Social Media Lies and Propaganda: LJ6

          After this week's readings I have learned quite a bit when it comes to ethics of social media websites. I have always known that social media is full of fallacies, but after reading this information- it only proves my ideas were scarier than I thought. It is astounding that there hasn't been much regulation of content on social media until recently. Most people just take the information they see with face value. I also found it interesting that there have been no ethics checks on peoples accounts who are renowned bullies. I see so many accounts slandering people, positing profanity and nonsense about famous people just because they made a controversial comment 15 years ago. With how cancel culture is now, you would think social media laws would be in full effect limiting what people say on the daily to ensure cancel culture is thoroughly taken care of. The best part is though, the same people bashing celebrities for making one "oopsie" would be in an uproar if their hateful words got censored. Knowing all of this now will keep my social media use to the bare minimum it always was. I post like one Instagram picture a year because of how toxic it all is. 

    As for social media propaganda and lies, I already knew that most things on the internet are lies. Just the other day I saw a TikTok that if you slap your phone hard enough the flashlight comes on. My dad saw the same TikTok. So, naturally; when I went over to his house I saw the man slapping his phone like an idiot wondering why it wasn't working. It is so funny to see grown adults fall for the simplest of internet "fake news". Especially when "the need to understand these cognitive vulnerabilities and how algorithms use or manipulate them has become urgent." (Hills, Menczer 2020) While that may not be the best example, the same rings true for most politics and news articles. 99% of the time the media outlets are looking for clicks, so they will make the story more outrageous or more politically incorrect in order to get a story going. It is astounding to see how many people refuse to look deeper into things and trust the first article they see. I have always been weary of the internet. Probably because I've watched one too many Black Mirror episodes. I have just been on this planet too long to be blind to the farce that is social media. Reading some of the articles provided on Canvas, one of the most ALARMING things I saw was "Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: 1) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their "most important"source" (Gentzkow, Hunt 2017) that my friends, is terrifying. I have no clue how anyone would use social media as a fact source judging that I could post anything I want to a twitter account and it could be the farthest thing from true. This all amplified when Trump was in office, him shouting about "fake news" and saying the internet trolls were lying about all the terrible things he stood for. Being in politics just means you have to be truthful and care about the people you are looking after.... Go figure. Funny enough, Trump started off on Twitter as a notorious hater. He was"first active on the web [to] gain political influence." (Kildis, 2020) and once he started to get into politics on Twitter, he gained a massive following in the race. I understand some people will not agree with what I am saying about Trump and I understand everyone has their rights to what they believe, but nobody can deny he had his fair share of fallacies he spouted off on Twitter.

    Sources: 

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/

https://www.e-ir.info/2020/11/17/post-truth-and-far-right-politics-on-social-media/