18.4. Repair and Reconciliation# The idea of repair (or reconciliation) has shown up a couple of times already, both in the role of shame in child development, and in the Enforcing Social Norms: The Morality of Public Shaming paper. Let’s look more at what a repair might or might not look like. 18.4.1. Limits of Reconciliation# When we think about repair and reconciliation, many of us might wonder where there are limits. Are there wounds too big to be repaired? Are there evils too great to be forgiven? Is anyone ever totally beyond the pale of possible reconciliation? Is there a point of no return? One way to approach questions of this kind is to start from limit cases. That is, go to the farthest limit and see what we find there by way of a template, then work our way back toward the everyday. Let’s look at two contrasting limit cases: one where philosophers and cultural leaders declared that repairs were possible even after extreme wrongdoing, and one where the wrongdoers were declared unforgivable.1

18.1. Shame vs. Guilt in childhood development# Before we talk about public criticism and shaming and adults, let’s look at the role of shame in childhood. In at least some views about shame and childhood1, shame and guilt hold different roles in childhood development: Shame is the feeling that “I am bad,” and the natural response to shame is for the individual to hide, or the community to ostracize the person. Guilt is the feeling that “This specific action I did was bad.” The natural response to feeling guilt is for the guilty person to want to repair the harm of their action. In this view, a good parent might see their child doing something bad or dangerous, and tell them to stop. The child may feel shame (they might not be developmentally able to separate their identity from the momentary rejection). The parent may then comfort the child to let the child know that they are not being rejected as a person, it was just their action that was a problem. The child’s relationship with the parent is repaired, and over time the child will learn to feel guilt instead of shame and seek to repair harm instead of hide.

You might remember from Chapter 14 that social contracts, whether literal or metaphorical, involve groups of people all accepting limits to their freedoms. Because of this, some philosophers say that a state or nation is, fundamentally, violent. Violence in this case refers to the way that individual Natural Rights and freedoms are violated by external social constraints. This kind of violence is considered to be legitimated by the agreement to the social contract. This might be easier to understand if you imagine a medical scenario. Say you have broken a bone and you are in pain. A doctor might say that the bone needs to be set; this will be painful, and kind of a forceful, “violent” action in which someone is interfering with your body in a painful way. So the doctor asks if you agree to let her set the bone. You agree, and so the doctor’s action is construed as being a legitimate interference with your body and your freedom. If someone randomly just walked up to you and started pulling at the injured limb, this unagreed violence would not be considered legitimate. Likewise, when medical practitioners interfere with a patient’s body in a way that is non-consensual or not what the patient agreed to, then the violence is considered illegitimate, or morally bad. We tend to think of violence as being another “normatively loaded” word, like authenticity. But where authenticity is usually loaded with a positive connotation–on the whole, people often value authenticity as a good thing–violence is loaded with a negative connotation. Yes, the doctor setting the bone is violent and invasive, but we don’t usually call this “violence” because it is considered to be a legitimate exercise of violence. Instead, we reserve the term “violence” mostly for describing forms of interference that we consider to be morally bad.

Individual harassment (one individual harassing another individual) has always been part of human cultures, bur social media provides new methods of doing so. There are many methods by which through social media. This can be done privately through things like: Bullying: like sending mean messages through DMs Cyberstalking: Continually finding the account of someone, and creating new accounts to continue following them. Or possibly researching the person’s physical location. Hacking: Hacking into an account or device to discover secrets, or make threats. Tracking: An abuser might track the social media use of their partner or child to prevent them from making outside friends. They may even install spy software on their victim’s phone. Death threats / rape threats Etc. Individual harassment can also be done publicly before an audience (such as classmates or family). For example: Bullying: like posting public mean messages Impersonation: Making an account that appears to be from someone and having that account say things to embarrass or endanger the victim. Doxing: Publicly posting identifying information about someone (e.g., full name, address, phone number, etc.). Revenge porn / deep-fake porn Etc.

16.3.2. Well-Intentioned Harm# Sometimes even well-intentioned efforts can do significant harm. For example, in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, FBI released a security photo of one of the bombers and asked for tips. A group of Reddit users decided to try to identify the bomber(s) themselves. They quickly settled on a missing man (Sunil Tripathi) as the culprit (it turned out had died by suicide and was in no way related to the case), and flooded the Facebook page set up to search for Sunil Tripathi, causing his family unnecessary pain and difficulty. The person who set up the “Find Boston Bomber” Reddit board said “It Was a Disaster” but “Incredible”, and Reddit apologized for online Boston ‘witch hunt’. 16.3.3. Social and political movements# Some ad hoc crowdsourcing can be part of a social or political movement. For example, Social media organizing played a role in the Arab Spring revolutions in the 2010s, and Social Media platforms were a large part of the #MeToo movement, where victims of sexual abuse/harassment spoke up and stood together. 16.3.4. Crowd harassment# Social media crowdsoucing can also be used for harassment, which we’ll look at more in the next couple chapters. But for some examples: the case of Justine Sacco involved crowdsourcing to identify and track her flight, and even get a photo of her turning on her phone.

