How have your views on social media changed (or been reinforced)?
My views about moderation changed a bit. I thought social media should be where people say whatever they want without moderation. But if moderation is absent, social media platforms aren't lasting very long because of flooding scams, porn, racist comments, etc. Free speech is a fundamental constitutional right, but people are held accountable for their actions.
How have your views on ethics changed (or been reinforced)?
I underestimated the significance of ethics before this course. Ethical standards such as compassion and inclusivity aren't just words but one core direction tech companies consider in making their products and developing their platforms in the future.
Again, our goal has been not necessarily to come to the “right” answer, but to ask good questions and better understand the tradeoffs, unexpected side-effects, etc.
My conclusion is similar to this assessment: often, there is no right answer to a question, so we must consider the tradeoffs and make the best decision. An action might be ethical under one ethics framework but not under another. My favorite ethics framework is Utilitarianism because it evaluates the ethics of acts based on whether they maximize benefit and minimize harm.
Most programming languages are based in English, and there are very few non-English programming languages, and those that exist are rarely used.
I don't think English being the dominating programming language is terrible because English is the most prevalent language worldwide. Programming in English helps more people to understand than any alternative. In addition, most programming terms are the most basic vocabulary.
In the early 1980s, a number of things changed which ended up with programming seen as a male profession, and a highly profitable and respected one.
I learned from Info 102 that women were pushed out of tech historically. Programming became a skill that only college graduates were able to possess. In the past, the overwhelming majority who had the privilege to go to college were men, leading to men's dominance in tech.
Do you think there are situations where reconciliation is not possible?
Yes, and one great example is the Nuremberg Trials, in which the Nazis were not given amnesty because of their monstrous killings of millions of innocent people. I think reconciliation is more about the feelings and decisions of the victims. If they feel reconciliation cannot repair the damage caused, it's their right to refuse reconciliation under the law.
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:
It's unethical to share posts, especially controversial ones, with the broader public from a private account without the owner's consent. I agree with the second block of the quote below that public figures, such as politicians and celebrities, are not within this frame because they naturally want more people to hear their voices, which is fundamentally different from the ideals of ordinary people who do not intentionally seek attention from the broader public.
But we do still live in a society which does not permit total freedom to do whatever one wants, with no consequences.
I agree with this assessment. While the freedom of speech is written in the First Amendment, it doesn't mean the citizens can say anything without dealing with consequences because there are still boundaries to free speech, such as no racist hate. Consequences can also happen under no violation of laws. For example, employees are found saying bad things about their companies. They might face consequences like sacking as a result of their actions.
Do you believe crowd harassment is ever justified? { requestKernel: true, binderOptions: { repo: "binder-examples/jupyter-stacks-datascience", ref: "master", }, codeMirrorConfig: { theme: "abcdef", mode: "python" }, kernelOptions: { kernelName: "python3", path: "./ch17_harassment" }, predefinedOutput: true } kernelName = 'python3'
That reminds me of the "mean tweets" during the Trump Administration. President Trump is widely criticized for frequent tweets that call out individuals, particularly those who disagree with him. Many believe that rhetoric matters and his actions could incite public harassment. I don't think crowd harassment is ever justified because it's ultimately harassment.
When looking at who contributes in crowdsourcing systems, or with social media in generally, we almost always find that we can split the users into a small group of power users who do the majority of the contributions, and a very large group of lurkers who contribute little to nothing.
I find this very intriguing. I doubted how crowdsourcing platforms ensure coherence and conformity. For example, the definition of a term might be so long that it incorporates thousands of sources. If many people played a role in editing, it would take tremendous time, money, and personnel to ensure coherence and conformity. This paragraph partially clears up my confusion.
Is an online encyclopedia whose content is crowdsourced. Anyone can contribute, just go to an unlocked Wikipedia page and press the edit button.
