# 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.

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