businessboat-blog

[businessboat-blog]

Final Project: Social Hacking

by Long Nguyen

Description:

I decided to do my project on the social hacking because I find it interesting how information and data can be manipulated to trick people. Even though I am against the practice, I find it fun to come up with a hack and its solution. My social hack is based on creating multiple fake accounts on itch.io to promote my game onto the front page. My solution instead is to figure out how to identify fake reviews from actual reviews.

Promt:

Social Hacking: Design and develop a protocol intended to counter your proposed hack from the original project. Develop a simple information page from the standpoint of the network or the system admin, speaking to consumers / other network users, about the original hack and the steps your company has taken to deal with it, including safeguards to prevent any future hacking.

At itch.io, we are aware of an influx of fake reviews lately that have been pushing commercial games onto the front page. This is considered false advertising and liable for lawsuit. We respect our users’ trust and community and had taken steps to deal with the problem and prevent future exploits.

We are currently working on FakeCheck and will shortly deploy it the following week. FakeCheck is an algorithm that look at a reviewer’s previous posts, behaviors, and timeline to determine their authenticity. Fake reviews are often written for multiple products within the same day, and while this may be unusual but not definitive of a fake review, it is taken into consideration. These reviews are also often overwhelmingly positive or overwhelmingly negative with a lack of contexts. FakeCheck will match keywords in the review and compare them with the reviewer’s previous posts to check for variety and consistency. A few sentences review is highly indicative of a bot due to their simplicity and lack of meaningful reasonings.

FakeCheck will also check the timeline of each reviewer’s posts as well. A large amount of positive reviews within a few hours for a relatively unknown game is highly unusual. If that is the case, FakeCheck will compile the names of the reviewers and check their history. If most of the reviews come from first time reviewer within a small window of time, then FakeCheck can safely determine many of those reviews to be fake.

If FakeCheck identifies a game to have many fake reviews, that game’s rating will be temporarily disable. Of course, FakeCheck is not the end all solution to such a complex problem, and therefore, a moderator will investigate the situation on a case to case basis and deem whether it’ll be necessary to republish the game and remove all of its statistical data or simply remove all of the fake reviews.

Finally, as a safeguard to prevent future exploit, we will be using the data gathered by FakeCheck to improve the algorithm and provide a better user experience. Information such as time spent on playing the game would be another factor into whether the review is legitimate since the algorithm would compare the amount of minutes/hours play to the average of amount of time played. If there is any outlier or large gap, FakeCheck will report it to the moderator as well.

[businessboat-blog]

Week 9 Fake news by Christopher Vu

There is no alleged author for this fake news article besides that it was posted on the WTOE 5 news website. It was posted first on the Facebook website as a post then on leads to their own news website for fake news. The author’s identity is unverified since there is no author to be named for the article.

The post originated in the U.S.

The main content of the articles is the endorsement of Donald Trump by Pope Francis. If people didn’t know that the post was a fake then they would believe that Donald Trump is doing god’s work by becoming president. This can cause a lot of religious people to believe that Donald Trump is a good guy compared to his counterpart. Because a lot of U.S Americans are religious then they will believe anything of a higher religious official will say without questioning them.

The article is using pathos and ethos within their article by explaining that the pope which is the highest person within the catholic religion is supporting Trump then that means that he is a good guy. Usually when people think of the church they think of god, so by distribution when people think of the pope supporting trump they will think Trump is doing god’s work. It will sway people to believe that their past views of Trump are misguided and that he has changed or is actually a good person. It gives the people to support Trump more encouragement to support him since a lot of people follow their religion religiously they wouldn’t not vote for him.

What indicates this article as fake is where the article is posted on which is on a fake news website that post satire and other fake news. Also how the article doesn’t even have an author with it leading to believe that nobody wants to take 100% of the credit of this story believing that they know it’s not true or their is a possibility of it not being true.

I don’t think the article would have fooled me because the pope has said in the past that he doesn’t want to affect the U.S election process since it is a country he does not live in and doesn’t want to abuse his power. Also with my own beliefs of Trump, it would have made me skeptical of high level officials publicly supporting Trump without them already being in his circle.

