Partners with Eva
I was looking for graduation dresses on a website called LuLu’s, and after looking at 1 dress, a bunch of suggested dresses popped up at the bottom of my screen.
Personally, I didn’t like any of the suggested dresses but I think its funny to see how LuLus algorithm immediately starts to target it’s users. In some cases,I think this asset is convenient because if you see a suggested dress that you like it saves you time from scrolling through all the options. But I also feel annoyed with this algorithm because I didn’t like any of the suggested dresses so it makes me feel like I have bad taste! 
Partners with Eva
My sister sent me this one.
I thought it was really interesting since it shared not only the memories but also included that the posts reached 500 likes. I also thought the wording of the smaller text was strange and made it seem like “Likes” are equivalent to people sending their love and support and that thanks to her posting, her WORLD is feeling a little closer.
For my observe I did the LinkedIn app. I think it’s a decent app and that it does an okay job doing what its desktop counterpart does. However that is something that bothers me with the app. I think it tries to push everything into a mobile format. I think the app suffers from that and becomes to cluttered. I don’t think it is as clean as it can be and see room for improvement. I expect a revamped update to come eventually, but like I said, it does do an okay job. I think the very unorganized and random feed is really hard to follow and therefore care about. Similarly, the find new connections is very weird knowing all your friends know all these people but you don’t. LinkedIn does a good job to help get you to employers and helps push your name which is something to be thankful of. Something it pushes quite often is their premium membership. It is constantly popping up and not pleasant when you are doing searching and browsing for things. It is cool to offer a premium i suppose but the free version offers just enough. I think it does a good job and worth having, it never hurts making connections and having a decent platform for employers to find you.
1. Make it so you can filter all posts that may come up on an “explore” page with hashtags or keywords. Gives user a chance to say what they do and what they don’t want to see ever while on social media
2. Get rid of the way that people can buy like, followers, friends. Doesn’t promote the idea of information stealing and fake accounts and just makes the numbers of followers just a bit more realistic.
3. Being able to manipulate the layout or interface offered in social media. Being able to personalize your social media in a way in which you can make some aspects of an interface bigger or smaller depending on how important that is you would be a cool without having the option of completely removing something. This would include being able to simply rearrange things on your interface as well.
4.Not having “recommended posts” based on data tracking
5. Show only what relates to you. not having a friend of a friend post on your timeline
6. Keeping business things separate from casual social media
– Chase and Maggie
This week I’m writing about how I think Instagram constructs me as a user. Since the newer updates in the passed few months I get this notification very often.. almost every time I open the app. Instagram really wants me to turn on my notifications. I think that Instagram is trying to change the way the users consume the material. Instagram used to be a platform where you would upload cool images, it was a photography app. With that in mind, it was an application where you would check it every day or so at MOST and see what was new. Now with instagram it has turned into a platform for memes, eye candy, sports highlights, news, “public figures,” and other advertising or eye candy posts. So now that Instagram has succesfully incorporated most apps into one, they want you to check it very often. With notifications on, I would get alerts probably once or twice an hour reminding me to go back on. And by putting the option to turn on my notications in my face whenever I open the app I am definitely more inclined to do it. Instagram wants me to check up on it all day.
Recently, I noticed a new (at least to me) feature in Gmail regarding the inbox.
Most of the time, I rush through checking my email, so it’s interesting that I slowed down enough to notice this feature. When you hover over the inbox without clicking, a little arrow appears on the side. Arrows usually mean “I’m hiding something”, so I tried clicking on it to see what would happen.
What I found was a whole bunch of ways to organize your inbox. My favorite one puts all unread messages on the top. I have yet to try this, as I found it overwhelming to look at all of my unread (and old) messages. One day I’ll deal with them, and remember this inbox setting.
Now, this is an observe because of how this little arrow made me behave following its discovery. I proceeded to spend a good amount of time hovering over everything and clicking everything I could see in Gmail, just to find out if anything happened. I didn’t realize it had happened until I finished my quest. Imagine what they could do with the knowledge of how to control me like that…imagine how many other sets of data they’re collecting on us, or could collect on us in a similar manner.
