Melanie Beltran
MCS 244
January 29, 2019
Social media has affected us a society by helping us connect with loved ones and meet new people. At the tips of our fingers and just hold a small device in the palm of our hands, people are able to contact others in the same area or across the world. It seems as though people have grown dependent on their smartphones for the use of social media to connect with others rather than face-to-face interactions. With the use of social media, it has both helped and hindered our society. Controversy arose with a popular social media application called Facebook. In the article, “Who Will Take Responsibility for Facebook?” stated, “…has been all but laid to waste—as it has served as a clearinghouse for propaganda, disinformation, fake news, and fraud accounts. More serious still: Facebook may not just have been vulnerable to information warfare; it may have been complicit.” The uproar that fake news being on Facebook has some sort of impact on the 2016 election seemed outrageous to Zuckerberg. This idea of “fake news” raised eyebrows because it is even harder to identify what news is real or not. Research conducted would have to be thorough enough to be proven true or real. In the article, “Taking the You out of Youtube,” presented the idea of Google hypothetically taking over Youtube and the effects it would possibly have. The up sight would be that videos would continue to be posted and viewed just like the usual use and platform of YouTube but the companies that have their ads displayed would profit more. In the article, “The Truth About Facebook’s Fake Quest To Connect The World,” stated that, “Facebook, whether intentionally or not, wasn’t giving a voice to the voiceless but was helping to establish online the same inequalities that exist offline. Being a party to that, he wrote, ‘is more than I’m willing to sacrifice personally.’” Social media is a way or method of connecting with others in order to reach out to people about controversy or other vital issues either in the United States or globally. But if a strong platform like Facebook prevents voices from being heard, it will only hinder their business instead to continue to help it progress. There are always going to be pros and cons to having social media present in our society. How can creators use various social media to help benefit themselves and the users?