Are Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer?
There’s no denying that the popularity of content on large social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. impacts the likelihood of that content getting seen and read. If someone or something goes viral, it will almost immediate gain some form of traction. This article gives concrete data based on user studies. In one study, out of 629 participants, 374 were given a survey asking how likely they were to read an article that had 451 likes on Facebook versus one that had 11 likes. An overwhelming majority responded they were more likely to read the one with more likes. The same question was asked of a Tweet. Unsurprisingly, they got the same results. More retweets increased the likelihood of it being read. They did this same study with multiple different social media sites and types of software, but they always got the same response that the things with more up votes or likes was more likely to be seen.
Relating this interesting study back to our recent coursework, it made me think of PageRanking and how different pages get their Authority and Hub values. The more links pointing to the page, the higher that page’s PageRank becomes. Parallel to the study results above, this mean that a page with more links is more likely to come up when certain search terms are searched for. That being said, what are the ethical considerations behind this strategy? If the big things are always seen, how will the little or lesser-known things ever be able to become known? If the rich keep getting richer, the poor will keep getting poorer. Will we ever be able to break out of this cycle and is it normal for tech companies and these common occurrences to mirror our societal biases and inequality?
https://marketingland.com/study-seo-assumptions-39831