Mark Zuckerberg's War On Free Will

“Our community now has more than 1.55 billion people, including more than 1 billion people active every day,” says Mark Zukerburg, the creator of Facebook, on his own Facebook page last year. As one of the most popular social media sites in the world, Facebook has been adopted by an increasing amount of people over the past decade. The number of users on Facebook indicates how Facebook plays an important role of socializing and communicating in modern age life. Since Facebook allows users to see their friends’ updates and access Facebook on a mobile device, it has a tremendous impact on its users in several aspects. People may ask, “how does Facebook impact its users?” Some people suggest that Facebook creates negative consequences, such as distracting students in class. However, do all users experience these negative consequences? Sociologist Everett M. Rogers argues that the consequences of innovations, whether they are anticipated or not, can be perceived as positive or negative. Since Facebook does not differ from user to user, rather that it is the users that are different from one another, Facebook’s consequences vary from individuals. Even though some criticize how Facebook influences people negatively, depending on how the individual uses it, Facebook can positively impact users through sparking creativity, providing convenience, and creating change.

Facebook is starting to “crack down” on fake news articles throughout the social media website. However, Katrina Trinko says, Facebook’s fact-checkers have a liberal bias. Trinko believes that many of the fake articles on Facebook are withholding information that is containing the whole truth. She believes that these “fact-checkers” are more likely to crack down on conservative views instead of the liberal views. (Katrina Trinko Facebook fact-checkers have a liberal bias) Facebook like other social media sites, have been accused of posting fake articles across their website. According to the PEW research center, sixty-seven percent of Americans rely on social media for their news coverage (News use across social media platforms 2016: Jeffrey Gottfried and Elisa Sherer). While social media has been known to show “fake news”, this has a huge impact on the influence of the viewers (mostly being American teenagers). Whenever there has been fake news across Facebook, there are circumstances where the fake news will be shared. Although the person who shares the fake news may not realize that it is fake, the news is being shared causing people to believe that it is true. Facebook is reaching out to the conservative political action conference who are questioning the potential for bias news articles. Facebook was censoring stories about conservative topics back in spring of 2016. Now, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is investigating and Facebook moved its automate to the trending news section. Facebook is working to ensure that the

The media can link people to the government by spreading opinions, ideas, or facts about political subjects that could affect policy or behavior for example, “heavy users of social media, relying on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to connect them with more than just friends and family. Eighty-eight percent … said they use Facebook to find news. This reliance on social media has fueled debates about how social media and personalized web searches influence political polarization. At the same time, social media also provides opportunities for people to actively engage in politics,”(Kelsh 1). This example proves the reliance that society and the American people have on the media, including the opinions and bias found in many online

The rapid growth of technology in our society has become more dominant than it was in the 17th and 18th century. Today, technology is used for almost everything in our day to day lives. But the most common usage of technology is for communication and industrialization. However, every good thing has its disadvantage if it is over used, and since technology has become very dominant, it is used by both young and older people but more predominant among the youth of the today. Even more, technology has brought about social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, my space, piazza.com, instagram, tango, and last but not the least texting. According to socialnetworking.procon.org, “47% of American adults used social networking sites like

Zuckerberg strategy was doomed…because it included no systemic assault on poverty, the real enemy of achievement” (Russakoff, 2015).

The reactions we have to certain events and scenarios can be altered by many outside forces. Friends, family and the news can all influence your opinion. But, have you ever considered that something you use everyday could be altering the way you think? Social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube all play a crucial role in our perception of things, especially political events, sometimes without us realizing it. Part of the opinion-altering information that social media disperses can come from propaganda advertisements that appear on the websites, but most of it comes from peers and strangers.

