"DARK SIDE" of social media include cyberbullying, addictive use, trolling, online witch hunts, fake news, and privacy abuse.
Nowadays our generation is hyperconnected and need to exist in multiples realities. The great thing about social media is you can become anyone you want to be. Users are seeking opportunities to create daily content, be seen and followed at a wide audience. People want to show what they have and even overstate a personality trait to bring more interest for their profile.
‘We’re almost convinced that our Instagram feeds are a truer representation of ourselves than who we are in real life.’
Social media has an impact on our daily life. Most of our day is devoted to our social media platforms. We communicate through it, make reviews, collect information and so on.
Nevertheless, the lost of control of our personal data has a negative impact.
These fake accounts known as ‘bots’ can sway advertising audiences and reshape political debates. They can defraud businesses and ruin reputation.
As a reminder, internet’s goal is to be accessible by everyone to serve humanity and not only a particular business interest. However, it is easy to miscommunicate or share wrong content as it is not revised or written by experts. Even some profile are using social media to create or make viral wrong content to manipulate user's mind.
Bots are algorithms combine with social media profile to attract and create engagement from other users and bots within the profile. It is difficult to catch bots as it is automatic software programs that perform to behave like a human. Those algorithms are targeting specific audience and become increasingly sophisticated, making it difficult to distinguish a bot-generated internet persona from a live human. It appears that 30% of social media users were found to have been fooled by bots.
Twenty-eight years ago, internet appeared and few years later the digital revolution #digital revolution made people more informed. Letting them access to information to make better decisions.
However, how about if content released on internet becomes false? This is the negative aspect of digital revolution where misinformation can get viral and may manipulate opinion #fakenewsmedia.
However, how about if content released on internet becomes false? This is the negative aspect of digital revolution where misinformation can get viral and may manipulate opinion #fakenewsmedia.
=> letting a wide audience make wrong decisions, damage the reputation of someone, involving industry’s monetary losses or even brand image crisis.
Digital security experts are working to find an efficient way to get rid of bots. In your opinion, spreading misinformation may badly harm a country ?
Ho yeah I definitely think that it could harm a country for example if fake accounts are spreading positive opinion about a candidate for a presidential election, making people believe that this is the way to go, that everyone is for a certain person or against an other. Some people may have a clear idea for who to vote to represent them and some others more uncertain, follow people. So imagine how badly it could spread false rumor an impact on the whole country interest...
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you! Governements should intervene and regulate internet where few giant are leading the market and making their own rules harming society sometimes. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other big firms don't have any constraint as internet is too wide and blurry which make them powerful !
DeleteNice blog post Maëyane. Personally I believe it's time for bots to go, as there is not ethical and good purpose for them but to fraudulently lead people to believe someone has a larger following then what they actually do, or charge companies for fake clicks (paid per click ads) that never really occurred by real people. The problem is that companies such as Google and Facebook have such influence and power that it's difficult for governments to enforce and regulate. People that buy fake likes simply are embarrassing themselves, especially when it's exposed and no companies will want to collaborate with them.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Maeyane! Yes, BOTS NEED TO GO! It's not safe, it's misleading, it's not ethical, it's just false vibes all around. Whether it's bots for post clicks, whether it's bots on Twitter that are retweeting posts to get something trending/popular such as unpopular opinions that could be targeting personalities, governments, trending situations etc - the numbers that they gather via bots can mislead and influence the audience in various ways where it becomes unethical and unhealthy for the society! Figures are not correct, how are we meant to trust numbers these days when there's bots existing? Definitely something needs to be done about it because it's harming society, people are misleading others and misusing/taking advantage of these situations whether it's on a personal or business level.
ReplyDeleteInstagram have regular cleanses of these "fake accounts" by removing them on Instagram. Hence, people that actually would spend their hard-earned money by buying followers and likes on ig find themselves losing followers on their page. IT is so embarrassing!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do agree that bots mislead information which thus causes harm to others. Some of them function by utilising the outdated software in our computer system to infect our computer as we are surfing the web. Or even as a virus when we open spam emails. This is unacceptable! Perhaps the use of computer protection or anti-virus softwares need to be consistently promoted by authorities to prevent this from happening.