[businessboat-blog]

Week 9: Group Strategy

To filter fake news posts and sites, we would develop an app or Chrome extension that would initiate an algorithm upon entering each website.

The algorithm would first look for the author of the article by searching for a name following the word “by” under the heading. The algorithm would then perform a Google search of that name to verify the author, and if the name is associated with any term about fake news, the app would notify the user. Afterward, the user is given the option to blacklist that author or not. A blacklisted author henceforward will immediately pop-up a message about their articles being fake news.

Additionally, the algorithm would also highlight all the hyperlinks in the body paragraph. If none are found, the news is more likely to be fake. If links are found, the algorithm checks to see if the links lead to multiple websites or if the links are all lead to the same source. If all the links lead to the same website, the news is considered uncredible.

In summary, our algorithm checks the author’s previous work to verify authenticity and checks the hyperlink sources for credibility. If either of these steps fails, the algorithm would determine the news to be potentially false and warn the reader. However, it is still ultimately up to the reader to determine whether they wish to continue reading or not.

[businessboat-blog]

Week 9: Fake News

by Long Nguyen

Paul Horner, a prominent hoax writer, published an article about Donald Trump securing the Amish’s votes on his fake news website (abcnews(dot)com(dot)co) that sought to mimic the real news outlet ABC News (abcnews.go.com). The site has been shut down as of today. The post originated from within the US as Horner was based in Arizona.

The article discusses how even though the Amish traditionally stayed out of politics, they have finally decided to “get involved in the democratic processes...to stop [Hillary’s] assault and take a stand for biblical principles.” (snopes.com) This is eye-catching to both Trump’s supporters and his opponents due to the implications that Donald Trump has secured millions of vote that can change the tides of the 2016 election.

Despite Horner’s intention to satirize Trump and his supporters, the article instead fueled the Republican’s stance as it was retweeted by Trump’s son and campaign manager as a legitimate victory. The fabricated story engineered an organization called the American Amish Brotherhood calling all Christian citizens to vote for Trump. Horner’s intention to humiliate Trump’s supporters’ gullibility backfired as rather than fact-checking the article, they spread the fake news on social media enough for it to appear factual. Even though Horner despises Trump, he had unintentionally created a platform for the Republican to increase their influence.

There are not many details that the average reader would notice to indicate the news article as false due to Horner’s meticulous craft of making it appear legitimate. However, some giveaways are the url being abcnews(dot)com(dot)co instead of abcnews.go.com, the phone numbers listed redirecting to the Westboro Baptist Church, the non-existent American Amish Brotherhood, and the seemingly stock photo of an Amish community.

This article would not have fooled me as I am always weary of political articles, and therefore, I often fact-check the sources and cross-reference other articles to make sure the news is legitimate. Even though some minor news outlet republished this hoax, their sources are the same link to Horner’s article, and there are no major news outlet that even considered the story factual.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_fake-news-845a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.a4b26196d134

https://www.snopes.com/amish-trump-presidential-victory/

[businessboat-blog]

Week 9: Fake News by Kevin Flores

1. As of now the article/website itself has been deleted.  The article was posted on the now dead website DenverGuardian.com.  The author name was never revealed, instead under author’s name it will just display DG Staff.  The author/website was not verified and has been confirmed later on by others that it is just one of many website that has been made to just post fake news during elections for views.

