Ethics of psychographic targeting in advocacy — using values, attitudes, and behaviors to micro-target messages. Will examine risks of manipulation, transparency gaps, and consent issues, with cases like Cambridge Analytica & Meta’s FTC decree.
Help I still need: Best sector focus; finding post–Cambridge Analytica examples; framing enforceable solutions. AIA HAb SeCeNc Hin R ChatGPT 4o v1.0 @jjsylvia

Final post: The post character count, and the inability to cross over into other instances without creating a new profile are serious obstacles that may be a limiting factor in user engagement and adoption. I look forward to watching it evolve. @jjsylvia

From the perspective of digital ethics, my foray into the Mastodon experiment has been eye-opening. Having only used more popular social media platforms, I expected the learning curve to be significant, but I didn’t expect just how different the experience would be. As a digital ethics novice, the connection between ethical frameworks and technology in wide use is fascinating, yet overwhelming when trying to articulate how they relate a specific ethical framework to an issue or challenge.

The Fediverse seems to be a real-world project that’s using ethical pluralism to allow people with different ethical preferences to interact. It’s interesting to see ethical frameworks applied to digital ethics across varied audiences. I think the platform is not fully conceived, but I think it holds a lot of promise, once the processes are worked out.

This seems to be a fundamental issue with federated servers being able to support users who do not wish to have multiple accounts. It seems like there is no handshake or passport into another instance, at least not for users, creating obstacles rather facilitating communication.

After replying to a post about scientists hiding AI use, I checked it later to see if there were any responses and found that “Replies from other servers may be missing. See more replies on mastodonapp.uk.” I clicked it, and it took me to the site and asked me to login with Mastodon UK credentials or create an account.

My interactions were varied like any other platform ranging from thoughtful to immediate knee-jerk reactions like Facebook or X. I posted a question asking what’s so cool about the Fediverse in an attempt to provoke a dialogue, and one user gave me a polite answer, but did not respond to my follow up question. The hashtags are extremely relevant on this platform since there are no algorithms driving content selection, so you’ll need to choose wisely if you want to find others and be discovered.

I chose the Mastodon server to see how the overall federated system worked in general. I didn’t appreciate the choice of picking another server and learned you can’t undo your instance choice unless you create a new account. It is a different interface than Twitter/X and Facebook, but based on my experience with those platforms, it seems to have a bit of each with likes, replies and boosts, or re-tweets. It’s interesting but I think it will take some exploration to fully develop an opinion.