Our Weaknesses

From listening to Ezra Klein's "why online politics get so extreme so fast,"I found myself becoming overwhelmed with thought. All summer we've been discussing, debating, writing, researching, and learning about the controversial topic of technology and how it has been and potentially can impact our world.

Something that Zeynek Tyfecki had brought up during her conversation with Mr. Klein was YouTube's strategy of giving the viewer suggestions that are correlated to what he or she had just watched. While Zeynek was watching videos about republican politics, a collection of videos about the holocaust had appeared under the suggestions column. When she had become aware of what just happened, she decided to test the algorithm by simply watching videos. After watching videos about vegetarianism, YouTube wanted to inform her about the positives of going vegan. This goes to show how something can be taken to new extremities in a matter of minutes. 

This brings up the issue of manipulation. Are we actually doing what we want to do or are we being manipulated? Are we allowing social platforms to dictate our decisions. The answer is yes. Although we are the ones dong the clicking and watching, YouTube is still being unreasonable. The issue is the exploitation of our vulnerabilities and how they are being used against us. These algorithms are tracking all of our activity, collecting it, and identifying our preferences and dislikes. All of these medias are fighting for our attention now more than ever. Like Zeynek stated, the ratio of information to attention was unbalanced so the crave for attention had increased which then led to the competition of attention harvesting. Attention is they key. If a politician, for example, is not capable of maintaining an audience's attention, there chances of success are extremely low. I understand why they would not be successful but should attention really be key? Because attention has become most valued, the presentation outshines the content. We have so much information being collected and absorbed at such a rapid pace. 

Do you agree with Zeynek Tyfecki that there is a healthier alternative to YouTube's ways of capturing attention to benefit their business? Tyfecki stated in the during the discussion that " we are the one's doing the clicking" is a weak defense for the algorithms. Do you agree with Tyfecki or disagree?