2. The website officially declared itself a US post from a Denver oriented news site.  Specifically, it mentioned it was one of the oldest news sites for all of the state of Denver.  However, it provides no evidence of truly originating in Denver.  While there is no final confirmation of where it came from, many believe that it just one of the many websites that have been created most likely from people in the Balkans. 3. Particularly the main content of the article focuses on a one of the supposed agents that was involved in the infamous Hillary Clinton email leaks.  Particularly how after the leaks were revealed, soon after, out of nowhere he was involved in a murder-suicide along with his “wife.”  It draws many issues on how it phrases the articles.  First off it redraws the memory of the Clinton Email leaks from a  while ago, that angered many/put her in a bad light, so it brings those thoughts back to the surface.  Next it focuses on how the person who not only was an agent for Clinton but also “responsible” for the mail leak has just suddenly died soon after it.  It shows a picture of a burning house to visually catch readers attention to try and display a crazy scene. 4. It is trying to make a chaos inducing articles for people to read specifically the chaos surrounding Clinton after the mail links.  Not only does the articles remind people about the links that recently occur, but it also talks specifically of how the person that dies was in particular one of the people responsible for the leak.   This just continues to create chaos around the subject, because it tried to make an implicit statement of how strange one of the leakers mysteriously got involved in a suicide so soon after the leak.  The articles just tries to invoke chaos of the leaks, coincidences, and exaggerated implications of how Clinton is a murderer.. 5.  First off, one thing that I notice was how the author name was not revealed but instead just said it was a staff member.  While this does happen sometimes, a majority of the time, articles with these titles for authors will mean the articles are normally faulty or just full of rumors.  Second thing that was off was the picture.  The article talks about a murder suicide but the picture is a burning house instead.  This will be fine but soon no sources of the aftermath of the house is shown which makes it seem that location was a lie.  Second of all, while there is normally hundreds of news articles, the fact that only this specific news website seems to be the one used to share makes it misleading, as that means others news sites are not publishing it which raises question if it is actual factual news or fake (which it soon reveals it was). 6.  I believe that the article would not have fooled me if I saw it during election.  First, using many research articles using a lot of news from other states for school assignments, I have a general idea of well known or big news publishers.  The fact, that the website claimed to be the oldest news source for Denver would have caught me off guard, since if that that was the case, the site will be well known.   Second, knowing there was a lot of fake news being spread around during the elections I am always skeptical of “big news” that comes out so I always make sure to check for any proof.  I would have probably not only look up other news sites to see if they had similar things or check trending to see if the news was being spread.  Seeing as how only one other website spread the article, I would immediately declare it as a fake and just ignore it. Also not to mention that usually when i read news I, tend to look up the more well known sources, I really don't tend to give attention or care about articles if shared on Facebook due to the fact of how many dumb and unreliable things are shared among the site.

[businessboat-blog]

Week 9: Fake News

by Tom C.

https://twitter.com/JaydaBF/status/935609305574903812

1. The alleged author of the tweet is Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of the U.K. based, far-right, anti-Islam, anti-immigration organization Britain First. Her organization disseminates propaganda on YouTube and Facebook designed to antagonize Muslims. The author of the post is verified, as she later tweeted a thank you message to President Trump for retweeting her post.

2. The post originated outside the United States as the author is located in Britain. The post is misleading in that the original video originated from a video portal in the Netherlands and it was originally shared without any claim that the attacker was Muslim or a migrant. The Netherlands Embassy in the United States took to twitter to correct claims that the attacker was a Muslim migrant and verified that he was in fact “born and raised in the Netherlands” and “received and completed his sentence under Dutch law.”

3. The main content of the post was a video of an alleged Muslim migrant attacking a Dutch boy on crutches. The post is salacious in that it depicts an alleged Muslim, an alleged immigrant, and an attack on a native Dutch boy with a disability. Such depictions appeal to hot-button issues of religion, immigration, and violence to draw viewers’ attention.

4. The post utilizes inflammatory depictions and descriptions as a strategy to incite viewers’ rage and antagonize them. It is relying on a completely fabricated story, designed to strike a chord in viewers who may harbor far-right, anti-Islam, anti-immigration views, much like the Britain First organization Jayda Fransen is linked to. The strategy appears to be propaganda meant to encourage votes for candidates, such as President Trump, who are aligned with voters who share similar sentiments. Moreover, it is also intended to induce chaos in that it stokes political and religious divisions within society in a divide-and-conquer strategy.

5. The fact that the post was shared by Jayda Fransen, a far-right, anti-Islam, anti-immigration leader who has been found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment in November 2016 should clue viewers to the fact that the post may be of dubious origin. I would certainly question posts from anyone who has been verifiably charged with a hate crime. Also, the video does not depict any of the context that the poster claims in the video itself. The poster merely attaches an unverifiable description which is baseless in context.

6. The post could not have fooled me as I would look for actual confirmation of the poster’s claims within the video itself rather than relying on an argumentative claim the poster makes, without any verifiable evidence in the video which I can deduce for myself after viewing the video. Furthermore, I always question the motives and credibility of far-right, hate groups as their aims do not align with my perspectives.

