How have your views on ethics changed (or been reinforced)?
My views on ethics definitely has been broadened after learning the ethical frameworks and engaging in discussions about ethical issues in technology throughout the quarter. Before taking this class, I relied on my personal standards and ethics to determine the morality of situations. Now I learned that individual ethical frameworks can vary significantly, which has enriched my comprehension of ethics as well.
We hope with this you can be a more informed user of social media, better able to participate, protect yourself, and make it a valuable experience for you and others you interact with.
This is one of the biggest takeaway I had in this class. Learning how to program a bot to manipulate or moderate content on social media, and discussing ethical issues in tech has provide so many insights for me. And this class also makes me have a better understanding of my responsibility as a social media user and as a member of society.
How would a user do the retraction? What options would they have (e.g., can they choose to keep or delete the original tweet content)? What additional information would they be able to provide?
I like this interesting idea of designing a retract button for social media platform like Twitter. It not only minimizes misinformation, it also can improve the efficiency and user experience when someone need to clarify for their prior tweets. And back to question, I think the retract button should not allow users to delete the original twee content, otherwise users would be able to or would look like they intended to hide their history, which is exactly the dilemma mentioned before. Additionally, it would be great that the retraction function allows user add a statement to clarify their previous statement, apologize, or provide accurate information to correct a precious error.
The consequences for being “canceled” can range from simply the experience of being criticized, to loss of job or criminal charges.
It's a very important and true statement that cancel culture can range from many different ways. And I also want to mention that, cancel culture generally targets individuals with less societal or financial power. So it's important for social media users to understand the potential repercussions of being "canceled". This awareness would remind users to be careful and thoughtful for criticism, and thereby preventing further intentional harm to those at the receiving end.
Do you believe crowd harassment is ever justified?
I don't believe crowd harassment could be justified. Everyone has bias, it's essentially impossible for any of us to fully understand the nuances and complexities of another's point of view. So I don't support online crowd harassment.
Do you think there are ways a social media platform can encourage good crowdsourcing and discourage bad crowdsourcing?
I believe the social media platform definitely has the power to encourage or discourage crowdsourcing. Reflecting on the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing case, wherein Reddit users initiated a suspect hunt, platforms like Reddit could incorporate measures such as banners or reminders at the top of posts to reinforce the notion that discussions are not definitive accusations against anyone. Moreover, when users singled out someone, the platform should engage in verification processes and provide clarifications to prevent misinformation.
Social Media platforms were a large part of the #MeToo movement, where victims of sexual abuse/harassment spoke up and stood together.
This example illustrates the positive potential of crowdsourcing. The property of online privacy offered by social media platforms empowers individuals to share their experiences without necessarily revealing their identities, which is also a important factor in facilitating engagement and promoting movements like #MeToo. However, as the surrounding examples also suggest that the effects of crowdsourcing can swing both positive or negative ways, depending on its application and use.
In addition to the trauma, by finding places where they can pay workers less and get them to do undesirable work, they are exploiting current inequalities to increase their profits.
It's sadly surprised to see that highly profitable companies often choose to hire moderators from countries with lower wages and overlook the potential trauma these workers may experience. By doing so, they contribute to widening inequality and demonstrate a lack of social responsibility. They should really have a therapy team to take care of their workers.
In the contexts of social media and public debate, moderation has a meaning that is about creating limits and boundaries about what is posted to keep things working well.
I agree that boundaries and limits are crucial for maintaining a safe and friendly environment on social media. However, it's also essential to consider the ethical implications of moderation power held by the platform. What if they overstep and moderate content that shouldn't be restricted? For example, I know that Weibo, a mainstream Chinese social media platform, often deletes posts related to sensitive topics such as homosexuality or societal safety issues.
Some people view internet-based social media (and other online activities) as inherently toxic and therefore encourage a digital detox, where people take some form of a break from social media platforms and digital devices.
It's very interesting to learn the term "digital detox". Taking a break from it is essential for maintaining mental health. It's important to remember that we should use social media to bring comfort and happiness into our lives, rather than letting it control us.
