Author: Christopher Morabito

Watching a Train Wreck by Brendan O’Shaughnessy

Christopher Morabito

O’Shaughnessy, Brendan. “Watching a Train Wreck.” Notre Dame Stories, 13 Feb. 2023.

Brendan O’Shaughnessy is an award winning author who has been writing for Notre Dame, a prestigious university for many years. His article ‘Watching a Train Wreck” discusses issues around the algorithms that social media uses to promote content. He argues that there needs to be a balance of what is and is not moderated. However, his main argument is that we cannot leave this solely to machines to do for us. This article is useful because it presents a different perspective because it shows that social media moderation is not just about what is blocked, but also what is promoted.

  1. “The company was aware that delegating the firing decision to machines could lead to mistakes and damaging headlines, ‘but decided it was cheaper to trust the algorithms than to pay people to investigate mistaken firings so long as the drivers could be replaced easily'” (O’Shaughnessy).

Gay Rights vs. Religious Liberty? by Andrew Koppelman

Christopher Morabito

Koppelman, Andrew. Gay Rights vs. Religious Liberty?: The Unnecessary Conflict. Oxford University Press, 2020.

In his new book published by Oxford University Press, Koppelman provides a compromise to the conflict he references in the title. Koppelman provides an overview of the argument on both sides. He then explains that the best way to solve this conflict is to “exempt only those who post warnings about their religious objections, so that no customer would have the experience of being turned away” (Koppelman 11). Koppelman claims that by having businesses that wish to refuse service based on their religious beliefs advertise this fact to customers before they even walk through the door, people will not go through the experience of being discriminated against directly. While Koppelman claims to be in favor of both sides, I intend to use his argument as my counter-thesis because I do not feel like the solution he offers will fix anything, but it is something that many people believe and therefore needs to be addressed.