[businessboat-blog]

Fake News 2016 Election: Hillary Transfers $1.8B to Qatar Bank

1)The alleged author is Sorcha Faal and the article was originally posted on whatdoesitmean.com. The author’s identity is unverified and is speculated actually be the owner of the website, David Booth, or someone working closely with him. Whatdoesitmean.com is by all means a conspiracy website that should not be taken seriously.

2)The story was allegedly a Ministry of FInance report circulating around the Kremlin according to the first few lines of the article, but there are no sources to prove this.

3) The main content is very long winded and involves many fake conspiracy theories and stories, but this is what it boils down to. A Ministry of Finance report circulating around the Kremlin on October 6, 2016 says that Hillary Clinton moved $1.8B to Qatar central bank at the advice of JP Morgan & CO’s CEO Jamie Dimon’s advice. Jamie Dimon was apparently on the verge of executing a masterplan to save their bank and it could have serious adverse effects on the financial stability of the US. Jamie, apparently “sounded a warning” to some of the bank’s top clients that the US auto loan bubble was about to collapse and cause a catastrophe for the the US financial market. In response to the warning, Clinton moved $1.8 billion from the Clinton foundation to the the Qatar Central Bank, saving her from the national crisis about to occur. After the transfer of  $1.8 billion occurred, one of the sheikdoms royal palaces was “ordered emptied” in preparation for the “early November arrival” of a “high value” dignitary, that is speculated to be Hillary. The article draws in viewers attention with a number of claims but the ,most noticeable ones are the claims of economic collapse, financial wrongdoings, criminalizing Clinton and her family, and associating Clinton with alleged supporters of ISIS.

4) This entire articles was made to defame and criminalize Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election period using false claims. It paints this picture that Hillary and Bill Clinton are part of some huge crime family that is looking to stay dominant in the US political system. By using a fake claim of economic collapse and associating Hillary with the middle east and alleged terrorist supporters it plays with a lot of uninformed Americans’ distrust of large banks and their shady dealings as well as the bias that many Americans have against the middle east. On top of building these associations, it somewhat bashes liberals calling them “lazy and free loading” and has a pretty open support of trump. This is made apparent by the statement, “And rather than the US propaganda mainstream media warning the American people of their economies looming destruction, this report concludes, they have, instead, begun a “systemic mainstream misinformation” campaign to manipulate the presidential election polls showing Hillary Clinton leading—but that stands opposed to actual (but unreported) polls showing Donald Trump leading”. On top of defaming/ criminalizing Hillary, this article wants to create chaos by creating mistrust in finance and government in general as well.

5) First of all, this website is a conspiracy website and it’s very apparent. The formatting of the page is really outdated with a 1990s HTML format with really horribly captioned photos. The photos are a dead giveaway and instead of describing them, I’m going to attach them. The website is called whatdoesitmean.com and has many posts about conspiracies as well. The sidebar ads are for healing crystal energy too. There were also misspellings and some pretty unprofessional language used throughout the article.

6) This article would have never fooled me, but I guess I could see how it fooled others. I’ve seen a good share of conspiracy websites in my years and they all share a similar format to what I saw. On top of that some the claims and stories were absolutely outrageous sounding and were linked to even more conspiracies. Basically, if someone showed me this page and the story I would probably laugh it off right away.

By: Spencer Neapolitan

[businessboat-blog]

GoFundMe Social Hacks

My social hack is one of personal gain that takes advantage of gofundme.com but does require a little chunk of money to start it off. It is basically a form of a white collar social hack, where you spend money to make a lot more money. My goal is to make money doing just that.

On Buyaccs.com you can buy Twitter accounts that were registered in 2012 and have verified emails and phone numbers. They are also fully profiled with a bio, avatar, and avatars. At $1.7 per account I will buy 50 of them for about $85 total and make my life much easier. The payment of choice is bitcoins, and they aren’t very difficult to use or acquire. Once the payment is made, they send you scripts and passwords to easily run and use your brand new botnet army. This is the easiest part of my social hack, but here is where it gets interesting.