If [social media] was just bad, I’d just tell all the kids to throw their phone in the ocean, and it’d be really easy. The problem is it - we are hyper-connected, and we’re lonely. We’re overstimulated, and we’re numb. We’re expressing our self, and we’re objectifying ourselves. So I think it just sort of widens and deepens the experiences of what kids are going through
I really like this statement from Bo Burnham, it's humorous but true. I agree that social media can be seen as a huge bubble, encompassing all sorts of emotions and influences. Whether these are positive or negative depends entirely on how individuals choose to use and interact with the platform.
I’ve been forced time and time again with these 6 panels, to be the party pooper, gate-keeper, girlboss, etc and just to get people to recognize there are artists behind these drawings online. These memes we share.
This quote feels sad and helpless to me, as an artist has to repeatedly recreate their work just to quietly emphasize their credit. I think citation and credit are significant issues in the virality of memes. When most people don't care about giving credit and repost without mentioning the source, it becomes very difficult to defend copyright.
In this way, as people split and share their starters, sourdough starters are spread, multiply and evolve (including the microorganisms evolving biologically)
It's really interesting to know about the old fashion about sourdough starters back to 1847. This is my first time hearing about this baking tool, and I find it fascinating that sharing starters was once a trend.
Similarly, recommendation algorithms are rules set in place that might produce biased, unfair, or unethical outcomes.
I just read a reading about design strategy employed by most websites and applications, which indicates that most recommendation algorithms still use the gender binary framework because it's represented by the majority of the audience. However, this approach is obviously biased and unfair by neglecting the diversity of sexuality and users' identity.
Let’s look more at a particular example of an accessibility design: alt-text on images (which we mentioned previously in chapter 2).
While I'm taking INFO 340, the client-side development class this quarter, I also learned a lot accessible design methods and concept, and the alt-text on images is one of the main points. The alt-text is the description of the image, which can help the screen-reader to explain what's the meaning of the image to people with visible disabilities.
A disability is an ability that a person doesn’t have, but that their society expects them to have.1 For example:
This chapter reminds me what I've learned in a disability study class. The terminology matters because you are putting a person first. The person should be considered as an individual, and their disability is an add on to themselves. And a person’s freedom increases when their capabilities increase. Therefore, accessible design is very important and meaningful to people with disabilities since it can increase their capabilities and freedom.
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.
The California Privacy Rights Act is the only privacy regulation that comes to mind for me. I was surprised to learn that California is the only state in the US that has taken legal steps to protect consumers' privacy, particularly online. And some websites may still require users to consent to the use of cookies in order to access certain functions. Privacy and security is the most important thing we should protect when we're accessing internet, and I think everyone should realize and advocate for this.
Employees at the company misusing their access, like Facebook employees using their database permissions to stalk women
This news reminds me a similar incident involving Tesla workers who shared footage captured by the company's vehicle cameras. Even two years after the Facebook data leak, it's clear that accessing technology can still pose significant risks to our privacy and security.
So those Redditors suggested they spam the site with fake applications, poisoning the job application data, so Kellogg’s wouldn’t be able to figure out which applications were legitimate or not (we could consider this a form of trolling).
This example looks quite positive to me and it's even more interesting to relate it to the term "data poisoning". Even though Redditors used data to poison the Kellogg company but help their workers, we still need to understand data poisoning does not necessarily benefit for the majority of people and it deserves more discussion on the ethical implication.
But targeting advertising can be used in less ethical ways, such as targeting gambling ads at children, or at users who are addicted to gambling
I believe many people would feel comfortable when they realize the internet is stealing their information such as the searching history and viewing history like I do. Every time I watch videos on Youtube, I will see the website targets advertising something I searched before on me. And even though I said no to sharing my privacy information with the website, I still have to face the same problem.
To create a social group and have it be sustainable, we depend on stable patterns, habits, and norms to create the reality of the grouping. In a diverse community, there are many subsets of patterns, habits, and norms which go into creating the overall social reality. Part of how people manage their social reality is by enforcing the patterns, habits, and norms which identify us; another way we do this is by enforcing, or policing, which subsets of patterns, habits, and norms get to be recognized as valid parts of the broader social reality. Both of these tactics can be done in appropriate, just, and responsible ways, or in highly unjust ways.
