This article explains how Facebook offers free internet service, but only to a limited extent. People were angry, because the free internet would only allow certain websites and offered only a few languages. This limited users' access and exposure. Even though I understand this would be frustrating, I wouldn't go so far as to call it "digital colonialism." If Facebook is offering something for free, its each person's choice whether to take it or leave it.

The concern with a government-funded social media site is censorship. If the government is in control of the public's media, they can control the narrative. The danger in this is that they can heavily influence what people think is going on in the world and the public's opinion on it.

This article explains the downside of what Jimmy Kimmel would call a "joke." The author looks deeper into the psychological effects of parents pretending to steal their kids' Halloween candy. She explains that the kids might experience lasting betrayal. Seeing their parents steal and lie can uproot their sense of morals and safety. The psychological effects on the child is not worth a five-second laugh on TV. This shows us that we must be careful about what "jokes" we promote on social media and television.

Often on social media when an influencer gets cancelled, they make an apology video. Whether or not the Internet forgives them depends on the sincerity of the influencer. In 2020, it was popular for influencers to do a "ukulele apology" and apologize in song form. This was often perceived as cringey and instead led to more hate and public shaming.

This article talks about the hate against Megan Markle. It makes me sad, because it seems like there is no real motive for this hate, yet she still receives it on the daily. The journalist writes that maybe the motive is simply racism or a desire to break up the royal family. However, it doesn't seem like Megan has done anything to warrant this kind of hateful response. This is sad. It shows that crowd harassment will continue to happen even without a direct "motive." Even if Megan had done something publicly deemed "wrong," it would still be immoral to harass her.

Crowd harassment is bullying. Therefore, it is hurtful and it is wrong. Even if the target is rich, famous, or powerful, words can be hurtful, and we should not use them to harass anyone. Crowd harassment can seem excusable because we think that if everyone is speaking hatefully about someone it must be excusable. However, we cannot succumb to this form of peer pressure. It is never okay to harass someone, even if they have opinions you do not agree with and even if others say it is okay to harass them.

This article explains how a missing hiker was tracked down using his most recently sent photo. Obviously, this is a positive use of technology. However, it makes me wonder, what photos should we be posting? This article proves how it is doable to find someone even from a picture showing a part of a cliff. In the same way, stalkers or people with ill intentions could track people down simply from an Instagram post. We must be cautious and private!

A fun example of this is the movie You've Got Mail. Two people fall for each other because they are communicating anonymously online. In person, they are feuding business colleagues. This shows how anonymous communication on social media can add another layer to our already existing relationships.

This article explains that Reddit's attempt to ban offensive content actually worked. They shut down certain threads and communities centered around fat-shaming or racism. According to the article, it led to a significant decrease in this type of hate speech and many users in those communities left the site. However, this begs the question, did this ban truly fix the problem? On Reddit, possibly. But most banned users simply moved to a different social media platform and continued on. This shows that the problem is an internal heart problem. Reddit's rules can't solve the emotional turmoil in someone's heart that is causing them to speak out in aggression or hate.

This is interesting to me because different people have different opinions on what is appropriate or offensive. Some people may go to social media as an outlet to express themselves in a way that they know might get them in trouble in person. In my opinion, these things listed (violence, sex, nudity, racial slurs) should be banned. However, that is a personal preference. Since social media is supposed to be a place where free speech is protected, how do we balance maintaining that liberty with personal preferences? Is there no balance?

This article explained a study conducted by students at UW. They created a Twitter-like app called Chirp and created pop-up notifications every three minutes asking users if they were mindlessly scrolling. The goal was to see if users enter a dissociative state on social media. One researcher said, "social media platforms are designed to keep people scrolling. When we are in a dissociative state, we have a diminished sense of agency." This makes sense to me. It's hard to only spend a minute or two on social media. Once you open the app once, you want to open it more and more throughout the day. For me, I've found that "fasting" off of social media completely works the best if I am trying to limit my usage.

Sometimes after going on social media, I find myself comparing myself to people on the internet. This is a negative part of social media and has a poor impact on my mental health. On the other hand, it allows me to keep in touch with people who live far away and who I am not able to see everyday. In this way, its good for my mental health.

