Calling an algorithm a "series of rules" makes it sound completely neutral. But in reality, those specific rules control what information millions of people see every single day. It makes me wonder if social media companies should be forced to tell us exactly how their systems decide what to show us.

The Miller and Parogni article from the bibliography really makes me think how much sighted users take for granted. thought adding alt-text was just a quick step so it was surprising to learn that writing good image descriptions is actually a creative skill that takes practice. I'm going to put more effort into describing my images instead of just leaving it blank.

It makes sense that bad design usually happens just because the creators didn't think about people different from themselves. This goes beyond physical disabilities, like how some facial recognition cameras can't recognize darker skin tones. How do tech companies actually make sure they include different types of people when testing out new ideas

Reading the article about the fbi sending a threatening letter to MLK made me understand that organized trolling and targeted harassment aren't just modern internet problems.

learning that ignoring online harassment usually makes it worse really changed my perspective. I always thought the best advice was to ignore internet trolls so they would eventually get bored and leave you alone. Hearing that abusers make worse threats when they feel ignored makes me understands victims of online harassment more.

This source was a comedy skit of how Obama greeted African americas differently and less formally compared to white American

I actually disagree with this statement because I make a choice to only add my close friends on social media and completely exclude my family. Keeping my audience small means I never have to worry about balancing different groups or accidentally posting something that offends the wrong person. In my experience context collapse is not a big concern if you just use privacy settings to control exactly who is allowed to see your posts.

I found an outside study from the Pew Research Center that showed automated bots share a huge amount of the news links we see online. It is kind of scary to realize that computer programs have that much control over what information humans consume every day. social media platforms need to be more open about which accounts are actually run by real people.

this article is about Elon Musk trying to back out of buying Twitter because he did not trust their data on spam accounts. It is crazy to see how a disagreement over how platform data is collected can threaten a billion dollar business deal.

It is interesting to think about how even a simple list of countries in a form can have hidden biases. I never thought how sorting a list alphabetically gives an unfair advantage to certain users while making others have a harder time. This perfectly shows that every single design choice a programmer makes will end up favoring one specific group of people over another.