It's a very true statement that the one way to maintain a healthy and appropriate online community is to enforce and police people's social pattern. But more importantly, everyone should study how to manage their negative emotions and be responsible to their speaking online.
Punish or stop: Some trolling is in service of some view of justice, where a person, group or organization is viewed as doing something “bad” or “deserving” of punishment, and trolling is a way of fighting back.
I think this mindset deserves the most ethical discussion. It sounds like people engage in this type of trolling because of their justice and values, however, it's still inappropriate to express their negative emotion to the internet public.
When trying to view results from a search, or look through social media posts, you could only view a few at a time, and to see more you had to press a button to see the next “page” of results. This is how both Google search and Amazon search work at the time this is written. In 2006, Aza Raskin invented infinite scroll, where you can scroll to the bottom of the current results, and new results will get automatically filled in below. Most social media sites now use this, so you can then scroll forever and never hit an obstacle or friction as you endlessly look at social media posts. Aza Raskin regrets what infinite scroll has done to make it harder for users to break away from looking at social media sites.
I would say most social media use the infinite scrolling feature because they want users to spend more time than they intend on social media sites, and making it harder for them to break away. However, this intention doesn't fit with Google search since it would reduce its searching efficiency. More importantly, I don't like the idea of how the social media companies prioritize user experience and satisfaction without sacrificing our mental health. As technology continues to evolve, it's essential to strike a balance between progress and mindfulness.
Facebook was launched in 2004 and soon put most of its competitors out of business, while YouTube, launched in 2005 became a different sort of social networking site built around video.
It's really fascinating to see how fast social media has been developed within decades. From the chatting purpose at the beginning to nowadays' video streaming or dating app, as we've seen, these platforms have experienced varying degrees of success, each with their own unique features and strengths.
As you can see in the apple example, any time we turn something into data, we are making a simplification.1 If we are counting the number of something, like apples, we are deciding that each one is equivalent. If we are writing down what someone said, we are losing their tone of voice, accent, etc. If we are taking a photograph, it is only from one perspective, etc.
I like the counting apple example that illustrates how we might lose in simplifying data. While data can provide valuable information, it may not always capture the full complexity of the subject at hand.
Age Name Address Relationship status etc.
I would say the data type for age should be an integer, with a range of 13 to 120, although the minimum age may vary depending on the social media platform (e.g., 13 is the minimum age for using Twitter). The data types for name and address should be strings. One aspect that deserves more consideration is the relationship status. In my opinion, its data type could be a string with a predefined list, allowing users more flexibility in describing their relationship status, rather than limiting them to simply stating whether they are single or not.
Bots present a similar disconnect between intentions and actions. Bot programs are written by one or more people, potentially all with different intentions, and they are run by others people, or sometimes scheduled by people to be run by computers. This means we can analyze the ethics of the action of the bot, as well as the intentions of the various people involved, though those all might be disconnected.
The ethical considerations surrounding bots are very complex, as they involve multiple layers of responsibility and intention. Analyzing the intentions of the human who code the bots' program or even users of the bots highlights the need for a comprehensive understanding of the ethical implications of automation.
Bots might have significant limits on how helpful they are, such as tech support bots you might have had frustrating experiences with on various websites.
It's really interesting to know so many examples of how automation can make our lives easier and more efficient. And I believe ChatGPT would be another great example of the latest friendly bots.
Ayn Rand is sometimes popular with tech people and CEOs. Understandably, some CEOs view themselves as brilliant and like being told that ruthlessly pursuing their ambition is morally good. (Though the end-goal can’t be great feats of engineering, that self-interest must come first and great feats of engineering can only be a side-effect).
Although I understand that some individuals, particularly tycoons, may view themselves as brilliant and prioritize their own benefit in the pursuit of their ambitions, I disagree with this approach. For example, when Elon Musk purchased Twitters and terminated thousands of workers, it was evident that he was driven by his ambition and the desire to achieve great things. However, this action had a profound impact on many people's lives. Therefore, while individual success is important, it should not come at the expense of others' well-being.