I will be using each bot accounts to create a separate gofundme campaign or maybe just a few gofundme campaigns. On top of that I will begin using these accounts to retweet tweets from conservative accounts with a high number of followers as well as falsely posting conservative tweets. Over the course of the next month or two I will gain a large number of conservative and alt-right followers, which will be the target of my social hack.

Each gofundme campaign will have a different conservative theme with an attached picture. Something along the lines of “Gas money to join the good fight at ___ rally” or just appealing to my group of followers. On top of that, I will set each to have a goal of $100 and donate about $80 of my own money to the cause to make it seem like my goal is almost complete

At this point I will have my bot accounts post these links to the gofundme campaigns in a call to action esque way, where it calls on my followers to help their conservative brothers and sister. Because my campaign goals look almost complete they are most likely to get that last $20 filled. The only setback is the fact that gofundme takes 5% of all donations. I will lose $5 of those toal $100 making a net profit of about $15 per campaign. If I have 50 campaigns that will be a net profit of $750, which is a pretty nice chunk of change. I will then collect the funds through my attached paypal account and be happy with my reward.

I guess the only unintended consequences or impacts is taking advantage of conservatives in a non disruptive or harmful way. They are giving their money to a false cause but it is only in small increments of money, and I think that is okay. I am a low income college student that is barely slipping buy with bills and food and my target audience is generally middle classed and can afford to donate $1-20 dollars if they wanted to. I could have chosen any group like gamers, parents, or many others but I stuck to this one because it is so easy to find compelling posts that you can retweet to get a lot of followers very quickly. Most of these posts appeal to their mass follower bases and they become an easy source of donations and followers for myself.

The best part of this is that it’s pretty easy for anyone to do and it is reminiscent of the white collar tricks that many wealthy people use to make their money everyday.

-Spencer

[businessboat-blog]

Week 7: System Expoit

by Tom 

Rideshare Credits

Ridesharing platforms such as Uber and Lyft incentivize users to encourage their friends and family to use the platforms also by providing existing users a referral credit when they refer new users to sign-up for the platforms. Existing users are provided a unique referral ID and encouraged to disseminate this referral ID widely throughout their social networks, such as through Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks so that others may use it to sign-up.

Uber and Lyft’s Terms of Service specify that the only limitation to spreading a referral ID is that the users must own the content where the referral ID is located. This restriction is vague and opens up a grey area within the referral system for gaming and exploitation. In my example, I will attempt to create a blog where I can place my referral ID and encourage visitors to my blog to sign-up using my referral ID, and thereby, receive a steady flow of referral credits, enabling me to stockpile an inordinate amount of ride credits for personal use and financial gain.

           My blog will be a community for rideshare users and drivers, offering up advice for Uber and Lyft drivers and riders on the best ways to use the platforms and overcome obstacles related to being a rideshare driver or user. Along the sidebar of the blog, I will prominently display my referral ID and within each article or post, I will embed a link to my referral ID and encourage new users to sign-up with my referral ID, while disclosing that I receive a commission from their clicks. The actual blog content does not have to be wholly unique, they can be automatically posted from other similar sites using a news aggregator. The only thing that must be unique is my referral ID. The goal is to drive views towards my blog and encourage clicks on my referral ID hyperlink. Driving page views can be done via an advertising campaign. This process involves buying facebook ads, employing search engine optimization, and creating a newsletter to email to my blog subscribers.

In a conservative estimate, 100 clicks on my referral ID may yield 1 new user sign-up. Thus, every 1000 page views can yield 10 ride credits. During the span of a month, it becomes possible to accumulate hundreds of rideshare credits. To further exploit the system, I will create a rideshare network start-up where I will offer 20 free rides for $9.99 a month. As customers sign-up for my credits service, I will replace my referral ID with their unique referral ID on my blog. This is a simple, automated replacement done using automated scripting tools. I will set the script to add and remove the subscribers’ referral ID’s based on the length of their subscriptions to my start-up service. Over time, credits will be directed to the subscribers’ rideshare accounts and hopefully, they will continue to be subscribers while I net $9.99 per month for each subscriber. This translates to my personal financial gain.

