Safiya Umoja Noble. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York University Press, New York, UNITED STATES, 2018. ISBN 978-1-4798-3364-1. URL: https://orbiscascade-washington.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UW/8iqusu/alma99162068349301452 (visited on 2023-12-10).

21.2. Ethics in Tech# In the first chapter of our book we quoted actor Kumail Nanjiani on tech innovators’ lack of consideration of ethical implications of their work. Of course, concerns about the implications of technological advancement are nothing new. In Plato’s Phaedrus [u1] (~370BCE), Socrates tells (or makes up[1]) a story from Egypt critical of the invention of writing: Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt, […] [then] came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; […] [W]hen they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: […] this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. In England in the early 1800s, Luddites [u2] were upset that textile factories were using machines to replace them, leaving them unemployed, so they sabotaged the machines. The English government sent soldiers to stop them, killing and executing many. (See also Sci-Fi author Ted Chiang on Luddites and AI [u3]) Fig. 21.1 The start of an xkcd comic [u4] compiling a hundred years of complaints about how technology has speed up the pace of life. (full transcript of comic available at explainxkcd [u5])# Inventors ignoring the ethical consequences of their creations is nothing new as well, and gets critiqued regularly: Fig. 21.2 A major theme of the movie Jurassic Park (1993) [u6] is scientists not thinking through the implications of their creations.# Fig. 21.3 Tweet parodying how tech innovator often do blatantly unethical things [u7]# Many people like to believe (or at least convince others) that they are doing something to make the world a better place, as in this parody clip from the Silicon Valley show [u8] (the one Kumail Nanjiani was on, though not in this clip): But even people who thought they were doing something good regretted the consequences of their creations, such as Eli Whitney [u9] who hoped his invention of the cotton gin would reduce slavery in the United States, but only made it worse, or Alfred Nobel [u10] who invented dynamite (which could be used in construction or in war) and decided to create the Nobel prizes, or Albert Einstein regretting his role in convincing the US government to invent nuclear weapons [u11], or Aza Raskin regretting his invention infinite scroll. [1] In response to Socrates’ story, his debate partner Phaedrus says, “Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country.”

Margaret Kohn and Kavita Reddy. Colonialism. In Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, editors, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, spring 2023 edition, 2023. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/colonialism/ (visited on 2023-12-10).

19.3. Responses to Meta’s Business Strategies# Let’s look at some responses to Meta’s business plan. 19.3.1. Competition# When Facebook started, there were already other social media platforms in use that Facebook had to compete against, but Facebook became dominant. Since then other companies have tried to compete with Facebook, with different levels of success. Google+ tried to mimic much of what Facebook did, but it got little use and never took off (not enough people to benefit from the network effect). Other social media sites have used more unique features to distinguish themselves from Facebook and get a foothold, such as Twitter with its character limit (forcing short messages, so you can see lots of posts in quick succession), Vine and then TikTok based on short videos, etc. Mastodon [s48] (Fediverse [s49] set of connected social media platforms that it is part of) has a different way of distinguishing itself as a social media network, in that it is an open-source, community-funded social media network (no ads), and hopes people will join to get away from corporate control. Other social media networks have focused on parts of the world where Facebook was less dominant, and so they got a foothold there first, and then spread, like the social media platforms in China (e.g., Sina Weibo, QQ, and TikTok). 19.3.2. Privacy Concerns# Another source of responses to Meta (and similar social media sites), is concern around privacy (especially in relation to surveillance capitalism). The European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) [s50] law, which forces companies to protect user information in certain ways and give users a “right to be forgotten” [s51] online. Apple also is concerned about privacy, so it introduced app tracking transparency in 2021 [s52]. In response, Facebook says Apple iOS privacy change will result in $10 billion revenue hit this year [s53]. Note that Apple can afford to be concerned with privacy like this because it does not make much money off of behavioral data. Instead, Apple’s profits [s54] are mostly from hardware (e.g., iPhone) and services (e.g., iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV+).

Trauma and Shame. URL: https://www.oohctoolbox.org.au/trauma-and-shame (visited on 2023-12-10).

18.3.3. Normal People# While the example from The Onion above focuses on celebrity, in the time since it was written, social media has taken a larger role in society and democratized celebrity. As comedian Bo Burnham puts it: “[This] celebrity pressure I had experienced on stage has now been democratized and given to everybody [through social media]. And everyone is feeling this pressure of having an audience, of having to perform, of having a sort of, like, proper noun version of your own name and then the self in your heart.” (NPR Fresh Air Interview [r10]) Also, Rebecca Jennings worries about how public shaming is used against “normal” people who are plucked out of obscurity to be shamed by huge crowds online: “Millions of people became invested in this (niche! not very interesting!) drama because it gives us something easy to be angry or curious or self-righteous about, something to project our own experiences onto, and thereby contributing even more content to the growing avalanche. Naturally, some decided to go look up the central character’s address, phone number, and workplace and share it on the internet. […] ‘It’s on social media, so it’s public!’ one could argue as a case for people’s right to act like forensic analysts on social media, and that is true. But this justification is typically valid when a) the person posting is someone of note, like a celebrity or a politician, and b) when the stakes are even a little bit high. In most cases of normal-person canceling, neither standard is met. Instead, it’s mob justice and vigilante detective work typically reserved for, say, unmasking the Zodiac killer, except weaponized against normal people. […] Platforms like TikTok, where even people with few or no followers often go viral overnight, expedite the shaming process. Stop canceling normal people who go viral [r11]

Doxing. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1189390304. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doxing&oldid=1189390304 (visited on 2023-12-10).

