Is Social Media the New Cancer in Our Society?

In my opinion, I wouldn’t say social media is dangerous to our lives, but it does consume a lot of our time. Social media keeps us up to date on world news, local news, and new trends. I had just listened to ‘The Prof G Show’ on Apple podcasts. Personally, it was a much longer podcast than I had preferred listening to, but it was insightful to hear what their guest speaker Sinan Aral had to say regarding if social media is ruining our lives. The podcast had caught my attention. When it began with how Disney had created the Disney+ platform, it explained how its distribution strategy was gone. They mentioned that Disney had the idea of taking all of Disney’s vital and premium content and put it on a streaming service platform for a monthly membership. Disney had to take a short term hit in revenues to move up the revenue ladder with a revenue bundle anchored by Disney+.

Sinan Aral answers the question, “What do we do now?” In his book ‘The Hype Machine’ he wrote where other stories and theories have ended. His book argues how social media works and how science is needed to understand how it operates and affects our society. Social media is now more influential for the good or the worse. A lot of it does come from political campaigning, which tends to be persuasive and precise. Social media posts are very well targeted. Social media created a social network we didn’t have years ago. I had learned what social network data portability is and the importance of it.

What is Social Network Data Portability?

It created millions of surplus every quarter and lots of competition. The social network data portability can also be explained in more straightforward terms that are seen as your social media identity portability to any platform provider. In 2019, the ACCESS Act, a bill that aimed at encouraging market-based competition among today’s major social media platforms by requiring the largest of these tech companies to allow their users to move their data from one service to another.

• It should provide the same seamlessly efforts for a standard messaging format and content creator as any platform there is.
• It’s the ability to create multiple stories, reels, posts, and messages to communicate from one app to another to chat with your friends and family on that particular provider’s network.

Social media’s business model was built on intention and engagement, and the content being shared and like causes emotional arousal. Emotional arousal is a big part of the explanation about what we see in society as a result. Having a private company like Facebook created by Mark Zuckerberg, can make proper behavior in their private networking space, so this does change what people see and how they act on their social platform. The big social media platforms each take very different positions than one another. Twitter, is more likely to release false and salacious information purveyed about somebody, where Mark Zuckerberg says, “We believe in free speech. People should be able to say whatever they want on their platform.” These are two different private companies with two separate large private spaces of social communication compared to the other public areas within the social media platforms.

The article of New York Times, ‘Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Evolving Position on Holocaust Denial,’ talks about Facebook’s new moves to stop the lies and conspiracy theories, I believe, goes against what Facebook intent for the people to social their social media platform. If you break Facebook’s rules and regulations, you will be booted from the platform, even though Facebook had made the statement where they stated anyone could have freedom of speech. I believe Facebook wants to do the right thing and allow others to post what they want, but in a manner that won’t offend others. Facebook had struggled with the decision to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust. The creator himself didn’t realize how social media can hurt people through their different claims and freedom of speech on the network he had built.

Overall, after listening to the podcast about the Hype Machine book and reading the New York Times article about Facebook and the Holocaust, I believe social media on any platform breeds toxic positivity.