Social Media Trolls
Companies set up business pages on Facebook and encouraged customers to “like” their pages in order to receive “free advertising since messages can go viral on social media. However, Facebook only delivers a small fraction of these posts to a small fraction of the company’s fans. Facebook controls the access to the customers and charges companies to gain more access to their own customers. Other social sites such as Twitter and Facebook also have negative elements in their networks. The best approach to dealing with the social media crisis of trolls is for companies to turn their own websites into mini social networks that are focused on the company, brands and customers. If trolls are left unchecked, trolls will proliferate a company’s site and customers will be turned off and leave. Many businesses and publications have been defeated by trolls by shutting down comments. This could be seen in day to day life. If you look at any social media site such as Instagram and go to an account, there will almost always be an anonymous account commenting negatively. The article states that a company in Iceland is offering a blockchain based anti-troll system called Trollteq. This system will authorize users and would not allow them to establish a second profile after being banned.
We talked about homophily in class. In this article, companies rely on free social media in order to gain more support. Homophily provides how a network’s surrounding contexts are able to drive the formation of its links. There are many social networks in social media connect people through companies. People may have similar interests with a company and therefore become friends. This is how many companies market. They rely on this in order to gain new customers because their current consumers keep adding friends who have similar interests as them. However, the trolls have been hurting companies because instead of adding a positive light, they add a negative light. The negative light can influence different people and turn all the current and possible new customers to turn on the companies.
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