###### tags: `CDA` # Phylicia's Reading Responses (Set 2) - Checklist for a [good reading response](https://reagle.org/joseph/zwiki/Teaching/Best_Practices/Learning/Writing_Responses.html) of 250-350 words - [ ] Begin with a punchy start. - [ ] Mention specific ideas, details, and examples from the text and earlier classes. - [ ] Offer something novel that you can offer towards class participation. - [ ] Check for writing for clarity, concision, cohesion, and coherence. - [ ] Send to professor with “hackmd” in the subject, with URL of this page and markdown of today’s response. ## Reading responses 5 out of 5 ### Oct 31 Tues - TikTok, Fakes, and Appropriation The digital world is a place of opportunity, exploitation for entrepreneurs or artists, high and fast level communication between small or big parties, and many more things that describe its positive aspects. Although it enables technological advancements in our mass communication, it also enables the dark and desperate sides of humanity to shine. The overuse of digital platforms can foster characteristics studied in the Dark Tetrad with psychological disorders like sadism, psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. Digital humans are already able to troll, dox, and hate online but another detrimental aspect of this world made up of code is identity. Maha Ikram Cherid (2021) from McGrawhill University says that “social [media is] a setting in which we negotiate and consume identity.” Now we can either use social media to further understand our identity, whether it’s finding people with your sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or ethnic relation. Now for the worse, people will see the characteristics of other races and steal aspects of their identities in order to fulfill their online fantasies. We’re in an “image centric culture in mostly lawless digital spaces” so there’s multiple sides of the argument: the internet was meant to be a place where you could be whoever/whatever you want (Rebecca Jennings, 2021). It becomes a problem when the people who’s ethnic or age identities are being taken; the Blackness, Asianness, and teenage girls are suffering the consequences of countless people altering their appearance to fit other racial/age groups. Cultural appropriation is a real issue for both Asian and Black cultures because they’re “attempting to inherit the race-construct itself” (Leo Kim, 2021). The sexualization of “fake” teenage girls is damaging to actual teens trying to figure out who they are without the pressures of an online mature appearance. But how do you remain authentic in a world where constant romanticized digital consumption is normal? Authenticity isn’t even the end of the discussion, it’s a problem of constant stealing of other identities for personal profit. ### Nov 03 Fri - Finding someone & living alone “Catfish” has got to be one of the most iconic reality TV shows I’ve ever seen. I have to give a big thanks to the emergence and advancement of digital communication for entertaining the masses with stories of foolish people overcome by digital love. The idea of “catfishing” is a relatively new term that refers to a person using a separate persona and images that do not match their identity. It’s common knowledge that the “Internet is a great place to pretend to be someone you’re not,” so with this concept in the wind, there’s a lack of authenticity and trust on social media and dating apps (Derek Thompson, 2019). Digital technology is constantly changing and adapting to the behaviors/trends of society, but one thing that hasn’t changed is humanity's need for relationships. It’s so easy to play with people’s emotions online; whether they be love, lust, anger, misery…but it’s also more accessible to assist people handling these emotions. It’s crazy how something built to link us has both improved our ability to interact globally while diminishing our self-esteem. Although digital communication has increased connectivity, we are more divided and lonely than ever. Christian Rudder from The Atlantic says, “that online dating has freed young adults from the limitations and biases of their hometowns” but also now there’s this overwhelming feeling of having to find a partner without the influence of family and friends (2010). I think it’s important to mention a quote from Robyn Vinter’s article saying, “‘People are so much more magic in real life’” (2023). Online interactions are amazing and all, but most humans, including me, would prefer face-to-face interactions to check for verbal cues, personality, and chemistry. I personally love the fact that Rudder said, “this is the age of DIY-everything, in which individuals are charged with the full-service construction of their careers, lives, faiths, and public identities” (2010). He’s completely right; we rightfully fought for independence without being force fed the identities of our family but society still holds the same expectations of finding a lover when online platforms are a double standard. ### Nov 10 Fri - Manipulated When I tell you advertisements are just as diverse as the forms of currency or different hair textures or kinds of trees in the world – I am exaggerating, but you get the point. According to Rob