Facebook’s War on Fake News and its Spread
http://www.businessinsider.com/fact-checkers-cast-doubt-on-facebooks-fake-news-fight-2017-11 This article commented on Facebook’s current struggles to tame the harmful effects of Fake News. Fake News, which spreads like wildfire and has the ability to falsely inform countless people in the world, is currently one of the major sources of controversy in our present day world. It has affected major political races and […]
Coordination Games and Iphones
In most networked coordination games we’ve examined, we’ve noticed two very apparent Nash equilibriums with nodes (or people) being incentivized to choose copy the behavior of connected nodes/people because of the significant benefits. In an article in “The Verge”, one journalist exapands this idea to the debate on phones and the “flow” of users between […]
Information Cascades and Starting a Movement
This TED talk discusses the idea of the first follower being more important than the leader in starting a movement. The speaker, Derek Sivers, relates this to a clip of a shirtless dancing man, dancing alone while a crowd watches. After about 30 seconds of dancing alone, the man is joined by someone else. After […]
Fake News and Information Cascades
This article discusses how fake news proliferates across social media through both network effects and behavioral biases. The author describes how an individual who may initially distrust a news story the first time they view it could change their minds after seeing it shared by many of their friends. This can cause information cascades where […]
Fine-Tuning the YouTube Picture
In class we discussed network effects, the idea where a product or service becomes more valuable as an increasing number of people use the product or service. You can see the effects of this idea within markets and more prominently, social media outlets such as Facebook or YouTube. In particular, network effects have had a […]
Power in Networks: Technical and Social
In Anarchy, Status Updates, and Utopia, James Grimmelmann discusses two types of power problems that all social software have: technical and social power. In any space controlled by software, the person behind the software is in control of the data and has the authority to alter the database, and in some extreme cases, confiscate money […]
How To Stop Social Media Monopolies
Source (New York Times) The article above talks about Facebook’s positive network externalities make them monopolies, and how we might approach reducing the risk of monopoly power. It relates to the topics of network effects as externalities and the rich-get-richer model covered in the course. Network externalities refer to the phenomenon by which a person’s choice […]
Herd behavior in purchasing books online
Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563207001458 In the attached article the author discusses four studies done on the effects of other purchasers when people buy books online. Each of the studies looks either at the effects of normal cues in the book industry, specifically star ratings and sales volumes, or at the effectiveness of different recommendation sources. The overall motive […]
Information Cascades and the Terror in Paris
https://www.engadget.com/2015/11/19/paris-and-the-trail-of-social-media-misinformation/ An information cascade is a two step process that begins when one individual faces a binary decision. Secondly, outside factors begin to influence the decision through observation. An information cascade forms when people begin to copy decisions of people prior to them due to the fact that they believe these prior peoples […]
Vine No More
Article Link: https://www.theringer.com/tech/2017/11/2/16593166/one-year-without-vine It has been a whole year since Vine was shut down, and in this short period of time, we have really began to see different social media platforms begin to merge their designs. Perhaps, as this article argues, this is why Vine’s downfall was so tragic: it was the only unique, innovative platform, […]
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