#junknews hooked blog2

[myles2m-blog]

Junk news spreads fast

When first reading this article I was kind of thrown back a little bit. I actually read the article a few times because each line was so intriguing and informational. New information that I had never thought about or even realized. 

The most interesting idea to me was the algorithms. The fact that social media comes down to math deciding what we see and what we don't see easily on the web. It is almost sickening that these algorithms decide what news I get to see. The worst part of it all comes down to the fact that some of the information that goes viral and pops up on our feed isn't accurate. False information can spread so quickly on the web, which is the fault of the algorithms. These are mathematical calculations, this isn't real people deciding what news is spread. 

Second item to discuss is advertising. The first item that almost made me laugh was clickbait. This happens to me CONSTANTLY! I am drawn to these items in social that reveal some type of secret or funny video. Clickbait is a smart way to advertise and get people to stray away from the original social media they are on and onto random links on the web. The second reason, micro-targeting, is also very true. We as people seriously allow the media to control our feelings, actions and opinions daily. 

The last item is exposure. Which is something we do daily as we troll our social medias; selecting which content we like and want to see more of, and denying or blocking content we don't want to see. For example, I love to watch Americans got Talent videos, these are items my social media have filtered and relaxed I enjoy based on my views and clicks. Another perfect aspect of exposure is the ability to privacy, having a private account to avoid others from digging into your personal life. Within exposure comes “preferred content.” These are items that will pop up because you have either recently searched it or hit a ton of likes and shares on that specific item. For example, I recently was searching cedar point and Kalahari on google; the next day ads for those places were popping up on my social media feeds. It amazes me that this exposure comes mainly from an algorithm realizing I was interested in a specific item and so the advertisement came from that. 

Overall, this article was very eye opening and showed me just how much social media can sink into our lives. It has a way of digging us into our screens and keeping us hooked, even if its on things such as fake news.