Social media is a strange concept because while there are many, MANY drawbacks to it, it is something we seemingly can’t escape, and it has brought many new perspectives and means of communication to life. So many people these days rely on social media for news updates, political discussions, even guidance. While getting rid of it as a whole might seem like it would cure our fixation with social media, it would probably be more destructive considering the heavy reliance on it. Some ways to try and improve social media could be….
1. The option to veto targeted advertisements
2. A tax for companies on certain sites
3. Implementing penalties for abuse or harassment online
4. Helping people understand where there data is going and who can access it
5. Educating on safe network use and how to prevent being hacked
6. Creating jobs designed to identify a variety of social media nuisances (i.e fake accounts, abusive posts or bullying, fake news)
7. Educating ways to increase income with social media or the internet
Facebook won’t leave me alone, I made a facebook strictly because my work required it in case of shift covers or communicating with my bosses. I have since left the job, yet facebook still thinks that I require a photo even after it being inactive for more than a year. I have even deactivated the account, yet the emails still keep coming. Facebook just wants my information regardless and I am not inclined to give it to them. I just want it to stop as they have done it sporadically throughout, but consistently every month.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkrdLI6e6M
This week I was inspired by a nerdwriter video on “How Dark Patterns Trick You Online” In the video he goes over various ways dark patterns on places like buttons encourage users to click on something they may otherwise not have clicked. The absence of such patterns also discourages users from clicking there (think of a yes/no do you want to continue question where yes has a dark color button and no has none). He also went over how difficult it is to unsubscribe or delete certain accounts, like Amazon, and how websites place deactiviation in places most users would not expect to look (for example amazon’s is not under “your account” but rather you have to go to the end of the page and look for help and click numerous other buttons before finally getting to a delete account page).
Ideas to improve social media w/ Alyssa
Make Facebook have certification for approved accounts so no fakes or duplicates could be made
Get rid of the Connect button for Facebook that is on other sites, such as connecting or logging in on other sites with your facebook, or connecting your facebook contacts with other accounts
Higher crackdown on bots, fake accounts, and accounts that steal information. There should be report buttons for accounts that users believe are fake so that such accounts can be manually reviewed and taken care of.
Support content creators more, either monetarily or through marketing, content creators are the one’s who get many new people to want to join a platform, if other platforms support their creators better those creators would rather be there then someplace they and their work is ignored or used for the benefit of the company over themselves. A platform without good content creators will not attract more users.
Separate newsfeeds, have one just for friends, and another for news and other sources you’re interested in. This way, you can focus more on content you care about, such as what your friends are posting, over what Facebook wants you to care about.
Make deleting accounts easier – Numerous sites, social media or not, make it incredibly difficult to delete the account, have rules like the account will be totally deleted after 30 days of not using as opposed to immediately. With the 30 day rule it is especially annoying because if you accidently click on a notification, the app button, an email, etc, you could accidently reactivate account and start the deactivation process all over again.
Make it easier to report stolen work – This is more so to help with copyright issues, but there are numerous problems on platforms like Instagram of people stealing artists work and claiming them as their own. It should be easy to get these deleted, especially if it’s something stolen from Instagram, as all that would be needed is the date posted, though may not always be the case most likely first person to post the artwork is the one who made it.
Be able to organize how you view your newsfeed – give users choice of seeing their feed in chronological order or perhaps most controversial or highest liked/upvoted, this way viewers can see what they want to see first
So Kathleen and I have been talking bout things, and it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the best solution for social media would be to delete all of it. Personally, I’ve sort of had distinct phases of interaction with social media — in high school and undergrad (the early days of FB), facebook was still mostly the students-only, friends-as-people-you-know world, where it was really useful for getting the word out on events and sharing photos, etc. and hadn’t been bombarded with advertising or excessive algorithms or otherwise monetized devices (at least that’s my recollection). After school, social media became part of my job description (literally, at Elsewhere), and I was almost on the other side of things, trying to capitalize on the value of those relationships, obsessing over metrics, etc. Now I barely participate and recognize that omitting myself doesn’t solve any problems, just because “deactivation is the opposite of activism” doesn’t necessarily mean that staying active is activism, either. Activism is activism. So,
1 – somehow tax social media, like cigarettes. fund critical print/web operations
2 – yes definitely bring back some trust-busting, all around
3 – no more algorithmic timelines, go chronological.