There are certain limitations to this exploit. The most glaring limitation is that most of the current population already are existing users on Uber and Lyft. Since both ridesharing platforms have grown in popularity, newer sign-ups are rare and harder to come by. Another major obstacle is the fact that the exploit is based on estimates. Since there is no certain way to account for new user sign-ups, all subsequent referral credits are directly tied to wavering estimates of click-throughs on my hyperlink. As a consequence, this makes for difficulty in inventory control for my rideshare credits start-up. At times, the subscriber may receive more than the 20 rides expected, at other times, they may receive none. This uncertainty impacts the overall success of the exploit.

[businessboat-blog]

Week 6: Network Mission Statement

Anti-bullying Social Network

Our social network aims to combat bullying on a national level via the creation of a community for people to share their experiences and foster self empowerment and self worth while developing empathy and compassion for others. We are creating a web of support in which our users can find comfort and acceptance in one another and feel a sense of belonging in our community. The site is heavily moderated and uses aliases to promote safety and anonymity in our K-12 based community.

Blog posts/ message board (share your experience)

Chatrooms

Connect with resources help/ support (counselors, suicide hotline, etc.)

Pen pal/ mentor program?

Create sponsored events (e.g. anti-bully ball)

Self-milestone celebration

Features:

Message boards and different threads for people to share their ideas, experiences, and interests in a safe environment through aliases or anonymity. There are different boards for different school level such as elementary, middle, and high school.

Moderated chat rooms in which people can talk and connect with one another.

Links that guide users to sources of professional support and help such as counselors, therapists, and the suicide hotline

Users sign up for a pen pal/ mentor program and connects on a one on one basis (with video capabilities) to form friendship and offer companionship.

Create sponsored social events with organization such Stomp Out Bullying and opportunities such as ziplining/ropes course to develop self-confidence.

A milestone system that celebrates the user’s progress towards certain activities such as being pen pal for more than a year. It is hidden to let the user discovers them to encourage self-motivation and self-celebration.

[businessboat-blog]

Long Nguyen Week 6 Project: Networks

Public and Private Chat Rooms

On the front page, there is a thread that takes the users to a chat room board. The board contains various topics from expressing opinions to getting to know the community, and clicking on a topic brings the user to a chat room. There are no limit cap on how many users can join each chat room, and users may change their alias in the public chat room or remain anonymous. Users can also invite up to 10 other people to a private chat on a separate tab, but the invited users may decline the invitation. Users also have the option to block other users, and the blocked user will not receive a notification of being blocked.

Messaging in chat rooms involve users typing in what they want to say, post it as an independent message or as a reply to another user via @username, and using emojis if they choose to.

Moderators are stationed in each public chat room to make sure no inappropriate behaviors or contents are being posted. Moderators have the power to kick and mute users from public chat room as well, but they cannot monitor private chat rooms. Kicked users are removed from the topic thread and unable to return to the specific chat room, but they can still attend other chat room. Muted users can join any chat room, but they cannot post.

The private chats between users are recorded to keep track of what is said. The history in private chats will not be deleted whereas the history of the public chat will be automatically deleted every 30 days.

Penpal Program

On the front page, there is a thread that takes the users to the penpal program. The user must sign up for the program by doing a personality test first, and an algorithm will try to match that user to another user with similar personalities and/or situations. Upon matching a penpal, users can start directly communicating to each other via private messaging. The purpose of the penpal program is to help users connect to other users (hopefully strangers not on the user’s friend list) and form a friendship. If the user wish to find another penpal, they must remove themselves from the penpal program and sign-up again. They will also receive a questionnaire on what went wrong with the penpal and how the system can be improved.

The algorithm determines matches based on the users’ preferences and characteristics. In addition to the personality test, the algorithm also determines which message board has the user clicked on the most as a reference to the users’ interests. If the users signed-up multiple times, the algorithm will also take into account previous matches and users’ responses from the questionnaire to learn what went wrong and adapt.