16.1.1. Different Ways of Collaborating and Communicating# There have been many efforts to use computers to replicate the experience of communicating with someone in person, through things like video chats, or even telepresence robots]. But there are ways that attempts to recreate in-person interactions inevitably fall short and don’t feel the same. Instead though, we can look at different characteristics that computer systems can provide, and find places where computer-based communication works better, and is Beyond Being There (pdf here). Some of the different characteristics that means of communication can have include (but are not limited to): Location: Some forms of communication require you to be physically close, some allow you to be located anywhere with an internet signal. Time delay: Some forms of communication are almost instantaneous, some have small delays (you might see this on a video chat system), or have significant delays (like shipping a package). Synchronicity: Some forms of communication require both participants to communicate at the same time (e.g., video chat), while others allow the person to respond when convenient (like a mailed physical letter). Archiving: Some forms of communication automatically produce an archive of the communication (like a chat message history), while others do not (like an in-person conversation) Anonymity: Some forms of communication make anonymity nearly impossible (like an in-person conversation), while others make it easy to remain anonymous. -Audience: Communication could be private or public, and they could be one-way (no ability to reply), or two+-way where others can respond. Because of these (and other) differences, different forms of communication might be preferable for different tasks. For example, you might send an email to the person sitting next at work to you if you want to keep an archive of the communication (which is also conveniently grouped into email threads). Or you might send a text message to the person sitting next to you if you are criticizing the teacher, but want to do so discretely, so the teacher doesn’t notice.

14.5.1. Origin Story for Moderation# One concept that comes up in a lot of different ethical frameworks is moderation. Famously, Confucian thinkers prized moderation as a sound principle for living, or as a virtue, and taught the value of the ‘golden mean’, or finding a balanced, moderate state between extremes. This golden mean idea got picked up by Aristotle—we might even say ripped off by Aristotle—as he framed each virtue as a medial state between two extremes. You could be cowardly at one extreme, or brash and reckless at the other; in the golden middle is courage. You could be miserly and penny-pinching, or you could be a reckless spender, but the aim is to find a healthy balance between those two. Moderation, or being moderate, is something that is valued in many ethical frameworks, not because it comes naturally to us, per se, but because it is an important part of how we form groups and come to trust each other for our shared survival and flourishing. Moderation also comes up in deontological theories, including the political philosophy tradition that grew out of Kantian rationalism: the tradition that is often identified with John Rawls, although there are many other variations out there too. In brief, here is the journey of the idea: Kant was influenced by ideas that were trending in his time–the European era we call the “Enlightenment”, which became very interested in the idea of rationality. We could write books about what they meant by the idea of “rationality”, and Kant certainly did so, but you probably already have a decent idea of what rationality is about. Rationalism tries to use reasoning, logical argument, and scientific evidence to figure out what to make of the world. Kant took this idea and ran with it, exploring the question of what if everything, even morality, could be derived from looking at rationality in the abstract. Many philosophers and, let’s face it, many sensible people since Kant have questioned whether his project could succeed, or whether his question was even a good question to be asking. Can one person really get that kind of “god’s-eye view” of ultimate rationality? People disagree a lot about what would be the most rational way to live. Some philosophers even suggested that it is hard to think about what is rational or reasonable without our take being skewed by our own aims and egos. We instinctively take whatever suits our own goals and frame it in the shape of reasons. Those who do not want their wealth taxed have reasons in the shape of rational arguments for why they should not be taxed. Those who do believe wealth should be taxed have reasons in the shape of rational arguments for why taxes should be imposed. Our motivations can massively affect which of those rationales we find to be most rational. This is what John Rawls wanted to address.

14.1. What Content Gets Moderated# Social media platforms moderate (that is ban, delete, or hide) different kinds of content. There are a number of categories that they might ban things: 14.1.1. Quality Control# In order to make social media sites usable and interesting to users, they may ban different types of content such as advertisements, disinformation, or off-topic posts. Almost all social media sites (even the ones that claim “free speech”) block spam, mass-produced unsolicited messages, generally advertisements, scams, or trolling. Without quality control moderation, the social media site will likely fill up with content that the target users of the site don’t want, and those users will leave. What content is considered “quality” content will vary by site, with 4chan considering a lot of offensive and trolling content to be “quality” but still banning spam (because it would make the site repetitive in a boring way), while most sites would ban some offensive content.

