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# Reading Responses (Set 2) - Montanaro
* 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 of 5)
### Mar 16 Tue - Ads and social graph background
Do websites know more about us than our friends and family do? Lou Montulli created the "cookies" that enable the web customization that we see today. Cookies, in his words, "bring memory to the web" in the form of a random sequence of letters and numbers stored on your web browser by the websites that you visit. Companies soon realized that cookies make it possible to *track* their customers to different websites and give them personalized advertisements in the form of third-party cookies. The example stated in the YouTube video talked of a pair of blue suede shoes for which you had recently searched and then it suddenly appeared as a banner-ad on your vox.com web page. Not only are retailers able to track their users, but they are able to target and completely customize each and every advert shown to the client. They can change the frequency with which you are shown an advert, they can adjust the order you view their ads in, they can even strike deals with the web pages they are being shown to you so that you don't see adverts from their competitors.
How can we take control away from the major companies like Facebook and Google? Later in the YouTube video, they talk about how those two companies hold the most information about their users and use their influence to gain even more information, even making companies send "first-party" cookie information back to them when the user uses an ad-blocker or prevents third-party cookies somehow. With all this power over information and lesser websites and companies, is there a solution in which we can reclaim and spread out the information held captive by Facebook, Google, and other internet goliaths?
### Mar 26 Fri - Breakup
Every generation of teens have been forming and ending relationships, but have they figure out how best to break up with someone? As technology, phones, and social media popularity grew, the dynamics around relationships changed, including ways to break up with someone. Ironically, even with all the long distance options like texting, teens still believe that in person break up are the best and most respectful way to do it. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, **78%** of teens believe that in person break ups are the most acceptable method, giving it a score of **8.4/10** with ten being the most acceptable. Despite this, according to another study done by the Pew Research Center, only **47%** of teens have broken up with someone in person, while *over text* is in second place with **31%** of teens having experienced this.
Technology plays an even more important role immediately following the breakups because of social media. Teens are constantly shown pictures of their *friends* on different media platforms, including pictures of their exes. Pew Research Center found that **48%** of teens have removed their exes’ numbers, **37%** have blocked them on social media, and **30%** have blocked their exes from texting them. Though these may sound like drastic measures, with the popularity of social media, many teens feel they are incapable of getting away from the memories of their ex, thus making it very difficult to get over them.
Has social media stalking created more mistrust in relationships? Ilana Gershon talks about Facebook stalking in her book *The Breakup 2.0* (2010), and she mentions how people tend to stalk their lover's page to find "traces of other flirtations" (p.147). These searched can quickly turn into hours of deep research for the sole purpose of finding signs of infidelity. Why is this necessary? Just because social media allows us to follow the lives of everyone in our lives and our friends' or lover's lives does not mean it must be utilized. Trust is fundamental in every relationship and should be built up as you spend time with your lover, it should be dependent on the results of a Facebook search.
### Apr 06 Tue - Algorithmic discrimination
The manipulation of displayed results through filtering is present in some of the internet's busiest websites. How exactly is this information filtered? The answer to this question is a mystery to the general population, and even to employees of major search engines like Google. Many have begun to accuse Google of racism based on results from searches like "three black teenagers" vs. "three white teenagers", which would depict mug shots and stock images respectively. Google responded by saying that "The people in society are creating Google..." because of how their filtering algorithm works. Every post and interaction with different pictures and websites alters the filtration of the results, ultimately meaning that any outward portrayal of racism in Google searches is directly related to societal racism or stereotypes.
Northeastern University students conducted a study on price discrimination and personalization of search results. The study found that of the twenty sites observed, nine were found to have discrepancies in prices from user to user. However, the data did not uncover *why* this "personalization" occurs in prices.
What would the internet look like without this filtration? In the BuzzFeed article, Google employee, Burai, repeatedly stated how the algorithm is based on the posts and information put onto the internet by society as a whole. Without this filtration, many of the popular solutions and results to each search would be covered under a pile of smaller blog-type websites. I am curious to see how exactly this would affect the average web search and things like the information war being waged by democrats and republicans in America.
