I've been involved with social media since way back when...I've started in chat rooms, ICQ, AIM and mIRC, and have been with it through it's evolution to blogging and social media platforms. I've seen the good and the bad with regard to what happens to social media. Although social media has allowed me to find friends and people of similar interests, I'm going to use this blog post to focus on some of the bad things that I've seen happen with social media.
One of the first and most pervasive problems with social media and social interactions online (for example, comments sections of blogs and other websites) is what's known as "trolling" which is to say online bullying. I am an avid reader of local news media websites, and their comments sections are some of the worst when it comes to this. A lot of the commenters either break out in name calling or making the discussion about politics rather than what the article is about. I know that the Times Leader recently made an effort to combat this problem by moderating the comments section. The Citizens' Voice has not done this yet, which makes some of their web articles almost unreadable. WNEP previously had a user moderated commenting model, but upon further review at the time of this post, it looks like they've turned off commenting completely. Online bullying takes many forms, the comments section is just one of them. There are several more types of online bullying, which you can read about here.
Another thing that seems to be a big concern is the role of Russia and other third parties that use social media to influence the decision of our US presidential elections. I recently watched the Netflix documentary about Cambridge Analytica and its role on influencing the 2016 election. It's quite disturbing to see how your personal information is shared for malicious purposes. I often caution my Facebook friends to be wary about what apps they use on Facebook because they could be hacked and their personal data could be compromised for malicious purposes. After the Cambridge Analytica hack was announced, I went through my Facebook and revoked access for a number of apps, which is a good practice to do at least yearly. There's a good guide on how to do it here. How social media will affect the 2020 election is still yet to be determined, but there's already some backlash on the Bloomberg campaign for violating Twitter's TOS: Twitter is suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing ‘platform manipulation’
Despite all of the negative things that can and have happened with social media, I genuinely believe there are ways of finding positive ways to interact with others and to "find your tribe." I'm curious to see what the other class members experiences with social media are, and how to expand on it. Furthermore, I think it's important to delve further into online reputation management, not just for yourself, but for any company or organization you may be representing online. I hope this book covers some of that in later chapters.
Another thing that seems to be a big concern is the role of Russia and other third parties that use social media to influence the decision of our US presidential elections. I recently watched the Netflix documentary about Cambridge Analytica and its role on influencing the 2016 election. It's quite disturbing to see how your personal information is shared for malicious purposes. I often caution my Facebook friends to be wary about what apps they use on Facebook because they could be hacked and their personal data could be compromised for malicious purposes. After the Cambridge Analytica hack was announced, I went through my Facebook and revoked access for a number of apps, which is a good practice to do at least yearly. There's a good guide on how to do it here. How social media will affect the 2020 election is still yet to be determined, but there's already some backlash on the Bloomberg campaign for violating Twitter's TOS: Twitter is suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing ‘platform manipulation’
Despite all of the negative things that can and have happened with social media, I genuinely believe there are ways of finding positive ways to interact with others and to "find your tribe." I'm curious to see what the other class members experiences with social media are, and how to expand on it. Furthermore, I think it's important to delve further into online reputation management, not just for yourself, but for any company or organization you may be representing online. I hope this book covers some of that in later chapters.
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