What happens when one minute someone is alive, and the next they aren’t? There is nothing worse then going onto Facebook and learning that your best friend has died… or so you think.
Recently Facebook has added a memorial aspect to its interface that will allow users to remember their friends who have passed away. In class we have discussed social media; what it is designed for and how it affects people. Logging on to find a friend is dead out of the blue is something that plays with our emotions. It affects the human mind.
In an article on Tech Crunch, the writer of an article on this matter showed the above picture of his co-worker, saying that he was not actually dead. Rather, Facebook had an error in its algorithm. For some reason, it was killing members of its social network who were not actually dead. How can we as a society trust social media when it is still so flawed? Not only did it kill off writers from a tech blog company, but it also knocked off its creator, Mark Zuckerberg.
Social media is a drug that consumes us all in its addiction. It is not a bad thing. Allowing friends from one end of the globe to stay in touch with each other is something magnificent. There is no doubt in my mind that we as a society need social media. We are social creatures. It does get concerning, however, that we depend on it so much in our daily lives.
When I get home from a long day of class and scroll down my Twitter news feed, if I see a tweet in regards to someone famous or close passing, I immediately check every other source. My first source is not Google. If on Twitter I will immediately go to Facebook to confirm the information. This is where Facebook’s error can become very concerning. Social media can change the world around us.
Do you find yourself doing what I do? Is social media your go-to source of information? Does your social media findings alter your perception of reality? Let’s hear what you have to say in the comments.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/11/facebook-suddenly-thinks-a-bunch-of-people-are-dead-dont-panic/
I would have to also agree with social media being the first response when wanting to know about current events. The first social networking site/app that I use to get information is Facebook. In a researched conducted about people in the U.S who get information via Facebook by PewResearch, states that 6 in every 10 Americans use Facebook as a news source. The reason Facebook is a widely used news source is because important information is often posted or shared. The current events that often appear on news feeds are events that have gone viral, and in a way deemed “important/worth knowing”.
While social media is a great way to keep connected with friends,family, and current events, it does indeed come with flaws. Any type of social network could have a tiny or large flaw that may cause an upset. However, if you put it into perspective there are millions of people using social media and odds are there will be a mistake every once in a while.
In conclusion, social media is a useful and it could have a powerful effect on the user’s psychological state of mind. There will be errors that may cause an upset or posts that are saddening. However, Nothing is perfect and people should be ready to handle a small defect and be able to derive wether the defect is fixable or not.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/05/pew-report-44-percent-of-u-s-adults-get-news-on-facebook/
Social media is definitely my main source of news (mainly Twitter). I agree that the appeal of using social media as a news source is convenient because you can follow multiple accounts to get various news sources. Although not necessarily on topic with this post, this got me thinking about how social media can alter our perception of reality and the “filter bubble” that we discussed in class earlier in the semester as a similar problem could arise from this.
Personalized searching makes it harder to find new information because it presents search results biased towards what the user has already looked at, creating a filter bubble. Users then only see the information that they want to or agree with. With social media, this can happen even more so. We pick and choose what Twitter accounts we want to follow. For example, republicans will likely follow conservative news accounts/politicians, and democrats follow liberal news sources/politicians. And on Facebook, if someone’s political opinions bother you, you can simply unfollow them without unfriending them. This allows us to pick and choose what news we hear and create something similar to a filter bubble.
However, this problem can be resolved by actively seeking out various news sources to get your news and information from. I know I personally like to look at opinions from both sides of an issue before forming my own opinion. More people need to do this and put themselves in other people’s shoes. This can help us begin to bridge the gap between differing opinions and ideologies that divide us today.
I found an article about a few computer scientists from Yahoo Labs who are working on a recommendation engine that connects people of differing views. It is meant to bring together people who have different opinions about sensitive topics but share interests in other areas and expose them to a wider range of opinions than they’d otherwise experience. I think that this would be a great way to help “burst the filter bubble” and help everyone see topics from other people’s perspectives.
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/522111/how-to-burst-the-filter-bubble-that-protects-us-from-opposing-views/
I too find myself getting most of my news from social media. For a busy college student, it is the easiest way to stay plugged in with what is going on in the world. However, I am always sure to check the sources of the information. I do not put much faith in sources I have not heard of and only allow hard facts from trustworthy. This makes me believe that this issue facebook had wouldn’t worry me. Mistakes happen and while they are not acceptable, we have to be realistic.
While these social media sites should be responsible, we too as users have to be responsible on how we use them. We can let them help us gather information in the world, but we should not let social media mold our views for us.
In conclusion, social media is a very important tool to collect information for our generation and social media sites need to take this into consideration. However, that responsibility is shared with both the sites and its users. In this specific case, users should have been able to tell that Mark Zuckerburg wasn’t actually dead if no other sources were reporting it. Should it have happened no? But mistakes happen.
I had never thought much of it, but it’s safe to say that I get almost all of my news from social media. Twitter in particular is an extremely useful source of news. Instead of having to check individual news sites or read individual blogs, you can just follow multiple news sources at one time and get real time updates on Twitter. Not only can you get news from reliable news sources, but you can also get real time reporting from eye-witnesses actually on the seen of events.
I decided to look it up and see how much social media is taking over as the main news source for people today. A recent study says that 62% of US adults get their news from social media. 62%!! That number was even higher than I expected. It’s also clear that there is a much higher number of younger people who get their news from social media than older people. That indicates to me that pretty soon that 62% will rise.
It also raises the question, is there potential to be had with a social media app that focuses solely on news. Almost like Twitter however less opinions, random updates on peoples days, and cat videos. I think an app where you can follow many news sources at once and get a steady stream of updates about our country and the world would be cool.
http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/