[businessboat-blog]

This is a post regarding Aspect 1: User Organization + Structure. The flowchart represents tiers of moderation, control, and access for our anti-bullying network. The chart depicts a hierarchy of control with the network administrator at the pinnacle. Following the line of succession, the second tier includes network moderators who oversee another tier of professional users such as counselors, therapists, suicide prevention professionals, and anti-bullying organizations users. The final tier are the end-users, whom the site is targeted towards. The end-user tier is subordinate to all other tiers and consists of heavily moderated peer-to-peer interaction and network privileges. 

Users are anonymous. They select an online handle and avatar to represent themselves during the profile creation process.

Users are equilateral in standing, except for site administrators, moderators, and peer advisors who are afforded additional access and abilities

Users are verified through a verification link emailed to them during the signup process. Their accounts are tracked by creation date, post submissions, profile badges, and peer review through a “+1” ratings system

Interaction between users is heavily moderated to ensure compliance with community guidelines

User will interact with one another via message board, private messages, and chat rooms.

Users my follow other users and may have followers themselves.

Users may join “groups,” smaller communities within the site based on similar interests or geographic location.

Group membership, followers and followed, are visible on the user’s profile pages

Verification, moderation, control and/or guidance implemented by the network is highly regulated due to the network’s intended purpose of reducing bullying. As the network is an online community, restrictions are put in place to diminish online-bullying, unwanted identification, and general abuse of community guidelines.

Organizations such as “Stomp Out Bullying” will be listed under the resources page and organization members’ profiles will be designated as a verified org profile. Similarly, site approved counselors, therapists, and other resources will be visibly designated as verified users.

[businessboat-blog]

Self Milestone Celebration

Over a certain amount of time the users will receive notifications of their accomplishments on the website for their commitment towards the website. The milestone would range from: being pen pals with a person for a year or more, attending sponsored events, or participate in chat rooms or blog posts. The milestones are suppose to incentivize people who have been bullied to talk more about their experiences and break out of their shell at their own pace. The milestone celebration are for the user’s eyes only so it only affects the user not anyone else so it doesn’t pressure them to do something because everyone can see you haven’t participated in a chatroom and such.

The milestone celebration system will activate once the user creates his or her account with the website. Once a user begins to share their story with others then a notification will appear to give the user an option to celebrate their first steps. The milestones will become harder to accomplish after the initial milestones since it is a support tool to help users express themselves often by incentivizing them. If the user clicks to celebrate their milestone, then their screen will be covered in fireworks for 10 seconds, and in large letters it would say “Congratulations on completing x milestone keep it up”.

On the network side, the milestone will more personalized towards each user as the program will observe the user’s activity on the website and what they do within the website. The milestones will be altered for each user where it is aimed towards activities that the user doesn’t do so it incentivizes them to do things they usually wouldn’t do.

- Christopher Vu

[businessboat-blog]

Week 6 Project: Anti-bullying Website (Friendzone) Aspect 5: Events Page

Sponsored Events

When looking in the search for  Events, it will lead them to a page where all the events that have been confirmed by the website will be displayed on the page.  Each event will be its own post/title that will display information of its event which includes information such as the location, the event’s purpose, and contact information for the event which will then be followed by a list of any sponsors supporting the event as well as special notices to any special guests that will attend if there any.

To the right side of the page will be a list of various quick threads.  Each Thread will be a quick shortcut to any events occurring/about to occur.  If there’s is for examples, five events, the user just has to look to the left where the threads are at, and if any interest the user, they just have to click the thread, and it will immediately move the screen straight to the beginning of that specific post.  The user can also just scroll up and down the whole page if they prefer that way to go through the posts.

Posts of events will be updated whenever new information is added.  Extra info with announced events will have edited text added into them to display the new info (while saying it’s edited info), while any event that have ended or past will soon be removed from the moderators.

While users just click on any threads or or scroll the info to use the page, the network side is different.  The people in charge off this area will constantly develop the site by removing or adding info/texts for any events about to be announced.  Moderators will always make sure the post are displaying accurate information and making sure all the contacts, sponsors, and guest info are properly correct/confirmed within hours of an update to event.

They will have to make sure that the threads on the side are constantly updated, so they will have to make sure to code/add the correct thread with the appropriate title as well as appropriate redirection to the titles.