4 – removing ads would be nice
5 – locals-only networks (in addition to the current global ones) so that IRL communities can get better? i don’t know
6 – reimburse users for data breaches
I came across a 2-for-1 in my usual pursuits of personal-screen-space offenses and bizarre personal-performance-capitalism. This PC mag article (a lame one) had one of those subscription pop-ups, but unlike the usual ones there was no way to exit out of it at first. My initial response was to refresh the page because I didn’t want to deal with it, and then I realized that I should document it for this. So I scrolled around until it came back (noticing part 2 of this), and I’m not sure if my empty-space email entering prompted the X in the top-right corner, or if there was some kind of automatic time-out. Anyways, sites seem to be getting bolder and/or more desperate with the hijacking of user space-time. The second thing happening here (illustrated by the gif at the bottom) is the redundant progress bar (do some people not have a scroll bar indicator? maybe it’s different on mobile?) across the top of the screen, running horizontally. It’s bold and red and maybe theoretically gives the same satisfaction of a loading bar going to completion, I imagine a certain type of person would really want to scroll/read until they made it all the way.
With Niky
The first time I made a post in a while, I got this option. I never saw it again, I think I may have been sharing a video from a public group. At this point, I had already typed out my status as a status because I was planning on posting it to my personal page. I stared at this option page for a while, wonder how I post my normal status. What the hell is a “News Feed?” Why would I post this to my story? It’s a status! If I wanted to send it in messenger, I would have picked that option! Why is Facebook treating me like I’m a 67 year old on social media, holding my hand, giving me an extra safety net so I don’t post something where I don’t want it to be. I guess the video was something I would normally share over messenger, but why was this page made? Is it really an extra safety net or is it just another way Facebook wants you to share and “reach” more people? Like in Snapchat how people post something to their story but also send that same photo to specific people.
News Feed is the new wall I guess? Where did the phrase “status” go? I see that timeline is still being used but I feel that Facebook has started to change a lot of their terminology in the past few years.
As many people know, online surveys for pay are mostly scam operations. Labor and consumer information for very little to no compensation. They do not make you money. I repeat! No Money!!!
So I was thrown by the grossness of being served this lovely advert on youtube while watching a vice documentary:
Vice voices is a survey service you can sign up for and “earn rewards.” So I registered to see if this waste of time led to any different content. The short answer is that it did not. The only way I could be offered more surveys was if I lied about my income and claimed I owned a boat and tennis rackets. These surveys quickly turned into consumer bullshit again.
Though the initial vice survey did ask me for my opinions on different vice content channels. I was able to ask “why are all your journalists hot?” and comment: “I don’t need them to be hot! I just want vetted content.”
This is where things get gross again: Vice is a corporate entity. All corporations are about growing profits first even if they produce news content. The secondary company hosting the surveys was: 
Apparently this large private company has a lot of bad reviews for paying out it’s promised rewards:
Also I thought this was a beautiful article with the “Vice Voices” survey program advertised on the same page. With everything we’ve learned from Cambridge Analytica, surveys feel like a pretty dated and legal way to get consumer information. I would love to read more statistics on this subject but I have not found a lot of long form journalism on the subject.
For the previous project, project 6, one of my ideas was to do something with google earth. But what I discovered was that I could no longer access google earth in my preferred browser, which is Firefox. I could download it as a program for my computer, but it was now only accessible on browser through google chrome. I feel like this isn’t an accident, seeing as how google owns both chrome and google earth. I wonder what they did to google earth that made it so firefox could no longer access it. Did they improve the user experience or something; making it like a virtual reality experience? I can’t be bothered to actually download it, so I suppose I won’t find out.
Mitch has expressed interest in click generated or possibly hovering generated tones. For this I know we need to create a tone library. While we are figuring this out, I’m brainstorming ideas as to how this can be blended into something poetic or silly: