Overall, based on the reading I believe social media has negatively impacted our society. Companies like Facebook started out as a new exciting way to connect with other people. I don’t think it was ever intended to do harm to our society. As time went on, I feel like most of these social media sites goal was not to improve but just to seek the attention of as many people as they possibly could get. In doing this, they increased the number of people on their platforms. Then more people will join and they could receive more money from advertisements. Social media has become a way for people to get news quickly and easily. This is a positive effect but mostly negative because people are believing in fake news they see and false information users are posting. I feel like social media can be a dangerous thing because sites like Facebook are not regulated. They have billions of users and has a large influence on people and elections. Recently Facebook has had a scandal which is discussed in the article, “Who Will take Responsibility for Facebook?” by Virginia Hefferman. Mark Zuckerberg was approached about the issue of “fake news” influencing the race. He did not take the issue seriously and referred to it as “crazy”. I find this very surprising that sites like Facebook that has such a large influence on people would not have taken care of the issue in a more responsible matter. The article states, “Facebook is the internet of huge numbers of people. Voters in other words.” This is having a negative effect on society because the company admitted to receiving payment for ads placed by organizations. Some of these from groups who have racist believes and agendas. Even a member from the Trump campaign said, “Without Facebook we wouldn’t have won.” In the article, “Taking the You Out of YouTube?” by Henry Jenkins mentions how larger companies like Google are purchasing different social media’s and corrupting them. This idea is also explored in the article “The Truth About Facebook’s Fake Quest to Connect the World” by Noam Cohen. The article discusses how Facebook is deteriorating furthermore. It seems like they are not taking real action to amend what they did but just avoided the issue. This is evident in a by statement by Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth, “that’s why all the work we do in growth is justified.” This statement shows they don’t take issues seriously and their main goal is growth by an means. This is why I believe sites like these should be regulated because they could have dangerous effects on society.
Jan 31