Social Media’s Effect on Our Viewpoints
Reference: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-anderle/how-facebook-and-googles-_b_8282612.html
Our society today is highly dependent on social media like Facebook and Google. Facebook has 1.49 billion monthly active users while Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. These two platforms have been integrated so well into our daily lives that we do not realize the power these companies hold. The majority of Facebook users did not even know that their News Feeds are automatically curated. According to the article, a user is more likely to see posts that agree with the political beliefs of his or her friends. While there is an option to turn the automatic filtering off, it’s one of those invisible features that not many people are aware of. This type of organizing and selecting which feed to display is pretty similar to the direct endorsement network structure. Each user is a node and his interests and views affect the News Feeds of his connections. Also, the views and interests of his connections affect his own News Feeds as well. Although there is probably a much more complex algorithm that Facebook is not releasing to the public, in the general aspect that was released to the public, it supports the direct endorsement structure discussed in lecture.
Google also has similar powers to change people’s views based on the order of the results displayed from the search queries. Most people nowadays only click on the first two or three links, so Google has the ability shape your opinions by choosing which information to reveal to you. The article talks about how Google’s search algorithm can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more, without anyone realizing that they’ve been manipulated. It was also shown that Google doesn’t strictly follow the direct or indirect endorsement structures, as it also factors location into the query results. So, when you run the same query from different locations, you end up with different results. While, Google does have the power to manipulate its users thoughts, it will not attempt such things because of the huge risks. The article states that politically savvy people will be able to pick up on it right away and both of the companies wouldn’t risk their reputations over it. Although it may be true that Google or Facebook doesn’t have any agendas to affect your views at the moment, it is important to realize that they have the ability to do it.