My high school English teacher was skeptical of students quoting from Wikipedia because the platform doesn't require expertise to edit the content, so Wikipedia is perceived as less authoritative than scholarly articles. But despite that, its crowdsourcing nature provides incredible convenience in daily life.
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 is a solid description of one of the core values of Confucianism. Moderation means avoiding extremism and making decisions after weighing in the benefits and harms of all perspectives, which still shapes Chinese values today. But moderation isn't always the most reasonable strategy.
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.
But does the "moderation" violate the First Amendment of free speech? Everyone on the platform should have the right to speak their minds without worrying what they say isn't appreciated by the gatekeepers and gets censored. Unfair moderation is a blatant violation of the Constitution.
Since social media platforms can gather so much data on their users, they can try to use data mining to figure out information about their users’ moods, mental health problems, or neurotypes (e.g., ADHD, Autism).
That's the bright side of social media. But I question whether this algorithm actually works. I recall the shooting that happened in Texas last year. The shooter posted a series of threatening tweets the day before, and nobody paid attention.
Tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing.
News media tend to report negative news partially due to doomscrolling - people naturally pay more attention to damaging than positive information, which sometimes creates unneeded pessimism.
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.
As sound as the result may seem, the experiment by Meta casts doubt on its validity because Meta and Instagram are competitors. Besides, is Instagram the only social media platform that causes mental health problems for teenage girls? What about other popular platforms like Snapchat?
What responsibilities do you think social media platforms should have in what their recommendation algorithms recommend?
Making sure that the algorithm uses systematic analysis in a non-malicious way is a significant responsibility. The platforms should also protect the privacy between the users, even if they follow each other. In my opinion, social media might only conduct personal analysis rather than peer analysis, and systematic analysis should be under more scrutiny.
What experiences do you have of social media sites making particularly good recommendations for you?
Social media recommendation algorithm provides content that matches my interests most of the time. For example, I am a soccer fan following a Spanish team called Real Madrid for years. The algorithm caters to my preference by showing the team's highlights. The funnier thing is that they also suggest posts and videos that despise its rival team - FC Barcelona. Social media platforms indeed have an algorithm that studies user behavior.
disabled people are often excluded from designing for themselves, or even when they do participate in the design, they aren’t considered to be the “real designers.”
The fact that disabled people are excluded from designs is unreasonable because they know their needs the most. I believe even if people with disabilities cannot physically participate in designs, their voices need to be heard comprehensively. I recall from a project in Info 200 that a crucial design step is conducting thoughtful interviews with the stakeholders. The standard should also apply here, with disabled people being the stakeholders in this case.
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 it
Those designs intend to be as inclusive and considerate as possible, which I strongly advocate for. However, it's important to realize that such designs aren't feasible under every circumstance due to realistic issues such as money and space. Additionally, there are times when designs simply cannot take care of the needs of the entire population.
What incentives to social media companies have to violate privacy?
The most direct incentive is money. If third parties offer large amounts of cash to buy user information, some companies might be lured and give up their promises to users. Another reason could be government pressure and policy. In some countries, the government has the ultimate control of all companies. There's little resistance for firms to resist the pressure from people who hold power.
What incentives do social media companies have to protect privacy?
Social media companies have to earn users' trust to grow their platforms. They risk reputation damage, user loss, revenue decrease, and even lawsuits if they disobey their privacy promise and expose user data to third parties.
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.
This instance tells us that giving up part of our privacy isn't always bad. In this case, we reserve the evidence to report the bullies when companies obtain a copy of the chat data.
It turns out that if you look at a lot of data, it is easy to discover spurious correlations where two things look like they are related, but actually aren’t.
It's another example that reminds people it's vital to question everything, including the supposedly objective measure, statistics. Two variables might not be correlated as it's shown - be aware of lurking variables.
Political leanings
This directly relates to my previous research - microtargeting. Microtargeting is a strategy that collects user data for machines to judge the users, leading to many controversies, such as invading user privacy and spreading misinformation. Politicians apply this targeting to influence the outcome of elections. There's substantial evidence that microtargeting has a tremendous impact on the election results of swing states.