[Dogpiling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpiling_(Internet) [q4]): When a crowd of people targets or harasses the same person. Public Shaming (this will be our next chapter) Cross-platform raids (e.g., 4chan group planning harassment on another platform [q5]) Stochastic terrorism [q6] The use of mass public communication, usually against a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism which are statistically probable but happen seemingly at random. [q7] See also: An atmosphere of violence: Stochastic terror in American politics [q8]

Merriam-Webster. Definition of ad hoc. December 2023. URL: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ad+hoc (visited on 2023-12-08).

In what ways do you think you’ve participated in any crowdsourcing online? What do you think a social media company’s responsibility is for the crowd actions taken by users on its platform? Do you think there are ways a social media platform can encourage good crowdsourcing and discourage bad crowdsourcing?

Brian Resnick. The 2018 Nobel Prize reminds us that women scientists too often go unrecognized. Vox, October 2018. URL: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/10/2/17929366/nobel-prize-physics-donna-strickland (visited on 2023-12-08).

15.1.6. Automated Moderators (bots)# Another strategy for content moderation is using bots, that is computer programs that look through posts or other content and try to automatically detect problems. These bots might remove content, or they might flag things for human moderators to review.

Mia Sato. YouTube reveals millions of incorrect copyright claims in six months. The Verge, December 2021. URL: https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/6/22820318/youtube-copyright-claims-transparency-report (visited on 2023-12-08).

14.3.3. Facebook (hired moderators)# Facebook uses hired moderators to handle content moderation on the platform at large (though Facebook groups are moderated by users). When users (or computer programs) flag content, the hired moderators will look at it and decide what to do. Facebook also discovered in internal research that, “the more likely a post is to violate Facebook’s community standards, the more user engagement it receives, because the algorithms that maximize engagement reward inflammatory content [n7].”

Anya Kamenetz. Facebook's own data is not as conclusive as you think about teens and mental health. NPR, October 2021. URL: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/06/1043138622/facebook-instagram-teens-mental-health (visited on 2023-12-08).

In 2019 the company Facebook (now called Meta) presented an internal study that found that Instagram was bad for the mental health of teenage girls, and yet they still allowed teenage girls to use Instagram. So, what does social media do to the mental health of teenage girls, and to all its other users? The answer is of course complicated and varies. Some have argued that Facebook’s own data is not as conclusive as you think about teens and mental health [m1]. Many have anecdotal experiences with their own mental health and those they talk to.

Rowland Manthorpe. It's the attention economy, stupid: why Trump represents the future whether we like it or not. Wired UK, 2016. URL: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/us-president-donald-trump-attention-economy (visited on 2023-12-08).

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

Fair Sentencing Act. May 2023. Page Version ID: 1153436887. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fair_Sentencing_Act&oldid=1153436887 (visited on 2023-12-07).

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 [k1]) can be used to suggest friends or contacts. And probably many more factors as well!

Social model of disability. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1184222120. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_model_of_disability&oldid=1184222120#Social_construction_of_disability (visited on 2023-12-07).

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 [j1]. 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.

Private message. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1185376021. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Private_message&oldid=1185376021 (visited on 2023-12-05).

For example, a social media application might offer us a way of “Private Messaging” [i1] (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.

Web tracking. October 2023. Page Version ID: 1181294364. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Web_tracking&oldid=1181294364 (visited on 2023-12-05).

For example, social media data about who you are friends with might be used to infer your sexual orientation [h9]. Social media data might also be used to infer people’s: Race Political leanings Interests Susceptibility to financial scams Being prone to addiction (e.g., gambling) Additionally, groups keep trying to re-invent old debunked pseudo-scientific (and racist) methods of judging people based on facial features (size of nose, chin, forehead, etc.), but now using artificial intelligence [h10]. Social media data can also be used to infer information about larger social trends like the spread of misinformation [h11].

Is It Funny or Offensive? Comedian Impersonates FBI on Twitter, Makes MLK Assassination Joke. January 2020. URL: https://isitfunnyoroffensive.com/comedian-impersonates-fbi-on-twitter-makes-mlk-assassination-joke/ (visited on 2023-12-05).