12.5.2. Cultural appropriation# The online community activity of copying and remixing can be a means of cultural appropriation, which is when one cultural group adopts something from another culture in an unfair or disrespectful way (as opposed to a fair, respectful cultural exchange). For example, many phrases from Black American culture have been appropriated by white Americans and had their meanings changed or altered (like “woke”, “cancel”, “shade”, “sip/spill the tea”, etc.). Additionally, white Americans often use images and gifs of Black people reacting and expressing emotions. This modern practice with gifs has been compared to the earlier (and racist) art forms of blackface, where white actors would paint their faces black and then act in exaggerated unintelligent ways.

12.1.2. Memes# In the 1976 book The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins1 said rather than looking at the evolution of organisms, it made even more sense to look at the evolution of the genes of those organisms (sections of DNA that perform some functions and are inherited). For example, if a bee protects its nest by stinging an attacking animal and dying, then it can’t reproduce and it might look like a failure of evolution. But if the gene that told the bee to die protecting the nest was shared by the other bees in the nest, then that one bee dying allows the gene to keep being replicated, so the gene is successful evolutionarily. Since genes contained information about how organisms would grow and live, then biological evolution could be considered to be evolving information. Dawkins then took this idea of the evolution of information and applied it to culture, coining the term “meme” (intended to sound like “gene”). A meme is a piece of culture that might reproduce in an evolutionary fashion, like a hummable tune that someone hears and starts humming to themselves, perhaps changing it, and then others overhearing next. In this view, any piece of human culture can be considered a meme that is spreading (or failing to spread) according to evolutionary forces. So we can use an evolutionary perspective to consider the spread of: Technology (languages, weapons, medicine, writing, math, computers, etc.), religions philosophies political ideas (democracy, authoritarianism, etc.) art organizations etc.

Biological evolution is how living things change, generation after generation, and how all the different forms of life, from humans to bacteria, came to be. Evolution occurs when three conditions are present: Replication (with Inheritance) An organism can make a new copy of itself, which inherits its characteristics Variations / Mutations The characteristics of an organism are sometimes changed, in a way that can be inherited by future copies Natural Selection Some characteristics make it more or less likely for an organism to compete for resources, survive, and make copies of itself When those three conditions are present, then over time successive generations of organisms will: be more adapted to their environment divide into different groups and diversify stumble upon strategies for competing with or cooperating with other organisms.

12.3.1. Replication (With Inheritance)# For social media content, replication means that the content (or a copy or modified version) gets seen by more people. Additionally, when a modified version gets distributed, future replications of that version will include the modification (a.k.a., inheritance). There are ways of duplicating that are built into social media platforms: Actions such as: liking, reposting, replying, and paid promotion get the original posting to show up for users more Actions like quote tweeting, or the TikTok Duet feature let people see the original content, but modified with new context. Social media sites also provide ways of embedding posts in other places, like in news articles There are also ways of replicating social media content that aren’t directly built into the social media platform, such as: copying images or text and reposting them yourself taking screenshots, and cross-posting to different sites

11.2.1. Individual vs. Systemic Analysis# Individual analysis focuses on the behavior, bias, and responsibility an individual has, while systemic analysis focuses on the how organizations and rules may have their own behaviors, biases, and responsibility that aren’t necessarily connected to what any individual inside intends. For example, there were differences in US criminal sentencing guidelines between crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine in the 90s. The guidelines suggested harsher sentences on the version of cocaine more commonly used by Black people, and lighter sentences on the version of cocaine more commonly used by white people. Therefore, when these guidelines were followed, they had have racially biased (that is, racist) outcomes regardless of intent or bias of the individual judges. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act).

When social media platforms show users a series of posts, updates, friend suggestions, ads, or anything really, they have to use some method of determining which things to show users. The method of determining what is shown to users is called a recommendation algorithm, which is an algorithm (a series of steps or rules, such as in a computer program) that recommends posts for users to see, people for users to follow, ads for users to view, or reminders for users. Some recommendation algorithms can be simple such as reverse chronological order, meaning it shows users the latest posts (like how blogs work, or Twitter’s “See latest tweets” option). They can also be very complicated taking into account many factors, such as: Time since posting (e.g., show newer posts, or remind me of posts that were made 5 years ago today) Whether the post was made or liked by my friends or people I’m following How much this post has been liked, interacted with, or hovered over Which other posts I’ve been liking, interacting with, or hovering over What people connected to me or similar to me have been liking, interacting with, or hovering over What people near you have been liking, interacting with, or hovering over (they can find your approximate location, like your city, from your internet IP address, and they may know even more precisely) This perhaps explains why sometimes when you talk about something out loud it gets recommended to you (because someone around you then searched for it). Or maybe they are actually recording what you are saying and recommending based on that. Phone numbers or email addresses (sometimes collected deceptively) can be used to suggest friends or contacts. And probably many more factors as well!