-Kevin

[businessboat-blog]

These are the website skeletons for the main page, message board page, message boards, and the get help page

-Spencer

[businessboat-blog]

Week 6 Project: Anti-bullying Website (Friendzone)

Main Page Feed, Blog Posts, and Message boards

Going to the website prompts the user to login to their account or sign up for a new one. Users create accounts with an email, password, recovery questions, and a verification email. It is recommended that younger users have parents help them with this process. Upon login you are taken to the main page or your feed.

The main page/ feed is your central hub for traveling across the entire site but also contains highlighted stories and posts chosen by the company and moderators. As you scroll down the main page/ feed the user sees inspiring stories overcoming bullying, stories about struggling, and interesting or funny user posts. The stories are hand picked or written very carefully by the staff for a good reason. These stories and posts are placed in the main feed to create a sense of safety, acceptance, and relatability for the user. By showing them that we can highlight some of our awesome users and letting them see that there is help and ways of overcoming their problems, we start to build a safety net for them. It allows them to feel comfortable and open up to the rest of the website. The only stipulation about the main feed/ page is that the stories are presented by our company and staff. This is to ensure that our website, at its core, is properly represented as a place to combat bullying and foster self empowerment in a safe place. Moderators can browse the messageboards/ threads (discussed later) and send the company any post they think should be posted on the main feed. If the company okays it, it will be posted onto the main page feed. The combination of daily company posts and moderator submitted posts will keep the main feed fresh and full of new things to read.

On the main page that contains the feed, you can find a link to the message boards. The user is then directed to the message board hub page, where they can select from Stories of Change, Self-Help, Talk About It, Raise Awareness, Community Events, and Miscellaneous. These message boards are a place for our users to post their own content, ideas, and stories related to the category they selected. The message boards are heavily moderated and any irrelevant or obscene content are either removed or redirected to other categories by the moderators. In the posts users can submit stories, attach images and links, and many other things. Other users can respond to these posts in the form of comments and discuss their opinions, ideas, or even start open conversation.This ability to share and communicate through posts helps create a community for our users in which bonds are formed and friendships can be made. It also helps our users form their own support web and find comfort in our community through the open sharing of ideas and interests.

Miscellaneous

A hub for off-topic conversations. Users can share things they are interested in or cool things they are doing. It’s the fun sub where users can post and talk about whatever they want as long as it’s appropriate and good spirited.

Stories of Change

A hub for stories of overcoming bullying and stories of improvement.

Self-Help

This is our advice board where users give advice to other users. It is mainly posts about changes or actions people took to improve themselves or their situation. It helps other users learn how to take these steps as well.

Talk About It

A board where users can vent their problems and talk about things they are struggling with.

Raise Awareness

A board where users share ideas of how to prevent bullying and bullying awareness

Community Events

Where users and the company post/ talk about the organized events held by the company.

Get Help Page

The Get Help page can be accessed from the link on the main bar. On this page users can find links to phone numbers and online sources of help. This includes help in finding a psychiatrist, therapist and many other resources. This can help users get the professional help they need.

-Spencer

[businessboat-blog]

Week 4 Remix Video

https://www.vevo.com/watch/bob-dylan/jokerman/USSM20100450

This remix video is the official visual for the Bob Dylan song, "Jokerman," from the "Infidels" album (1983). The video yokes his lyrics with various imagery, such as a Minoan fertility god statue, images of President Reagan, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King, the Joker from the Batman series, along with other culturally topical imagery to amplify his lyrics and songwriting. The video and his lyrics speak to ideas regarding the anti-christ, religion, slavery, oppression, hegemony and biblical and literary themes. For example, the video depicts Adolf Hitler as Dylan sings of a "manipulator of crowds."  This portion of the video deconstructs the political idea of Hitler as a charismatic, powerful orator juxtaposed with the fact that he used his given strengths towards influencing a genocide. Another portion of the video depicts the Joker from Batman with the head of Dylan. The image re-contextualizes a familiar cartoon villain to fit in with Dylan's "Jokerman" song title. Throughout the remix video, Dylan changes images, pictures and symbols to give them new context and new meaning. Alongside his songwriting, Dylan uses remix to demonstrate his power as a prophetic poet and critic of sociocultural and political importance.