This article is a compilation of lots of Tweets made by Monica Lewinsky. The writer praises her humor and says she is a "light" in the cesspool of Twitter. I appreciate how she makes light of a bad situation. She knows that there are many eyes on her and she isn't fazed by it. I think this is a positive example of using social media for good. She uses it to make people laugh, instead of using it to tear people down.

I like the analogy of sourdough for the Internet. It seemed silly to me at first, but it actually is quite accurate. The sourdough starter grows and develops over time. In the same way, a meme or an online joke starts with one user / one event, and morphs depending on who interacts with it. People can put viral topics in new contexts and give them a new light. The sourdough starter can be used into multiple different loaves.

In summary, this article explains TikTok's algorithm and why it is superior to other platforms (such as YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels). The ability to easily scroll through videos makes the user not as perceptive to the fact that they are consuming a lot of content they don't like. Scrolling makes it easy to quickly find what they do want to watch. TikTok also has a vertical layout, which aligns with how users hold the phone and use their thumbs to scroll. Differently, most YouTube shorts creators are clipping longform horizontal content into shorts. TikTok also allows each video to have an audience by giving each video a chance to go viral even if the creator has minimal subscribers. This motivates consumers to also be creators and builds the TikTok empire further. Lastly, TikTok shows users videos from niches that they have never seen before. They are able to take this risk, because of the easily swipe-able format.

An example of this is the photos app. It automatically puts together collections of memories from certain locations or time periods and then shows them when you open the photos app. This can be problematic, because sometimes the "memories" are not pleasant. It might be a collection of photos of you and your ex, a collage of your homework from middle school, or from a funeral.

This article talks about Antico - a woman who sees the world a little differently. She is a tetrochromatat, which means she can see more colors than the rest of us. She uses this to her advantage in her work as a painter, creating unique interpretations of ordinary objects or landscapes that are filled with unique colors. She is an example that disabilities are not a bad thing. Instead, they are a superpower.

Another example of this is the speech to text function on iMessage. If users are unable to use their hands to type and create a text, users can instead speak and the phone will convert the speech to text and send it. This also works in the opposite way, allowing users to hear a verbal replaying of a text instead of having to read it on the screen if they are unable to.

This article explains how Facebook was storing a list of millions of Instagram passwords. They advertised it as tens of thousands, hoping to make the issue seem less intense. However, the number was truly in the millions. They stored the passwords in plain text, even though they were supposed to be encrypted. Records show that 20,000 Facebook employees had access to these passwords. Even though the situation seemed dire, Facebook didn't urge users to change their passwords and barely called attention to the incident. This shows how as users we must take privacy precautions into our own hands. The company will usually not be looking out for our privacy, so we must do it ourselves.

This example surprised me. Usually when I think of the idea of privacy, I think of it as something that needs to be respected at all costs across social media, especially by the company running the site. Each user's information and habits are their own and should not be easily viewable by the company. However, this example of death threats and harassment is something that most definitely has happened before and will happen again. In this instance, I would 100% want the company to be able to access my private messages. In this case, a disruption of privacy would be ethical, because it is in the intention of creating safety and protection. Instances like these should be the exceptions to the general rule of privacy.

This article explains how researchers at UW who created the center for the Informed Public are trying to approach the Covid misinformation. At the end of the article, Kate Starbird said something that surprised me. She explained how she believes social media platforms should not punish their users for spreading misinformation, because that is what dictators and authoritarian states do. This is interesting and makes me wonder how she would rather the problem be solved. If the posts can't be taken down and users can't be stopped, how will we be able to tell what information is correct?

The thing that surprised me the most was that companies are allowed to see what sites you view and then put their ad on those sites. The book explained that advertising companies can see who views their ad, then what that person also looks at. This seems to be a step too far and a violation of privacy.

This article explains how comedian Jackie King pretended to be the FBI on Twitter and tweeted, "Just because we killed MLK doesn't mean we can't miss him." Personally, I don't think this is a funny joke. MLK's assassination was a tragedy, not a spectacle. He doesn't deserve to be the punchline in a Twitter joke years later or a mechanism for Jackie King to make money or become more famous.