Have you witnessed different responses to trolling? What happened in those cases?
Yes, I have. It really depends on the circumstances of whether and how to respond to trolling and harassing. I agree with the point made by Film Crit Hulk that sidestepping isn't always the best strategy. When facing severe and constant online harassment, reporting the account and holding the offenders accountable for their actions might work best.
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.
That reminds me of "the chain of contempt," in which people look for ways to put themselves in superior positions to enjoy looking down on others, especially on the internet, where users mostly wouldn't be held accountable for their actions. Trolling relates to the discussion of whether the internet is real or fake. I think it's phony that people might not act this way in real life, at least not as direct, while it's real because people unleash the dark side of humanity online.
Catfishing: Create a fake profile that doesn’t match the actual user, usually in an attempt to trick or scam someone
The following example perfectly demonstrates why people shouldn't blindly believe in online narratives. It costs nothing to fabricate anecdotes and spread misinformation.
Do you think it matters which human typed the Tweet? Does the emotional expression (e.g., anger) of the Tweet change your view of authenticity?
I think it depends. Regarding Donald Trump, I believe that Twitter aggression is his game to appeal to his base as a "non-politician". The article claims that the tweets from the supposedly "Trump campaign" post in a different style that softens the rough edges of himself, but I think both senders represent Donald Trump and his MAGA movement anyway, so the sender's real identity doesn't matter to me.
The user interface of a computer system (like a social media site), is the part that you view and interact with.
It's essential to make the user interface eye-catching to attract users in the first place. I prefer a concise user interface that makes understanding how different functions work easy.
are what a user interface lets you do. In particular, it’s what a user interface makes feel natural to do.
Social media sites try to make users feel directed and comfortable with their designs. Given its definition, I find it similar to its nuance "signifier", but I am not sure how they differ.
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.
This block of sentences is a reminder that AI and computer science cannot substitute the significance of human interaction. Although they take some pressure off humans, machining learning cannot integrate everything that's humanitarian and personalized.
Data points often give the appearance of being concrete and reliable, especially if they are numerical.
This quote tells us that although data have been considered more objective than most qualitative methods, we should still monitor how data are generated. Bots are only one factor influencing an analysis's numerical outcome, and many other things can make data biased.
There are many types of bots in the social media world.
Bots could be used both in nice and malicious ways. The existence of bots makes internet surveillance more challenging as a result. Lots of racist tweets, for example, come from bot accounts, so suspending those accounts wouldn't be effective in punishing racists.
Various groups want to gather data from social media, such as advertisers and scientists.
It's worth mentioning that if data scientists want to collect data regarding user behaviors on the internet, the bot accounts' activities, which often don't represent those of ordinary people, might mislead the analysis into drawing inaccurate conclusions. How to "filter out" such accounts when conducting research could be challenging.
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.
The summary serves as a fair glimpse of the core values of Confucianism, with some significant omissions. Confucianism was widely held as the guiding principle of the ruling government in ancient China, and most Chinese people still regard Confucianism as noble, honorable principles. However, many values are outdated and not consistent with the development of human civilization.
How often do you hear phrases like “social media isn’t real life”?
Quite often, actually, and I think the statement is partially true. People behave differently online than in real life. But I think the internet reflects the alternative, undisclosed sides of people.
Why do you think the people who Kumail talked with didn’t have answers to his questions?
It might be that ethical concerns have little financial impact on tech companies, so they are among the last things to care about. Even if concerns like privacy are addressed to the customers, they do not have control or even knowledge about their data manipulation by the tech companies.
They don’t even have a pat rehearsed answer. They are shocked at being asked. Which means nobody is asking those questions.
Ethical concerns of social media/technology have not kept pace with the fast-developing tech industry. Few people desire to take action to prevent it from invading people's safety and privacy. There's clearly a lack of humanitarian caring in tech designs.