I've listened to The Ezra Klein Show's podcast : "Why politics get so extreme so fast," with Zeynek Tufecki. During the podcast Ezra would bring up topics and questions and then ask how Zeynek felt about them. She would then further elaborate it so powerfully that it would lead me to thinking about it, and eventually give me a stress headache. The topic of this podcast might have been how politics get so extreme, but it further developed into multiple talks and arguments about how we are rewarded for attention gathering and how much more competitive the human race has become overtime. Many companies were mentioned, like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. With the mentioning for all of these companies they also mentioned the algorithms that are evidently in place.
To be honest, I think it is crazy how algorithms are in place with these simple companies. It blows my mind how it is legal for our information to be collected overtime. Whether we notice that it is being collected or not, it is happening. Don't get me wrong though, I do enjoy my daily Spotify playlists that always has what I want to listen to on them. However, as a people have to recognize that they are taking advantage of our human vulnerabilities.
In order to change how we are going now as a whole we are going to need a big shift. We have allowed for these men to become gate keepers of what we see and what we don't. For example, it is not hard to find racist, homophobic, or xenophobic things online. During the podcast, one of them had made a comment about how you never see a Beyonce song online that was not released to the public, but it is not hard at all to find toxic things. They choose to leave certain things there because it makes them a bigger profit at the end of the day, whether they agree with it or not. They are so powerful, it is easy to forget that they are even there.
When we see things like this happening in the industry I think that we need to come up with ways to try and regulate these men. Big or small, I believe that if we don't regulate them soon we really won't have a choice in the end. Lastly, I leave you all with one question. What exactly are the rules for a healthier society?
-Egypt Chin
I love what you are saying but I don't believe that "rules" would stop these men. The only thing that might actually stop them is if we do not appease to their intentions of wrongdoing. If we change our beliefs, it would instantly change the way industries would broadcast their products. Do we stop giving our information away, do we stop participating in social media overall, or do we begin marches and rallies so our voices would be heard? So here is the question that I leave: how do we change our view to make a positive outcome?
ReplyDeleteWhile i understand what you're saying and the point that you're making about how it's crazy that it's legal for massive companies like Facebook to save everything we do on their platforms, it's pivotal to realize that, by using these platforms and clicking though the terms and conditions (like anybody reads those things anyways) we, in short, signed away ALL of our data that we put into those databases willingly.
ReplyDeleteWhile i totally agree that these monoliths of attention seeking websites should have the responsibility to keep our sensitive data safe and secure, I implore you to think of it from an outside perspective. To create a "healthier society" we as consumers must first realize that we are enabling the spread of the problems that we love to hate, by continuing to use the websites guilty of these acts. By no means are these companies innocent, but we cannot call ourselves rational if we choose to pawn ALL of the blame off onto these social media networks for our own human shortsightedness.