion dollars in revenue.

I have noticed this phenomenon in TikTok lately. It seems that every month, the users will "hype up" a new creator based on their looks, personality, or some other factor. Though, after the initial fame, new users will begin to create videos belittling the creators or digging up their history to "cancel" them. I've noticed this pattern on TikTok to be much quicker than in hollywood (could be due to the fast-paced nature and trends of the app).

It is interesting to learn about the "borders" of harassment and what types of it can go unpunished and which types are actionable. Shown in this example of the car splashing water, we can learn of the thin line between "accidental" harassment and coordinated, malicious harassment that is possible to be prosecuted.

Examples of doxxing as presented in this passage are actually witnessed frequently in modern times. I feel that doxxing KKK members who are known to harass and even murder black people is acceptable as especially in the past, law enforcement may not take appropriate action to prosecute their crimes as the members may hold high official posts and power. Doxxing their members may have been the only resort that worked to identify the clan.

It is very hard to control or regulate the internet's harm as that would require limiting various actions and speech. I do notice incidents like this on TikTok a lot especially when a random person offends a community or belief. A recent example includes the doxxing of Nick Fuentes's address after he made derogatory and misogynistic marks on his accounts after Trump won the 2028 election.

Upwork has really took off in modern times with the rise of social media and marketing. One of the biggest upwork platforms that is the most relevant right now is Fiverr, which allows clients to pay freelancers for work that can vary on expertise (reflected in their fees). Now with the rise of social media, especially TikTok, a lot of companies are hiring freelancers or UGC creators to market their products instead of agencies due to the lower costs and abundance.

I believe the easiest method to ensure that moderators are doing their job based on interest rather than financial motivations is to render the work voluntary. Though Reddit's moderation system is set up in a way that deters mods from "power-tripping" due to the community based moderation including downvoting and upvoting, some mods act irrationally (for example, banning you from a subreddit for no reason).

While it is absolutely reasonable for social media companies to attempt blocking offensive and pornographic material, it is important for them to realize how the demographic of their service actually uses the application. For example, Twitter (pre-Elon) was used to share pretty much any content without much regulation and after the rebrand and new regulation policies, traffic has a lot.

I have noticed Munchausen Syndrome in TikTok a lot but didn't realize it was an actual condition. A lot of people seem to "self-diagnose" for attention on TikTok. There was a famous TikTok during lockdown in which a teenager pretended to be have tics on his videos.

I've been seeing the internet trend of following a detox from social media to "restart" your attention span and even improve one's mental health. However, it is important to consider that not all people have the luxury to turn off their social media or internet access because their careers or wellbeing may depend on it.

I wasn’t aware that this type of chain mail existed in the past, I believed this was a modern example of trolling that even I fell victim to (especially in middle school). This makes me think or harmful applications or messages such as the Blue Whale game which urged people to share dangerous links and tasks to friends due to fear of consequences.

It is interesting that the origin of memes actually come from the idea of genes and evolutionary biology. It never occurred to me that memes are an indicator of changes in technology, culture, political ideas and more. In that sense, memes are a reflector of the evolution of society and its modern values.

This is a very important part of my experience with social media especially with apps that share the same parent company. For example, Meta owns both Instagram and Facebook but I use the apps for different audiences. I use instagram to connect with friends and Facebook for family and I really don't like it when instagram asks me to share my content to both apps or when the user recommendations are brought over from the different application.

This tweet makes me reflect on my daily interactions with social media when i interact with content that I do not like. If there is something weird that appears on my feed, I am more likely to spend more time watching it to analyze the message which the algorithm make infer as interest in the post and show me similar content. I wonder how that differs in the algorithm when I click "not interested in this content" or report it.

To my observations, society is still experimenting with universal design as it is harder to notice features that make certain actions or services accessible to all people, especially in the physical sense. However, I have noticed software companies releasing new features that make their products usable for all, for example, Apple's accessibility feature that reads out text and options for the user to interact with without having the need to read the screen.