Trolling on the Internet is rarely funny. When we post, we must think about the real-world implications. How might this "joke" about MLK effect his grieving family or folks at the FBI who respect MLK?

It's interesting to me how trolling was a thing even at the beginning of social media. This shows how everything that humans create can become corrupted. What is intended for good can always be twisted and mistreated, because we are imperfect creatures. Social media might have started as a place for people to connect with each other, but even from the beginning people also used it to "troll" each other (substituting genuine connection for trickery and hate).

This story is absolutely wild. A woman named BethAnn pretended on Twitter to be a Native American queer woman who was a professor at ASU and who was a victim of sexual harassment. She used the account for her own personal gain. She used it to give credibility to herself (the fake account would post praise about BethAnn), lead MeTooSTEM, and even raise $75k through a gofundme. One day BethAnn announced that the woman behind the account had died of Covid and she even held a funeral for her. This level of deception is insane. It shows that of course, we can't believe everything we see on the Internet. It also serves as a warning to us of the level of deceit and manipulation that the Internet can be used to create.

This idea plays out often in short-form video content (such as TikTok, Youtube shorts, or Instagram reels). Creators like hayleyybaylee and janeinsane exemplify this idea. They made sarcastic and satirical videos that at first appear to be reality. Hayleyybaylee makes videos about a day in her life as a "billionaire's girlfriend," where she does absurd tasks around her fancy New York apartment dressed in full glam. Janeinsane makes videos about Utah moms. She exaggerates their stereotypical qualities (for instance, using Stanley cups). Both creators are playful and fun, and their audiences aren't mad that they aren't completely authentic. The purpose of their content isn't to inform or teach, it's simply to make others laugh. That is where it's excusable to let authenticity slide.

To summarize this article, user friction is anything that prevents someone from using the website or app in the way that it is intended and how they want. Emotional friction occurs when the user has a complex negative emotional reaction caused by the site and is hindered from completing the task. Interaction friction happens when the site is not easy to navigate. Cognitive friction is when the site isn't setup in the way that a user is used to, and so they give up on trying to figure out the new terms.

This makes me wonder, should we have restrictions on what can be posted on social media? Isn't that taking away freedom of speech? Is it the CEO's responsibility to ensure that the social media site is being used for good? Does the CEO carry that burden, or is it on the individual users?

This article explains that during the super bowl in 2024, 75% of X's site visits were bots. This is wild to me. It makes me wonder, are social media sites like X even worth it anymore? If the vast majority of users are bots, we aren't even interacting with other humans anymore and the purpose of social media (to connect and share) is lost.

Before reading this, I had never thought of this situation (the woman posting with kids from a different country) in this way before. However, it's so true. The woman should not be posting a child without their consent. Additionally, posting about the trip and taking advantage of the kids in that way almost devalues the original purpose of the trip. It makes me question the woman's motives. Did she really go abroad to raise money and help out? Or did she just want to take photos so the world would know she was a good person who goes abroad and volunteers. It's important to remember that social media is only one side of the picture. We see only what the person is showing us, not their intention behind it.

In this source, Jeong discussed how a bot quickly became racist, even though it had filters on certain words it could say. This brought up the idea of context. The bot could be told not to use specific words (like slurs), but it had no awareness of how normal words (she used the example "boy") could turn offensive or racist depending on the context. This is an interesting problem that highlights humanity's complexity. What is right and wrong to a computer might be gray and nuanced in real life. When surfing on the internet, we need to remember that real life has depth, context, and emotions.

This makes me wonder...how many online accounts are actually bots? Is social media completely inauthentic? Are we all getting angry at or being led by bots run by people simply trying to make a profit?

Social media is a way to create the life that we idealize. People post their best angles, biggest smiles, and cutest moments. They leave out the tears, bad hair days, and long commutes to work on a musty bus. Social media contains some snapshots of "real life," but cannot complete the picture. Online, people also become their most bold selves (debating people on topics they would be too scared to in mention person). Social media is a mechanism to tell people your top 1% is you 100% of the time.

This idea that the Internet only amplifies what is already happening in "real life" fascinates and surprises me. Can nothing new be created on the internet? Is the Internet all a reflection of other movements happening face to face? Can't people collaborate in new ways online that they otherwise could not have in person?