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# Reading Responses (Set 2)
## Reading Responses:
### April 8^th^, 2022 - Bemused
In all my 22 years of living, I have never questioned the five-star system that runs rampant in our society until reading Reagle’s 7th chapter in Reading the Comments. In hindsight, 5 options to express our entire feeling toward anything – product, customer service, driving skills – seems limiting and that it would make more sense to have a larger rating system to encompass the entire range of human emotion. Reagle provides clarity by explaining that the limiting five-star system has led to a system of commenting that “is typically reactive, asynchronous, and short.” My mental association with the word “reactive” is a negative one and people being “short” with one another is a phrase that means people are acting rude towards one another. Knowing the connotations of these words, it is no surprise that the limiting five-star system is going to foster negative and embarrassing comments because people comment in a reactive (combative), asynchronous, and short (rude) manner.
Before this class, I never had a system of filtering comments while online shopping. My typical strategy included scrolling to the comments and choosing a few at random to read and then pick a common trend. If I had known that people are hired to immediately comment and like on new posts to boost their own products or that many low reviews are left by very angry users that cannot be trusted, I would have developed a more advance comment screening mechanism. If a CO2 machine saved a woman’s life and she only gave it a 4/5-star rating while she gave random products 5/5 ratings, what comments can we trust? This, coupled with the quick reactivity of posts that expose implicit bias, leads to my new perspective that assessing comments needs to be more advanced than randomly selecting a few comments to read.
### April 12^th^, 2022 - Algorithmic discrimination
The biggest take-home message from Kerninghan (2017) was that it is virtually impossible to go through life in incognito mode. It was overwhelming to see the amount of information about you that one simple google search can reveal. Taking this course has brought awareness to my activities on a site; if you are on a website, it is a given that what you looked up, what you clicked, and even where your mouse moved are being collected. What I was unaware of was the intercommunication between websites given all the information in cookies. While this breach of privacy made me upset, it was nothing compared to Rutherford’s *Buzzfeed* article. The piece provided multiple examples highlighting internet search results being racist, sexist, offensive and supporting negative stereotypes of marginalized groups, specifically Black people. A search for “beauty” on google images yield majority non-people of color and a search for “unprofessional hair” spews majority photos of Black hairstyles.
As a person of color, I have struggled my entire life with the notion that I could be considered attractive. This was due to all the models in billboards, ads, and on TV being white and establishing the Eurocentric standard of beauty that most of the world and I do not fall under. It seems that the creators of the internet have fed into this discrimination in their biased algorithms. In today’s America, the percentage of minorities in every professional/highly regarded field are extremely low and in the minority. With so much discrimination happening in real life, it is saddening to hear that an inherently unbiased search engine with no thoughts or emotions could still be racist/misogynistic/prejudiced and perpetuate ideas of “other.” I am glad that courses such as this one highlight.
### April 19^th^, 2022 - Collapsed Context
When people my age ask for my twitter and I say I do not have one, I am met with awe. The reason I do not have a twitter was aptly summarized in Marwick and Boyd’s (2010) study. When one is on a social media platform such as Twitter, a public platform is automatically assumed. This leads to all social media users imagining the audiences to which they are communicating with. This study identified how the context collapse of audiences into friends versus following changed based on the user. If you were a “micro-celebrity,” the audience is less of a friend and more of a means to make money and succeed. People with less followers are often tweeting to “themselves” (not a real concept on the internet) or their friends. The common ground between the two different types of twitter users: censoring for the audience.
I personally do not have a twitter because I already censor myself and alter the way I present myself on Facebook and Instagram. While Twitter is a different form of social media and could possibly expose me to more news and laughs, I do not want to go through the struggle of creating an entire persona. I am not a micro-celebrity, so I would have to find “friends” on the platform and then assess who they are to see what I can tweet. Already, my Instagram posts are a balance of “fun” and “work friendly” when I really just want to create a digital diary of my life. Relating this back to the study – whether you are tweeting to friends or thousands of people you do not know, you are subconsciously filtering and censoring yourself based on your imagined audience. Therefore, no one can be “truly authentic” online because of subconscious thought.
### April 22^nd^, 2022 - Authenticity, Work & Influence
Instagram influencer is already a fake job, so why are there people faking a fake job? This was one of the main thoughts I had while reading Lorenz (2018) article. Brands and companies utilize popular social media users to promote their products, but there are people promoting products without being paid. While this may seem like a win-win situation – social media influencers get the appeal of being popular enough to be sponsored and companies get free press – it can be a great detriment to the company. Fake influencers posting seemingly sponsored content make it nearly impossible for companies to hire an actual promoter since so many people are faking it. Especially when it comes to 2020 with the pandemic and protests, how you present yourself on the internet is extremely important. Lerman’s (2020) piece covers this topic and explained how many micro-celebrities online are balancing promoting products with social advocacy.
I can imagine a dangerous online relationship where a social media influencer is fake promoting a company’s brand while simultaneously posting heinous content such as anti-BLM or anti-Vaccine. In this case, the company is hurt because it seems as if they are supporting a micro-celebrity that does not have the company’s values or lacks decency altogether. For example I remember 2020 Instagram being very supportive of the BLM movements, but my Instagram now is 50% advertising that it has lost social movement impact. It seems as if online shopping and brand support are now embedded into social media and the only way to avoid it is by not going online at all. Both Lorenz and Lerman emphasized what you support online can have real effect, and it is up to audience/influencer/company to always make sure what is being posted is reflecting the proper message.
### April 26^th^, 2022 - Pushback
As someone who can barely take criticism from a friend or mentor, I understand the appeal of silencing everyone on online platforms. In his book, Reagle (2019) couples logic with concrete examples of both the benefits and harms of public commenting without the threat of monitors or disabling comments. The two most prominent examples of intense comment filtering were the company Stack Exchange and the mentioned Atwood article. Stack Exchange’s main goal in commenting was to “supports the absolute minimum amount of discussion necessary” through comment upvotes remaining public and the rest being hidden. Atwood seconded this method as their article explicitly said online communities have a responsibility to moderate the community. Conversely, Reagle proposes the possibility of filter bubbles due to comment filtering. He states that there will be little privacy and people will only see what they already believe in, which discourages the free flow of thoughts and discourse.
My biggest takeaway from the reading was finding a balance between filter bubbles and Godwin’s law. Filter bubbles may feel safe, and I personally love the online bubbles I run in, but I realize that the periods of most growth in my life are when I leave my safety bubble and venture out to new horizons. This can be applied to new ideas found on the internet through comments that may never be seen if everyone lived in a bubble. However, Godwin’s Law which states that internet discourse always leads back to Hitler/Nazi’s still exists. No one wants to see harmful rhetoric or other offensive language that always occurs without filters, but as a society we need to be pushed with new ideas and people. Reagle does an amazing job at laying out this dilemma and I can now see that this will be the biggest point of contention when free speech concerning the internet is discussed.