One set of the early Internet-based video games were Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs [g14]), where you were given a text description of where you were and could say where to go (North, South, East, West) and text would tell you where you were next. In these games, you would come across other players and could type messages or commands to attack them. These were the precursors to more modern Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGS [g15]). In these MUDs, players developed activities that we now consider trolling, such as “Griefing” where one player intentionally causes another player “grief” or distress (such as a powerful player finding a weak player and repeatedly killing the weak player the instant they respawn), and “Flaming” where a player intentionally starts a hostile or offensive conversation. In the 2000s, trolling went from an activity done in some communities to the creation of communities that centered around trolling such as 4chan [g16] (2003), Encyclopedia Dramatica [g17] (2004), and some forums on Reddit [g18] (2005).

Text analysis of Trump's tweets confirms he writes only theAndroid half was published on. Text analysis of Trump's tweets confirms he writes only the (angrier) Android half. August 2016. URL: http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-tweets/ (visited on 2023-11-24).

Many people were upset at being deceived, and at the many levels of inauthenticity of Dr. McLaughlin’s actions, such as: Dr. McLaughlin pretended to be a person (@Sciencing_Bi) who didn’t exist. Dr. McLaughlin, as a white woman, created an account where she pretended to be a Native American (see more on “pretendians” [f11]). Dr. Mclaughlin put herself at the center of the MeToo movement as it related to STEM, but then Dr. Mclaughlin turned out to be a bully herself. Dr. McLaughlin used the fake @Sciencing_Bi to shield herself from critizism. From the NYTimes article [f10]: “‘The fact that @Sci-Bi was saying all these things about BethAnn, saying that BethAnn had helped her, it didn’t make me trust BethAnn — but it made me less willing to publicly criticize her because I thought that public criticism would be felt by the people she was helping,’ he said. ‘Who turned out to be fake.’” Though Dr. McLaughlin claimed a personal experience as a witness in a Title IX sexual harassment case, through the fake @Sciencing_Bi, she invented an experience of sexual harassment from a Harvard professor. This professor was being accused of sexual harassment by multiple real women, and these real women were very upset to find out that @Sciencing_Bi, who was trying to join them, was not a real person. Dr. McLaughlin, through the @Sciencing_Bi account, pretended to have an illness she didn’t have (COVID). She made false accusations against Arizona State University’s role in the (fake) person getting sick, and she was able to get attention and sympathy through the fake illness and fake death of the fake @Sciencing_Bi.

Social networking service. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186603996. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_networking_service&oldid=1186603996#History (visited on 2023-11-24).

Friction [e30] is anything that gets in the way of a user performing an action. For example, if you have to open and navigate through several menus to find the privacy settings, that is significant friction. Or if one of the buttons has a bug and doesn’t work when you press it, so you have to find another way of performing that action, which is significant friction. Designers sometimes talk about trying to make their user interfaces frictionless, meaning the user can use the site without feeling anything slowing them down. Sometimes designers add friction to sites intentionally. For example, ads in mobile games make the “x” you need to press incredibly small and hard to press to make it harder to leave their ad: Fig. 5.6 An ad on a mobile device, which has an incredibly small, hard to press “x” button. You need to press that button to close the ad. If you miss the “x”, it takes you to more advertising.

Thus, when designers of social media systems make decisions about how data will be saved and what constraints will be put on the data, they are making decisions about who will get a better experience. Based on these decisions, some people will fit naturally into the data system, while others will have to put in extra work to make themselves fit, and others will have to modify themselves or misrepresent themselves to fit into the system.

Anna Lauren Hoffmann. Data Violence and How Bad Engineering Choices Can Damage Society. Medium, April 2018. URL: {https://medium.com/@annaeveryday/data-violence-and-how-bad-engineering-choices-can-damage-society-39e44150e1d4} (visited on 2023-11-24).

Steven Tweedie. This disturbing image of a Chinese worker with close to 100 iPhones reveals how App Store rankings can be manipulated. February 2015. URL: https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-shows-how-fake-app-store-rankings-are-made-2015-2 (visited on 2024-03-07).

There are several ways computer programs are involved with social media. One of them is a “bot,” a computer program that acts through a social media account. There are other ways of programming with social media that we won’t consider a bot (and we will cover these at various points as well): The social media platform itself is run with computer programs, such as recommendation algorithms (chapter 12). Various groups want to gather data from social media, such as advertisers and scientists. This data is gathered and analyzed with computer programs, which we will not consider bots, but will cover later, such as in Chapter 8: Data Mining. 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. Note that sometimes people use “bots” to mean inauthentically run accounts, such as those run by actual humans, but are paid to post things like advertisements or political content. We will not consider those to be bots, since they aren’t run by a computer. Though we might consider these to be run by “human computers” who are following the instructions given to them, such as in a click farm:

2.1.1. What is Social Media?

Consequentialism# Sources [b46] [b47] Actions are judged on the sum total of their consequences (utility calculus) The ends justify the means. Utilitarianism: “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” That is, What is moral is to do what makes the most people the most happy. Key figures: Jeremy Bentham [b48] 1700’s England John Stuart Mill [b49], 1800’s England