I think this book and this course reinforce my views on social media especially in how it could harm people. This book talks about the pressure put on people through social media, the data leakage issues on social media, etc. One notable thing is that this book uses several ethical framworks to evaluate the harms and benefits brought by social media. It provides me a standard of what I could think about while empathizing users, which I think is extremely useful while designing a product/social media platform.

It is hard to find a method that brings only benefits. I remember I learned in an article about how the industrial revolution increased slavery because of the less skills required, making it easier leading to slavery. Even though the industrial revolution does not functions as Eli Whitney expected, I still believe this revolution brings a lot more convenience to our society. It promotes transportation with the train, and increases the productivity. From the Utilitarian approach, I suppose the industrial revolution brings more benefits than harms.

I think the social media sites from other cultures could provide entirely different views. For instance, on a Chinese social media platform called Red, people could share their daily lives and recommendations for good restaurants on the platform freely, and some vloggers will also shot warm scenes that talk about family reunion or life reflections. I believe some of the contents on that social media are more valuable than the ridiculous videos on Tiktok.

I remember I read an article about the cheating of grocery stores' charity. The dollars the grocery stores get for charity could be used to operate the firm temporarily. Even further, if the charity organization heavily relies on the grocery store, the grocery store could ask them to invest the money to the store for operations. The article talked about how grocery stores created an illusion that they cared about charity and were empathetic to people that need help.

I feel like it is difficult to repair the public shaming on social media platforms, especially on instagram. There are so many people using Instagram, which means that one message of public shaming could be spread to the entire platform within a short amount of time. For instance, we have a UW confession wall on Instagram, and some people would post the private relationships between people on the confession wall. Then, all the students who use confession wall will see that post and will put public shaming on people involved in the relationships. Even though those victims will argue that they've never done the posted things, no one would believe in them. Thus, we couldn't identify the authenticity of the post, but we've already put public shaming on people, and it is hard to repair.

I suppose this is a common theme in movies that talk about criminals. I remember I watched a movie about how a girl who trusted a couple was being put into an underground and suffered from endless pain. Even though the schadenfreude from social media is different from the physical pain possessed to that girl, it could infer that there are people who enjoys troubling others. I think this feeling could influence the social media a lot because this could create a negative atmosphere on social media.

No. I think it could never be justified unless there is a restriction on users' freedom of speech. This usually happens on social media because when people see one negative comment about a post, more people will join the group to put more negative comments on the post. I don't think there is a law that restrict people from doing that.

I believe cyberbullying is one of the greatest issue on social media. People on social media will judge posts and the user that create the post. I remember in a TV show I watched, it talked about how a girl got cyberbullying and eventually suicide after suffering in depression for a long time. This is not the only case, and there are thousands of cases similar to this one. Nowadays, people who want to be an influencer has to have the courage to face cyberbullying, and those who couldn't wouldn't have a good consequence.

Yes. I think a social media platform could encourage good crowdsourcing through giving out clear rules and policies of the content that users could post to public. Also, the platform should apply advanced algorithms that could help filter the bad crowdsourcing posted online in order to discourage such posts. I believe the online platforms have the responsibility to encourage good crowdsourcing and discourage bad crowdsourcing so that they could create a better online environment.

I agree that people have been putting a lot of efforts in connecting human beings using tech, such as video chats. In the video that shows the telepresence robots, it demonstrates how people could communicate with each other even from a long distance. However, I'm wondering if this telepresence robot is really making everything easy. It seems like the robot is not yet well developed to quickly recognize the position of real human in order to find the right direction to face the virtual person. Further, I couldn't tell how this robot is better than other online meeting platforms, such as Zoom, and why should I spend money to buy such product.

I found that the major ways that social media could create negative impacts on users' mental health are the bad comments and the social media pressure. I suppose it is hard to eliminate the social media pressure because everyone wants to present the best aspect of their lives on social media. However, it is possible to reduce the number of bad comments. Social media sites have the responsibility to filter out the bad comments to create a more joyful and peaceful online environment for users. I think social media sites should recommend people videos that convey positive attitude towards life and apply algorithms that could help eliminate comments that worsen the online environment.

