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.