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To me, one of the most important phenomenon with social media, and now AI, is the lack of privacy and constant surveillance. Pretty much anything we do online is tracked, and social media collects so much information that it's hard to believe it's blindly accepted as something unavoidable in today's culture. One of the articles mentions that Facebook users are estimated to have 2,200+ companies watching them and tracking their data. So many people don't think twice about how much data they give to social media and what that information can be used for. Think about social media platforms that ask for your name and birthday to make sure you're old enough for their platform and a real person, but coincidentally, a name and birthday is also what some doctors ask for to verify your identity. Of course people who run social media don't have your ID... Except it's becoming increasingly more common for accounts and websites to ask for a picture of your ID to verify who you are, and once again, most people don't say no because they want to view that website or have that social media account. Where this falls into AI is the amount of personal information so many people give AI, especially chatbots. People will create accounts on things like ChatGPT and likely never think about the fact that anything they ask it is all strung together nicely in their account, so any information given is recorded and connected. People ask chatbots for life advice or even just talk to it to get things off their chest, but all of that information is processed and collected. To me this raises a question: if AI and/or social media blatantly stated they collected your data and sold it or used it for third parties and you couldn't opt out, would anyone even bat an eye? Humans are creatures of convenience, and being able to just ask a chatbot how to do something or making that post on social media to send all of your friends a message is a lot more convenient than looking something up yourself, especially offline, or having to contact each individual to tell them whatever you wanted to. Is privacy even a big deal to most people? Or have too many people just blindly accepted that there's no other option so it doesn't faze them?

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this is the exact same problem A.i art has with stealing others work.

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I think a majorly underlooked component of social media is how it gamifies and commodifies the concept of social interaction. Now more than ever, metrics on levels of engagement are prioritized and rewarded, sometimes financially. Not only does this often lead to feelings of isolation as this is fundamentally a highly skewed way to view human interaction, but this can also encourage a degradation of digital interaction. Algorithms prioritize those who can achieve the highest amount of interactions through whatever means necessary, which often does not encourage pro-social behavior. A new form of vocabulary has come to be to describe this anti-social behavior designed to provoke and taunt into engaging, coined "rage bait" or "engagement bait". Instead of pro-social behavior like empathy, patience, understanding, and kindness being nurtured, inflammatory content is the most highly rewarded with increased visibility and reach. Anti-social behavior like lying and manipulation, hostility and aggression, and irresponsibility and impulsivity are often highly rewarded, as disagreement and controversy generates more comments, more interactions, more engagement, pushing this type of content up and outward. This proves a problem, as lots of AI training data is directly scraped from the internet with reckless disregard for the content it is trained off of. As seen with earlier chatbots, such as Eliza, users were able to turn her into a raging nazi within the span of a few weeks. Grok has already reached the same point too, as it has routinely been spouting conspiracy theory about white genocide in South Africa, and had an entire 16 hour unchecked period where it referred to itself as "Mecha Hitler". While this is certainly the most extreme example, as long as "engagement at all costs" is prioritized, such will not foster pro-social habits and tendencies. If AI gets stronger reactions from anti-social behavior, and is rewarded for increased engagement, these LLMs will prove to increasingly degrade in personality.

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One impact I found interesting is false and misleading information becoming viral which could apply to #3. AI is being relied on more and more in our lives and how would we be able to prove what info is true or false? This AI that we rely on should be trusted to provide all true information. AI can create content almost instantly and share content all over, which could potentially flood misinformation into the internet and social media.

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in a world being plagued by every type of misinfo and then some; 

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in a world being plagued by every type of misinfo and then some; 

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we don't need a machine with the purpose to make it

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I found "The impact of social media on communication" interesting because in terms of social media becoming a daily tool and 2nd form of communicating behind just talking. Companies continue to experiment with how they can incorporate certain apps to be a part of our everyday life, which is both concerning and annoying. The constant usage of ads to get you buy something, or the algorithm attempts to get you into some political stuff, or topics you want to be involved with. The article "AI and the Evolution of Social Media" gives me more insight into how these companies use AI to affect a user's algorithm to get them locked in to scrolling on Tiktok for a long period of time. It's also just wrong, because your literily using AI to manipulate a person to get you to buy something and keep a track on what you watch, like, and follow.

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One impact I find important is virality. The reading explains that social media algorithms reward shocking or emotional content because it keeps people engaged, which often leads to the spread of misinformation. This applies to AI because generative AI can create and distribute false or misleading content much faster and at a much larger scale.

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I find it interesting surveillance discussed in the article "AI and the Evolution of Social Media" because lately I have felt like I am being watched and tracked by my movement of my phone and social media and AI use. I find it interesting they track our movements across companies. Yes, I always hit ask app not to track because I don't want these apps and and companies knowing what I'm doing, but however I feel that they are listening to me because I can say something to a friend then get on Facebook and I see ads fro something that we discussed. How it relates to AI, when I'm on chat GPT for instance I can ask it a question and the same thingd happens it will predict or suggest things to me that I have spoken out loud to a friendd. Also, lock-in I found interesting because of the same thing, I have found it harder to switch to different platforms because I have grown acustom to using certiam sites.

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I'm going to talk about algorithms, and how they're scummy. first, it's simply creepy for all these companies to consume the media you consume. and second it makes you want to doomscroll more, third, that scrolling could lead to focus issues as it continues to feed you more stuff you like

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I find "surveillance" within social media as the most interesting topic. It is highlighted in the "AI and the evolution of social media" reading. It directly links AI to social media, as it takes interaction information and processes it to generate more tailored content. I find it slightly unnerving that social media platforms have the capability to "spy" on me. I don't know how much information the AI within social media can gain access to, but it seems like more progression in this area could lead to endless amounts of personal information becoming public. If it just an algorithm of the videos I interact with, I'm okay with that. However, if that algorithm is AI's "foot in the door" to more in depth spying, social media won't be around much longer on my devices.