It's a Shame

                In Jon Ronson’s Ted Talk video, “When Online Shaming Spirals Out of Control,” he demonstrates through shared stories how social media is ground zero for public shaming. When comments written by individuals are not received as anticipated, people on social media are quick to tear your life to shreds. It turns into a feeding frenzy of social media critics, ready to pounce and voice their opinion whether it is unjustified or inappropriate.

He shares two stories in particular that are meant to grasp the audience and shake them into correlation. He shares the account of Johan Lehrer, who was a pop science writer found guilty of plagiarism. When giving a speech to publicly apologize for his transgressions, he arrived at the foundation unaware that just behind him was going to be a live twitter feed of the event. During the event multiple tweets were published trashing Lehrer and his attempts at reconciliation.

An even worse incident involved a PR worker, Justine Sacco thought it would be a great idea to make fun of unfortunate situations in third world countries before boarding her plane. The twitter-verse ripped her to shreds while on the plane napping on her long flight. Before she landed, “she had become the top trending topic on twitter.” It started off as bad public relations, but turned worse before she landed. People posted horrific tweets wishing harm upon her and attacking her viciously. As the night went on people were calling for her job. She was ultimately fired and left with a traumatic recollection of the events as they unfolded. The worst part was that her comments were not meant to be racist or truly insensitive, but as a joke from someone from a higher social class, someone higher up in the social hierarchy. As she put it, “Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the Third World. I was making fun of that bubble.”

As Sacco and Lehrer found out, the days of social media being kind to the shortfalls of their fellow man are gone. What is left is a pit of hungry piranhas. They found out the hard way how social media responds when blood is in the water.

I think Ronson did an excellent job of organizing his speech. He talked about early days of social media as well as eased into increasingly disturbing stories of the unfortunate victims, whether truly deserving or not. The stories he shared were captivating, it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion, I couldn’t look away and had to pause to read every tweet to not miss a detail. I thought it was one of the best Ted Talk videos I had seen.

Ronson truly delivered a powerful message of how people of social media are willing to dehumanize individuals and tear their world apart. As the shaming gets more intense, the level of disturbing publications rises to the point where the writers of such publications are heinously attacking their fellow man. Their morals seem to fly out the window as the shamers get joy from producing the filthiest, inappropriate tweets.

The purpose of this speech was relevant in our society and is a growing issue. In today’s society, people are very quick to jump to conclusions and castrate others without sufficient evidence. Without knowing how that person really acts or how they carry themselves. The trauma that this causes could lead many into reclusion, depression, or contemplating suicide. All because of some thoughts that were not well received. During his speech, Ronson says “we tend to identify with the kindhearted defense attorneys, but give us power, and we become like hanging judges.” This is true, as every one of us has the ability now to make our voice heard. We’ve realized “that we can hit them with something we understand that they don’t, we can get them.” And get them we do.

But that is not what this world is about. It is not about making someone pay for a stupid comment or tweet that they have made. It is about forgiveness. Giving a second chance for people to learn from their mistakes. Let them make amends and return to a functioning member of society. Tearing people down and demoralizing them to the point of self-isolation is not the answer. It is more beneficial to give them advice and help guide them to make better decisions as well as build them up. It is not only better for us as a society, but as individuals as well.

Critical Facebook Fail

In Derek Thompson’s article “The Facebook Effect on the News,” he takes a critical look at the articles that make the cut on most people’s news feed. He takes the stance that Facebook is not a valuable contributor of news circulation, but rather circulates fluff articles such as what Kim Kardashian did over the weekend.

His organization is weak at best. He starts his article mentioning his intentions for an article based on Facebook’s takeover of the number one spot of user homepages. That Facebook is user's main source of finding information as it is user-friendly and uses information from their likes, shares, and hides to build a feed specific for them. He supports this information with the comparison of referrals given to BuzzFeed, between Facebook and Google.

He then furthers his support by listing the top stories of the 2013 calendar year as built by BuzzFeed. He starts with a list of top 20 articles from Twitter. Although most of the headlines would draw attention from newsfeed scrollers, only about ten of them are actually considered news (and that is being rather generous). The top ten mainly is made up of actual news articles though.

He then builds the suspense by listing the top 20 stories from search engines. Nearly 70 percent of the top stories would be considered as actual news, even if the news you were looking for was concerning the firing of Paula Deen.

