1. Introduction#

  • How does social media influence our world and us, in good and bad ways?

  • How do the decisions made by the creators of social media platforms affect how it is used and what people do?

  • How do social media bots change the dynamics on the platform?

  • What can we learn about people from social media data?

  • What are the ethical trade offs made in all of these situations?

In this book, we will try to start answering questions like this. To get us started let’s look at a particular situation that happened on Social Media: the case of Justine Sacco’s racist joke tweet, and then read actor Kumail Nanjiani’s reflections on ethics in tech.