I agree with this point that it is difficult to evaluate the effects brought by social media. In an episode in Black Mirror, it talks about how social media could ruin people because of the pressure it puts on people's appearances. However, from my own experience, social media gives me a chance to connect with my family and friends. Without social media, I could never contact my family from the other hemisphere so easily, and I would need to write letters to talk to them, which could be an extremely long span of time.

Honestly, this is hard. While exploring cultures that I'm not familiar with at all, I feel hard to find the boundary of appropriation. To avoid that, I usually ask if I could talk about ... that I think may be insulting to them. I will change my tone into a kinder and moderate one in order to avoid any potential conflicts. When people ask me about my culture, I would love to introduce it to them, and I don't mind them saying something insulting because I would explain those to them. I suppose if people on social media are nicer, and be respectful to every culture, they won't have conflict.

Viral content could distort the content and create misunderstanding. In Amy's event, it seems like Amy is the victim who feel threatened while a man approaches her, which is a normal reaction when someone is taking video with no sense. However, the social media platform put emphasis on what she said that could create misleading information that Amy is a racist, trying to catch users' eyes. However, I don't think it's easy to get rid of such attribute on social media, because these platforms are designed to catch people's eyes.

I'm wondering if other factors could influence evolution too. For instance, I remember I watched a documentary called "The Cove," which was about how Japanese fishers killed dolphins and sold to public. I believe human's interference in nature has been a rising issue now, and I'm wondering how that would influence the natural evolution? Similarly, in technology, if data breaches happened, will that influence the change in social media? I suppose if data breaches happen, that would influence how social media is designed to prevent those breaches, thus, influencing the evolution of technology.

I think social media platforms should take the responsibility to spread some meaningful contents. I don't think they should put too much on product advertisements. They have the responsibility to raise social awareness on societal issues because they are a good medium that help to spread content.

Instagram usually gives out recommendations on products. When I searched some products online, instagram will immediately recommend me the same products while I look through stories. It makes me feel bad because sometimes I just want to take a quick look on some products, but is not thinking about buying that. Further, it ignited my desire to buy products, which I would realize that it's a waste of money after I spent money on them.

I think the recommendation algorithm based on distance is significant. I can tell that the system is examining the distance between me and other users, which makes the content we get similar to each other. I remember I read a book on how this neighborhood recommendation system works, and the advantages and disadvantages brought by that. Personally, I feel bad when me and people around me get the same recommended content because when I share the content to them, they've already seen those recommendations before, making the human interactions boring.

I've heard about this in designing multiple times. However, I don't think it is possible to create a platform or environment that have options for everyone. There must be someone that we could not empathize on. In Utilitarian approach, as long as our design maximize its potential of usage in groups of people, it should work.

I remember in my learning of INFO360, our instructor mentioned the word, "empathy" in designs. One group of people that we should empathize is people with disability. I'm wondering the disability mentioned in this book would also count as a disability in design? Are they similar?

I'm concerned that one day personal chats will be exposed to the public due to data breach. I wish social media could create a platform where I could freely express my emotions to my friends at any time, and I won't accept anyone else having access to my personal chats. I'm also concerned that the lack of privacy on social media could create cyberbullying.

I remember I've read an article about metadata that talks about the threats of metadata on humans' privacy. The article talked about some extreme situations, such as how companies sell the data they collected to other companies for profits, and how metadata could spread porn photos and videos without permission. I believe if there is a metadata breach, the consequence will be devastating because millions of datapoints of humans are all shown to the public.

I don't feel comfortable about personalized advertisements, and I'm usually hesitated to give out all the accurate information about me to google. However, I do think some personal information is needed to keep track of the behavior of users, in case they will do something harmful to the online environment. I think they should get rid of the customized advertisement even though they are monitoring our behaviors.

This is the situation that I met. I found the recommendation algorithms extremely powerful, making me feel insecure because my data can be viewed by an online website where I use to buy my daily supplies. Personally, I think this data mining process should be illegal because I don't feel comfortable when I know my behaviors could be monitored by businesses. Further, the advertisements recommended usually don't match my taste, and I don't feel much engaged into those advertisements especially when I suspect they are inferred from my online browsing behavior.