Stokes, the most popular advertisements available online are danner adverts, interstitial banners, popups and pop-unders, floating adverts, wallpaper adverts, and map adverts; a mouthful to most (2014). Each advertisement is meant to convey a message, or an enticing story of promotion for the audience to become sucked in to whatever good or service is being sold. Whether it’s a pop up ad for “see Molly who’s 7 miles away for some action” or a floating advert of Nike trying to sell their newest red Jordan 1s. Now when you mention an advertisement oftentimes we forget to acknowledge the power of social media ads for personal blogs. Instagram’s algorithm prioritizes posts that are getting the most attention/interactions, which makes sense, but for small businesses trying to reach a new audience that can become rather discouraging. I realize I fell in a trap during the pandemic; I made my own “Instagram pod”. Cleo Abrams from Vox, pointed out how “pods might be worth it for the initial boost, but they can’t substitute authentic engagement” (2020). I made countless online friends and we would support one another’s posts and following list. My form of advertising was sending my post(s) to big group chats, aka my “IG pods” with people I’ve never even met before. In an effort to work the algorithm, I have exposed my privacy to these “online friends” of mine, to receive more likes/comments for engagement status. After all this though, I know advertisements are necessary for connecting businesses to their target audience, even if it does involve a little online manipulation and exposure from privacy. Privacy barely exists anymore so you might as well have some target ads to the target market. --- ### Nov 17 Fri - Artificial Intelligence Imagine working years on a piece of art, just for your style to be copied in seconds through an artificial intelligence mimicking you. The reality is that bots are now able to use preexisting art works to teach themselves how to be creative like the human artists they see. James Vincent vocalizes this by stating, “image generating models were trained on their artwork without their consent and can now reproduce their styles” (Vincent, 2022). Now if an artist’s paintings are used to teach an AI how to paint, is the future artwork that is created by it considered copyright work? Or is it just a derivative and only necessary to give inspirational credits? What is enough? As we know, any form of creative production is considered a Public Good, and is protected by the promise of copyright once that creativity is expressed in a tangible medium. If bots are now capable of creating original works, this could negatively impact the creative industries and increase job displacement. The thought of a robot taking your job because they learned the human ability of creativity is a scary thought… The concerns of copyright ownership from bots is one thing, and “this technology presents plenty of opportunities, but plenty of complex new challenges, too” (Heilweil, 2023). The chatbot “Sydney” created by Microsoft was news to me, but her actions were reminiscent of a favorite video game of mine called *Detroit: Becoming Human*. Its correlation lies in the fact that these artificial works behave with human traits, which are to no surprise “trained on huge datasets of human text scraped from the web” (Gold, 2023). These mannerisms will indefinitely shape our future culture and trends. We, as a society, need to find a fair balance between AI usage/exploitation and supporting human creativity. ---- ### Nov 21 Tues - Algorithmic Bias Is Google racist, or is it just a reflection of our society? According to Fiona Rutherford and Alan White, it's a reflection of our tainted societal beliefs and behaviors. The manner in which Google gains its order of results, when you click on images for instance, is a reflection of what online users are simply looking for in accordance with society’s perspectives. In order to tailor to popular belief and keep people using, algorithms have to be put in place within digital applications like Google. Which makes complete sense; you want people to use your apps? Then tailor them to the user's interests and they’ll stay clicking. I see how human developers may attempt to supply the algorithm with neutral information but inherently input biased content to teach the software. “The popularity of the image, how frequently it is shared, context such as text around the image, and meta-tagging all come into play” (Rutherford and White, 2016). Even the OpenAI, ChatGPT, has been found to lean more liberal in its responses to online users. Out of curiosity, I simply asked ChatGPT “are you a neutral openAI” and to no surprise, it said yes, but also “it's essential to note that biases present in the data I was trained on can influence my responses” (ChatGPT, 2022). My reasoning for putting 2022 is that its statements and knowledge are updated to 2022. This was fascinating to me, considering we are such a divided country, I had assumed that it was a fairly even political distribution within the data input to “teach” artificial intelligence, and yet conservatives feel underrepresented in a way. Yet the AI is learning from preexisting information found on the web.