Upon entering the list of top stories from Facebook. It is evident that it is filled with nonsense, mainly things that you should see, use in your daily life, or stories to get an emotional response.

The primary purpose of Thompson’s article is to discredit Facebook’s contribution to society as nothing more that senseless dribble that shows up on personal newsfeeds because actual news is not a priority for the average American.

Though the article does raise questions about the content that American’s find entertaining, it does not offer any groundbreaking information. At this point in time, and even in 2014 when this article is published, this is rather outdated information and he should have moved on to his next article topic. Move along, nothing to see here.

All of his sources cited are produced from buzzfeed. I find this rather limiting. Other sources could and should have been used. Maybe from a source that doesn’t have their hand in most of the said mindless dribble that is found on Facebook. Besides the outdatedness of his article, this is the second disturbing fallacy the writer presents. An article against a source should provide evidence from credible sources. I guess real news sources could care less about trivializing Facebook feeds.

The author’s organization was easy to understand. He made his case but failed to make a lasting impression. Anyone who knows how Facebook is organized, knows that it is based on individual user’s preferences. Many of whom choose not to hide, but rather skip over the nonsense that doesn’t relate to them. I think it is rather weak that he closes off his article with the bold statement “The News Feed is perhaps the world's most sophisticated mirror of its readers' preferences.” This article was not written before the pinnacle of Facebook’s reign, but when users interest in the site has already plateaued. This article is at least four years too late. To revisit the information presented in this article is a waste of the writer’s time in my opinion, a hit to his credibility as a writer, and is pointless in itself. It is not news to anyone and wouldn’t make The Onion’s back page.

Biased by Google

                Google over the years has become an entity that has the power to control what people all over the world see. How is this possible. Through the power of their search engine. In a Ted Talk video, Swedish writer Andreas Ekstrom challenges what we know, or think we know about how the multinational corporation handles the information displayed through its search engines.

In his video, Ekstrom sheds some light on how Google is biased to the information that each query returns. He vividly painted a picture of how the search results were manipulated by uploads of unflattering images of the First Lady, Michelle Obama, and a Swedish terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik. Now this is where it gets interesting, upon realizing that these images were floating around and being circulated about the U.S. President’s wife, Google removed these images via manually rewriting the code. In the case of the terrorist, images of dog feces were used to insult and protest the cowardly and heinous acts that resulted in the death of eighty people. These images went unmolested by Google. Ekstrom concludes that just as its users have biases based on our strong beliefs, there is a man behind the written code that has biases as well. With any technology that arises currently, there is a human element that will have these biases and the thought of unbiased information on the web is a myth.

                Ekstrom’s work in this video was very well delivered and incredibly powerful. The purpose was to show that Google has the ability to control the results of any search result. Yes, search results are filtered through relevancy, but the watchful eye of google can ultimately determine what is shown when the query is entered. The purpose of Ekstrom’s work is very relevant to our everyday lives. Google is the number one search engine in the world, utilized by hundreds of millions of people daily and returning billions of articles deemed to be relevant to the search requests.    

                I think Ekstrom was very clear in his message of the power that these biases hold. It is not only a matter of ethics and morality that it is necessary for Google to have such control. As many instances in the past have indicated that such powerful corporations have to control the information put forth by them and their affiliates. In the past, companies such as Apple have put on hold the release of apps on their devices that are deemed inappropriate or offensive to not only individuals, but to groups, religions, or even countries. News affiliates similarly regulate what they air determined by the biases of their political alignment or government issued direction. I feel that this in necessary because it can be a dangerous game of “he said, she said.” These corporations know that on a worldwide scale, it is better to be cautious than to ignite a firestorm of controversy with their CEO’s and chief editors in the crosshairs.

                Just as the examples that Ekstrom made evident, the manipulation of search images and results is too easy. Having the ability to change an image of a person is one thing. Having a group of misfits start falsifying or offending those that have the ability to declare international and intercontinental warfare should be avoided at all cost. In that case, the corporations that have the power can and should step in and limit the damage. This I would consider a worst-case scenario. In all likelihood, that scenario is a bit improbable with the amount of surveillance that our government has in place. A more likely scenario would be that some pop star is going to get their feelings hurt by some stalker trying to maim their image. In that case, let it ride Google.