### Apr 13 Tue - Gendered Work
Ever dreamt of being famous? With the rise of social media, the path to stardom has become far more accessible to the general public. Many female social media *stars* find that their new platform is very difficult to balance between professionalism and business in order to maintain and ensure success, a concept known as the *digital double bind*. The bind has three conflicting demands that are imperative to maintaining social media status: self-promotion, interactivity, and visibility.
Self-promotion is key to growing one's brand and gaining the support of those around you. However, women must be far more meticulous with their self-promotion compared to men, who tend to be aggressive with talk of their success. Women lean towards a *soft-sell* method, where they suggest a natural unfolding of success and a build-up of connections.
Interactivity is the interactions and buildup of relationships between people, such as fans or potential business partners. According to a study done by Brooke Duffy and Urszula Pruchniewska, women are extremely careful to not have these relationships affect their credibility and to ensure a positive economic outcome.
Lastly, visibility is the balance between personal and vulnerable. For many female influencers, this balance can be nearly impossible, like with Mommy blogger Heather in the study spoken about above, who constantly needs to walk the line of personal versus vulnerable when talking about her life. Each entrepreneur in the study had vastly different responses to where exactly things get to be too personal.
Many social media accounts have noticed that securing a sponsorship deal is the perfect way to balance the three challenges above while also growing one's account. This has created a wave of "sponsored" posts in which the post appears to be an ad but there is no connection between the brand and the account. For the lesser-known celebrities, this has driven down actual sponsorship deals and have only truly succeeded in growing the businesses not the accounts.
Does each social media site have the same line where things get too personal? In the Duffy reading, they talk about the balance between personal and vulnerable and it made me think about the various levels of vulnerability on social media platforms. Sites like Tik Tok and Snapchat tend to be far more personal than that of Instagram and Facebook. However, with how cautious influencers need to be, wouldn't that mean that the vulnerability line on Facebook shouldn't be crossed anywhere else in order to maintain that image seen on Facebook?
### Apr 20 Tue - Pushback
How do online comments relate to *Family Feud*? Comment sections have become a place of discussion rather than correctness. Instead of focusing in on the topic at hand, whether that be a question or an idea, many people use their comments as ways to slander authors or give incorrect answers. Places like YouTube have been riddled with this behavior especially after the Google+ merger.
Sites have begun to set strict restrictions on comment sections, even going as far as limiting how many responses are shown under a given post. This method allows for a vote based system in which people need to give answers that others can “upvote” or agree with. The current culture around commenting has forced many to avoid reading comments all together. Dave Winer, the person who started using blog comments, disabled them in 2012 because “they’re not worth the trouble”.
Vulgar comments made on major social media sites shed a horrible light on the comments as there is no anonymity in most situations. The question then becomes why does this happen? Do people feel a false sense of power and security when sitting in the comfort of their home behind a screen? Though it may seem easily avoidable, comments are a part of life now and they can also help in daily life and help to raise people’s confidence and share moments with each other.
As my generation continues to grow, I see many of my peers beginning to lose interest in social media, myself included. Those that do continue on are often the same people that refused to get it at the start and joined late. In the study done by Gomez and Morrison in 2014, they analyze 5 motivations and behaviors that create this “pushback”.
Each motivation discussed talks of a change in perspective on certain aspects of the users life, like productivity or political views. The motivations then result in a behavior that reduces the social media use dramatically. The most interesting of the behaviors is the *social agreement* where people form groups to set goals and limit media use. I have seen this numerous times and know many people that have found it effective, but I always found it ironic. People banding together to drop a habit, social media, that is used as a tool for communication to help keep your friends “together”. I think the modern social media, like Instagram, has begun to lose traction.
Has the Internet strayed from its original path? Growing up, I was always told that the Internet allows us to communicate with people and learn things that would normally be very difficult. This atmosphere lends itself to curiosity and exploration. However, in the concluding chapter of your book, you explain that Stack Exchange does everything it can to limit discussion. The website does this to give only the best answers and questions possible rather than have a more flowing conversation between people on the site. This concept makes sense because limiting comments and responses does ensure that the answer given is correct, but I am still shocked by the drastic difference this view of the internet gives compared to that of my childhood. I believe the Internet has broken up into parts with curiosity and efficiency being two major dividing factors.