This paragraph calls upon the reasons why we consider some people to be disabled. We do not classify certain people solely on their physical or mental differences but due to the low accommodation or opportunities present for them in society.

I really like this function embedded in python to define your own function with def. This function definitely saves time for programmer to not have to create redundant lines of code to repeat the same action that isn't a 'pre-made' function.

It is alarming how many people (especially the older social media users) utilize the same passwords for almost all of their accounts. Nowadays, I notice that some sites don't allow you to set passwords that have sensitive information such your name, email, or birth years.

I wonder how the popularity score function actually works. Is the function looking for key words that have positive/negative connotations? Are we looking at social media engagement with the string?

It is interesting and at the same time, eerie that social media can record your race and political leanings. I remember learning about how certain American campaigns target specific demographics (racial and geographical) to present them with catered political messages.

I remember this incident span out throughout the Black Lives Matter Movement realizing that an online community can come together to act in a manner that is inline with their values. Though, it was surprising that it was the K-pop community to lead this troll as usually obsessive fans can troll rivaling groups or members in the same manner.

Reading through this section of the origins of trolling present in older internet message boards, I realized that the exact method of trolling is used in modern social media cites. For community based media such as Reddit or Quora, older members still troll newcomers. The trolling can be based on niche knowledge that only older member retain, or some other aspects relating to the community.

This type of behavior is hilarious and unsettling at the same time. Especially nowadays, 'cancel-culture' has become widespread for public figures which prompts people to pretend as a part of marginalized groups to 'fake' disrespect or pity. As I have noticed on TikTok it is mostly non-poc users that get offended at people trying different aspects of foreign cultures, labeling it as "cultural appropriation"

I agree with the point that authenticity shouldn't be the deciding factor of labeling something as valuable or not. For example, different types of media are actually inauthentic and have been scripted. Types of these media include films, fictional literature, or even YouTube videos such as social experiments or pranks. These scripted content can help make a point that still resonates deeply with their audience without the need to being authentic.

Even though AOL may seem outdated in comparison to the multitude of social media platforms of the modern day, I noticed that we still use quite a few features from the chat system in today's softwares. For example, the online offline feature or profile quotes are a "new" feature on Instagram visible to your followers.

it is interesting that some UI designers will intentionally create friction to leverage the difficulty of pressing smaller buttons. Though most designers would like to create a frictionless feeling, I think a little bit of friction may create more interaction with the viewers; especially if the website is selling products, it might be helpful to force users to click on multiple buttons to get them exposed to more goods before they achieve their desired goal

I've always wondered how a computer stores sound. Learning that there are actual electrical currents being transferred into numbers is fascinating. It is interest how many different processes needs to be completed just to store a single second of sound; the sounds waves are pushing diaphragm and then the push & pull translates into electrical signals. It is an incredible feat that modern computers are able to complete these multitude of tasks in such a short time. Furthermore, I noticed that the technology of sound recording closely parallels how our ears capture and recognize sounds through electrical currents!

The functionality of these pauses are useful when trying to disguise a bot as a real user. The function may even allow bots to evade Twitter's bans but may repetitive pauses of the exact same interval may raise red flags and lead to a possible ban?

I related the Tweet of Justine Sacco to the fact that these women were assigned to complete calculations that would go on to aid the creation of thermonuclear bombs. The line blurs further between the debate of should people focus on innovations that may improve our livelihood and should inventors be accounted for the misdeeds of other users. The women would should’ve question their moral responsibility even though they are creating revolutionary technology, they they were aware of its direct uses.

Though utilitarians believe that the “end justify the means,” it is hard/impractical to determine which actions will please or harm populations—showcasing the subjectivity of this framework. Furthermore, utilitarianism doesn’t account for justice in a society as it strictly advocates for actions which bring the greatest benefits for a society.