10.2.3. Making an environment work for all# Another strategy for managing disability is to use Universal Design, which originated in architecture. In universal design, the goal is to make environments and buildings have options so that there is a way for everyone to use it2. For example, a building with stairs might also have ramps and elevators, so people with different mobility needs (e.g., people with wheelchairs, baby strollers, or luggage) can access each area. In the elevators the buttons might be at a height that both short and tall people can reach. The elevator buttons might have labels both drawn (for people who can see them) and in braille (for people who cannot), and the ground floor button may be marked with a star, so that even those who cannot read can at least choose the ground floor. In this way of managing disabilities, the burden is put on the designers to make sure the environment works for everyone, though disabled people might need to go out of their way to access features of the environment. 10.2.4. Making a tool adapt to users# When creating computer programs, programmers can do things that aren’t possible with architecture (where Universal Design came out of), that is: programs can change how they work for each individual user. All people (including disabled people) have different abilities, and making a system that can modify how it runs to match the abilities a user has is called Ability based design. For example, a phone might detect that the user has gone from a dark to a light environment, and might automatically change the phone brightness or color scheme to be easier to read. Or a computer program might detect that a user’s hands tremble when they are trying to select something on the screen, and the computer might change the text size, or try to guess the intended selection. In this way of managing disabilities, the burden is put on the computer programmers and designers to detect and adapt to the disabled person.

A disability is an ability that a person doesn’t have, but that their society expects them to have.1 For example: If a building only has staircases to get up to the second floor (it was built assuming everyone could walk up stairs), then someone who cannot get up stairs has a disability in that situation. If a physical picture book was made with the assumption that people would be able to see the pictures, then someone who cannot see has a disability in that situation. If tall grocery store shelves were made with the assumption that people would be able to reach them, then people who are short, or who can’t lift their arms up, or who can’t stand up, all would have a disability in that situation. If an airplane seat was designed with little leg room, assuming people’s legs wouldn’t be too long, then someone who is very tall, or who has difficulty bending their legs would have a disability in that situation. Which abilities are expected of people, and therefore what things are considered disabilities, are socially defined. Different societies and groups of people make different assumptions about what people can do, and so what is considered a disability in one group, might just be “normal” in another.

Besides hacking, there are other forms of privacy violations, such as: Unclear Privacy Rules: Sometimes privacy rules aren’t made clear to the people using a system. For example: If you send “private” messages on a work system, your boss might be able to read them. When Elon Musk purchased Twitter, he also was purchasing access to all Twitter Direct Messages Others Posting Without Permission: Someone may post something about another person without their permission. See in particular: The perils of ‘sharenting’: The parents who share too much Metadata: Sometimes the metadata that comes with content might violate someone’s privacy. For example, in 2012, former tech CEO John McAfee was a suspect in a murder in Belize, John McAfee hid out in secret. But when Vice magazine wrote an article about him, the photos in the story contained metadata with the exact location in Guatemala. Deanonymizing Data: Sometimes companies or researchers release datasets that have been “anonymized,” meaning that things like names have been removed, so you can’t directly see who the data is about. But sometimes people can still deduce who the anonymized data is about. This happened when Netflix released anonymized movie ratings data sets, but at least some users’ data could be traced back to them. Inferred Data: Sometimes information that doesn’t directly exist can be inferred through data mining (as we saw last chapter), and the creation of that new information could be a privacy violation. This includes the creation of Shadow Profiles, which are information about the user that the user didn’t provide or consent to Non-User Information: Social Media sites might collect information about people who don’t have accounts, like how Facebook does

