Catch-22 on Free Speech
Almost all social media cites use their claim of neutrality to defend their inaction in terms of accountability and morality. These calls for stronger ethics and accountability have been brought… Read More
Category: Group C
WMD’s and Youtube
In her book,Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Cathy O’Neil writes about the models and their potential harmful impact, especially with the criminal justice system. She refers to the particularly harmful models as “WMDs” (“weapons of math destruction”). The criteria for these “WMDs” are whether or not the models are […]
“Fixing” Algorithm Biases
Rachel Thomas’ article, “When Data Science Destabilizes Democracy and Facilitates Genocide,” highlights the importance of a data scientist’s responsibility in the algorithms they create, and the inherent biases such algorithms contain. She focuses on Facebook, and explains how its function as a news source often provides its users with inaccurate or fabricated stories, and leads […]
Machines Learning Bias
Algorithms and models are reflections of human biases, and this sometimes leads to unintended repercussions, such as turning into toxic feedback loops. Toxic feedback loops, as described by Cathy O’Neil… Read More
Facebook, Polarization, and the Technological Imaginary
Of all of the shocking information packed into Rachel Thomas’s “When Data Science Destabilizes Democracy and Facilitates Genocide,” I was most intrigued by Facebook’s claim that its platform is value-neutral. Of course, this claim brought me back to the first week of class, in which we discussed the technological imaginary, particularly the contrast between the …
Continue reading “Facebook, Polarization, and the Technological Imaginary”
Ambiguity of Authorship
“Nothing prompted me to think deeply. Everything made me feel something.” If there exists a better description of the “Facebook experience”, than I have not heard it. As he does throughout his essay, Siva Vaidhyanathan speaks to the (occasionally harsh) realities of engaging in a virtual world without sounding preachy or alarmist. Vaidhyanathan acknowledges that […]
Facebook: An Anxiety Machine
Siva Vaidhyanathan’s article on the power of Facebook to disconnect us and undermine democracy raised many interesting points with which I agreed. I found his description of Facebook as a… Read More
The Social Affordances of Facebook
In reading the excerpt Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Antisocial Media, I was particularly interested by Facebook’s statement as to the purposes of its own website, in which they said that they intended their platform to be a “place for meaningful interactions with your friends and family–enhancing your relationships offline, not detracting from them” (34). Of this quote, two primary …
Video Games, Microtransactions, Gambling, and More
Siva Vaidhyanathan’s “The Pleasure Machine” mentions the similarity between many casinos and social media with their use of operant conditioning. This term, coined by psychologist B.F. Skinner, describes the ability to condition animals to engage in repetitive behavior through the delivery of small stimuli, be it positive or negative. Both casinos and social media use […]
Social Media Critics Need to Get Over It
As interesting and relevant as reviews and criticisms of forms of social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc. seem to be, I often wonder what exactly it is that these critics are looking to see in terms of changes to these platforms. To be able to write an informed piece about any social media site, one […]