Kashmir Hill. How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did. Forbes, February 2012. URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ (visited on 2023-12-07).

Sometimes social media platforms let users choose between different recommendation algorithms, like in the examples below:

Neurodiversity. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1187185735. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neurodiversity&oldid=1187185735#Neurotypical (visited on 2023-12-07).

Another way of managing disabilities is assistive technology [j13], which is something that helps a disabled person act as though they were not disabled. In other words, it is something that helps a disabled person become more “normal” (according to whatever a society’s assumptions are). For example: Glasses help people with near-sightedness see in the same way that people with “normal” vision do Walkers and wheelchairs can help some disabled people move around closer to the way “normal” people can (though stairs can still be a problem) A spoon might automatically balance itself [j14] when held by someone whose hands shake Stimulants (e.g., caffeine, Adderall) can increase executive function in people with ADHD, so they can plan and complete tasks more like how neurotypical people do. Assistive technologies give tools to disabled people to help them become more “normal.” So the disabled person becomes able to move through a world that was not designed for them. But there is still an expectation that disabled people must become more “normal,” and often these assistive technologies are very expensive. Additionally, attempts to make disabled people (or people with other differences) act “normal” can be abusive, such as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy for autistic people [j15], or “Gay Conversion Therapy” [j16].

Everything Everywhere All at Once. December 2023. Page Version ID: 1188074672. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Everything_Everywhere_All_at_Once&oldid=1188074672

Data can be poisoned intentionally as well. For example, in 2021, workers at Kellogg’s were upset at their working conditions, so they agreed to go on strike, and not work until Kellogg’s agreed to improve their work conditions. Kellogg’s announced that they would hire new workers to replace the striking workers: Kellogg’s proposed pay and benefits cuts while forcing workers to work severe overtime as long as 16-hour-days for seven days a week. Some workers stayed on the job for months without a single day off. The company refuses to meet the union’s proposals for better pay, hours, and benefits, so they went on strike. Earlier this week, the company announced it would permanently replace 1,400 striking workers. People Are Spamming Kellogg’s Job Applications in Solidarity with Striking Workers – Vice MotherBoard [h25] People in the antiwork subreddit [h26] found the website where Kellogg’s posted their job listing to replace the workers. 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). Then Kellogg’s wouldn’t be able to replace the striking workers, and they would have to agree to better working conditions. Then Sean Black, a programmer on TikTok saw this and decided to contribute by creating a bot that would automatically log in and fill out applications with random user info, increasing the rate at which he (and others who used his code) could spam the Kellogg’s job applications:

Troll (slang). December 2023. Page Version ID: 1188437550. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Troll_(slang)&oldid=1188437550 (visited on 2023-12-05).

n 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.

As a rule, humans do not like to be duped. We like to know which kinds of signals to trust, and which to distrust. Being lulled into trusting a signal only to then have it revealed that the signal was untrustworthy is a shock to the system, unnerving and upsetting. People get angry when they find they have been duped. These reactions are even more heightened when we find we have been duped simply for someone else’s amusement at having done so.

Web 2.0. October 2023. Page Version ID: 1179906793. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Web_2.0&oldid=1179906793 (visited on 2023-11-24).

Graffiti and other notes left on walls were used for sharing updates, spreading rumors, and tracking accounts

Twitter. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1187856185. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter (visited on 2023-12-01).

Binary consisting of 0s and 1s make it easy to represent true and false values, where 1 often represents true and 0 represents false. Most programming languages have built-in ways of representing True and False values.

Astroturfing. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186679500. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Astroturfing&oldid=1186679500 (visited on 2023-12-02)

n some corners of the internet, there can be more content from bots than from humans, so most of your interactions in those places might be from bots and not other humans. For example, you might get into heated arguments about sports, music, or politics, and be interacting with hundreds of accounts, but you might not realize they are all only automated bots. This is informally called the “dead internet theory.” [c1]

2.3.2. Human Computers# [b113] Before electronic computers were generally available, when scientists wanted the results of some calculations, they sometimes hired “computers” [b114], which were people trained to perform the calculations. [b115] When scientists wanted these human computers to do a task for them, they would give these human computers instructions for what they wanted calculated. These instructions were given in a regular human language (like English), and in math notation. Then the human computers would send back the results of whatever calculation they had been asked to perform. But human computers were eventually replaced by electronic computers, and communication with electronic computers was not straightforward.

Live a rooted, balanced life of moderation. Virtue is a group effort. Individuals can’t be virtuous on their own because “the earth is slippery, slick” (meaning it is easy for an individual to fall into bad actions, they need support and moderation) [b35] Aztecs [b36], 1300s - 1500s CE in what is now Mexico