I think the only way that could deal with trolling is to give immediate respond to any victim who posted complaints about the troll. It is important for platforms' management teams to recognize the effect of trolling on users, and they should put more focus on filtering contents that have trolling tendency. Further, it is important to educate users how to avoid trolling, and how to identify them.

I think this is a method that businesses use. I remember I saw some posts that provoke readers' anger first, and talk about how their products deal with the situation. For instance, Chegg can post something like: Are you feeling stressful to find out steps of answers? Join Chegg, which could... I think this emotional disruption is trying to make users feel sudden changes in emotion so that they are more likely to remember this advertisement.

I doubt the authenticity of the Tweets that come from Trump's campaign. Politicians will express their viewpoints on social media, and they will make the public think that they are thinking for the citizen to gain appreciation. People in Trump's campaign are those who support his idea, meaning that they prone to post speeches that protect Trump. When there is a tendency or intention of speech, the content's authenticity will face skepticism.

I agree with this idea. I've seen some artistic works from prehistoric people in museums, and some of the painting skills are lost nowadays, making them remaining in history forever. Thus, prehistoric society can be highly sophisticated, with well defined laws and social norms. Further, some of the prehistoric histories have demonstrated that they already has the hierachy and the ruling system.

I've never seen or heard about this system. This is similar to Reddit nowadays. It allows people to communicate with each other, and provides a platform for people to share useful information. Some disadvantages in this system is that the style of this system makes it hard to look through comments, because it looks like original code. Further, I'm wondering how it manages information. Does misinformation exist in this system?

I've read a book regarding the bias and conspiracy theories in previous newspapers. It talks about the big 3 TV networks's tendency in political parties. I do think social media could provide us with more information on the same news, but I don't think it will mitigate the bias created in news. Since the information on social media can be more diverse than centralized newspaper, the voices from people will be more diverse. Thus, more bias will exist, and the possibility of misinformation will be higher.

I think the address is special in this list because the system has to detect whether the address is correct or not in order to make sure the information is accurate. Thus, there should be metadata in the system that stores the address of every place in google map, so that when the user didn't enter the appropriate address, the system will give out notice.

In an INFO course I took previously, there was a concept called "stage of status," which is usually hidden from users. I suppose metadata is a similar concept to "stage of status," as it is also used to help facilitate users' use of the function. I think metadata can be very powerful, especially in the number of data it could collect from users, which they could use to analyze user behaviors.

Is it necessary to prevent bot from being created for the intention to harm the social media environment? Or keeping those comments can be helpful sometimes?

I don't think bot is only about posting things on social media. I asked ChatGPT whether it considered itself as a bot, and the answer was yes. Bot can also be a chatbot that interact with people to answer questions to them. I suppose Siri, ChatGPT and other AI online chats are all bot.

Though ethics are generally defined in this way, giving a standard for everything to decide whether it's right or wrong, I've seen rebuttals on this idea in other places. There shouldn't be a clear standard on what is right and what is wrong because everything that exists has a reason behind their existence. Deciding whether something is right or wrong is based on the aspect people look from. For instance, stealing from a wealthy people can be right when a person is trying to save their mother by paying their medical service fees. From the perspective of the thief, they have a justifiable reason for stealing, and it can be right because they are doing it for their family. Thus, I could hardly agree with this definition of ethics since the aspect it is looking from is not detailedly explained.

I think social media has a close relationship with "real life." Social media is an indispensable part in our life because people rely on it for building connections with with each other. Further, it provides a lot of information that people would want to know to keep up the trend. It is hard to live without social media unless people want to be left behind.

I think it is the responsibility of tech workers to think about "empathy" of the tech design. A good design has to be inclusive to minorities in society, making sure that everyone has the ability to access the tech tools. I think heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthroughs can be some good ways to evaluation whether the tech fulfills the goal of being inclusive because the designers get the chance to understand different users' behaviors and accommodate the tech created to make everyone convenient.