.1. Privacy# There are many reasons, both good and bad, that we might want to keep information private. There might be some things that we just feel like aren’t for public sharing (like how most people wear clothes in public, hiding portions of their bodies) We might want to discuss something privately, avoiding embarrassment that might happen if it were shared publicly We might want a conversation or action that happens in one context not to be shared in another (context collapse) We might want to avoid the consequences of something we’ve done (whether ethically good or bad), so we keep the action or our identity private We might have done or said something we want to be forgotten or make at least made less prominent We might want to prevent people from stealing our identities or accounts, so we keep information (like passwords) private We might want to avoid physical danger from a stalker, so we might keep our location private We might not want to be surveilled by a company or government that could use our actions or words against us (whether what we did was ethically good or bad) When we use social media platforms though, we at least partially give up some of our privacy. For example, a social media application might offer us a way of “Private Messaging” (also called Direct Messaging) with another user. But in most cases those “private” messages are stored in the computers at those companies, and the company might have computer programs that automatically search through the messages, and people with the right permissions might be able to view them directly. In some cases we might want a social media company to be able to see our “private” messages, such as if someone was sending us death threats. We might want to report that user to the social media company for a ban, or to law enforcement (though many people have found law enforcement to be not helpful), and we want to open access to those “private” messages to prove that they were sent. 9.1.1. Privacy Rights# Some governments and laws protect the privacy of individuals (using a Natural Rights ethical framing). These include the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which includes a “right to be forgotten”, and the United State’s Supreme Court has at times inferred a constitutional right to privacy

People working with data sets always have to deal with problems in their data, stemming from things like mistyped data entries, missing data, and the general problem of all data being a simplification of reality. Sometimes a dataset has so many problems that it is effectively poisoned or not feasible to work with.

Social Media platforms use the data they collect on users and infer about users to increase their power and increase their profits. One of the main goals of social media sites is to increase the time users are spending on their social media sites. The more time users spend, the more money the site can get from ads, and also the more power and influence those social media sites have over those users. So social media sites use the data they collect to try and figure out what keeps people using their site, and what can they do to convince those users they need to open it again later. Social media sites then make their money by selling targeted advertising, meaning selling ads to specific groups of people with specific interests. So, for example, if you are selling spider stuffed animal toys, most people might not be interested, but if you could find the people who want those toys and only show your ads to them, your advertising campaign might be successful, and those users might be happy to find out about your stuffed animal toys. But targeting advertising can be used in less ethical ways, such as targeting gambling ads at children, or at users who are addicted to

In the early Internet message boards that were centered around different subjects, experienced users would “troll for newbies” by posting naive questions that all the experienced users were already familiar with. The “newbies” who didn’t realize this was a troll would try to engage and answer, and experienced users would feel superior and more part of the group knowing they didn’t fall for the troll like the “newbies” did. These message boards are where the word “troll” with this meaning comes from.

Every “we” implies a not-“we”. A group is constituted in part by who it excludes. Think back to the origin of humans caring about authenticity: if being able to trust each other is so important, then we need to know WHICH people are supposed to be entangled in those bonds of mutual trust with us, and which are not from our own crew. As we have developed larger and larger societies, states, and worldwide communities, the task of knowing whom to trust has become increasingly large. All groups have variations within them, and some variations are seen as normal. But the bigger groups get, the more variety shows up, and starts to feel palpable. In a nation or community where you don’t know every single person, how do you decide who’s in your squad?

Select one of the above assumptions that you think is important to address. Then write a 1-2 sentence scenario where a user could not use Facebook as expected because of the assumption you selected. This represents one way the design could exclude certain users.

What assumptions does Facebook’s name policy make about its users’ identities and their needs that might not be true or might cause problems? List as many as you can think of (bullet points encouraged).

Open two social media sites and choose equivalent views on each (e.g., a list of posts, an individual post, an author page etc.). List what actions are immediately available. Then explore and see what actions are available after one additional action (e.g., opening a menu), then what actions are two steps away. What do you notice about the similarities and differences in these sites?

Now it’s your turn to try designing a social media site. Decide a type of social media site (e.g., a video site like youtube or tiktok, or a dating site, etc.), and a particular view of that site (e.g., profile picture, post, comment, etc.). Draw a rough sketch of the view of the site, and then make a list of: What actions would you want available immediately What actions would you want one or two steps away? What actions would you not allow users to do (e.g., there is no button anywhere that will let you delete someone else’s account)?

Can you think of an example of pernicious ignorance in social media interaction?

All data is a simplification of reality.

Why do you think social media platforms allow bots to operate?

Bots, on the other hand, will do actions through social media accounts and can appear to be like any other user. The bot might be the only thing posting to the account, or human users might sometimes use a bot to post for them.

Being and becoming an exemplary person (e.g., benevolent; sincere; honoring and sacrificing to ancestors; respectful to parents, elders and authorities, taking care of children and the young; generous to family and others). These traits are often performed and achieved through ceremonies and rituals (including sacrificing to ancestors, music, and tea drinking), resulting in a harmonious society. Key figures:

What do you think is the responsibility of tech workers to think through the ethical implications of what they are making?