Along with personalization, this article uses authority-disorder a little bit to frame the story. What makes authority-disorder so present is the author’s description of Facebook’s handling of the controversy; the author cites cooperation with organizations, but it also cites previous legal troubles with the company and critics who say that the company “isn’t doing enough” (Eddy, 2017) This tells readers to view Facebook’s inactions on content as a negative thing, and in turn helps emphasize the personalization present. Presenting Facebook’s controversies as something potentially harmful to social order invites the readers to have sympathy for people and issues they might not otherwise think about. It also makes the readers contemplate on authority figures. The article itself references how authorities in Germany and abroad are reacting to the social media’s website. What this does is it makes the reader wonder what their government is doing. The article, through citing previous controversies and incidences, makes the reader raise questions as to whether authority figures are doing what they can to regulate a major company such as Facebook. While the authority-disorder bias can tend to exaggerate, using this bias can potentially inspire citizens to get informed about their rights when browsing the

In this Article it discussed the way facebook and other social media program has affected people's political views. I feel that this ties in with the idea of Media Bias. Media Bias for example is the way news reporters inform you about the news, they try to inform you on what they want you to hear and the way they see it. Facebook has become a main source for people to be persuaded into who they may choose in an upcoming election. When you go down your news feed you may see other people saying things like “How can you trust Hillary” or“ How do you believe Trumps sanity? Then the comments under such post are endless which then make reader begin to agree with certain people which then creates media bias. These pages have meaningful audiences,

Facebook is a worldwide acknowledged social media service, that because of its sheer size, it possesses the ultimate power to influence and potentially morph its user’s perspectives, by simply exposing them to biased articles, headlines and even messages, motivating them to act on what they are displayed with. Author, Farhad Manjoo of the deprecatory article ‘Facebook 's bias is built in - and worth watching’, expresses his fear of Facebook’s ability to control the news; ‘Facebook is the world’s most influential source of news’.

The fact that news circulation has become an automated processes with the specific goal to increase viewership and make money off of ad sales, complicates Zuckerberg’s assertion that Facebook is neutral. It appears that the site depends on algorithms that provide users with posts and articles that they think they will like most, and thus, they are biased in that they function to feed into each viewer’s individual bias. Furthermore, these algorithms do not have the consciousness of a human, nor the ability to discern between real and fake news media, at least not in a way that is effective, yet. Also, according it Innis, who argues that media and technology are inherently biased because they favor certain knowledge and contain preformed tendencies of how the media and technology will be used, Facebook biased. As a non-durable media, Facebook has a bias towards space, in this case the monetized spread news articles. As such, it experiences great discontinuity and is preoccupied with the present. This account or the fact that topical and fake news was such an issue during the election. People wanted to use the breath of Facebook to make money on financially viable, yet false,

Facebook is involved in a serious controversy in the United States. And last but not least they are being accused of nothing less than ideologically manipulate the news that serves its users , all this is happening on the campaign trail, so the whole thing takes on an even greater dimension that already itself has.

Facebook has been a one of the biggest phenomenons for the past decade and has had a huge affect mostly on the younger population. Technological determinism is that technology is a force for social change and Facebook does have some of the aspects of this. It is factor of “The Global Village” because we rely on it to connect with other people from all over the world. Facebook has fortified behaviors such as narcissism and shyness. In the younger generations Facebook has problems with dependency and addiction for it’s users. It has become a social norm in the younger generation to have a Facebook account and the younger generation who do not are in the small percentage. “Facebook (2014) reveal that as of March 2014 there were 1.28 billion active users on the site per month, and at least 802 million of these users logged into Facebook every day.”(Ryan,133). It is the most used social media site in the world and It has become apart of over 800 million people’s everyday lives. It seems sometimes people are controlled by Facebook it becomes apart of them. Technological determinism and Facebook share some of the same qualities but are not completely intertwined with each other.

     False news stories are abundant on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and are detrimental to society in the way that they spread misinformation. This is especially evident surrounding major events that receive extensive media coverage such as elections. Many times conspiracy theories and embellished stories are presented on social media as factual reports which can result in mass misinformation in society. Upon reading these false or embellished stories we feel informed although we have been blindsided. When researching a certain topic on the web we are often faced with false or altered information which can hinder our process of retrieving facts and  legitimate statistics . Some articles will provide readers

Despite the fact that these websites are now deciding how news and information is disseminated to its users, there are still democratic practices that are useful in generating a suitable discourse and civic understanding/engagement. Obviously, I approach my theory it with a heavy bias against the filter bubble and I insist on critically examining them. But one could very well argue that with the recent tailoring of content, people have more time to spend enjoying materials that they have been looking for all this time. No longer are you expected to spend heaps of time sifting through stacks of newspapers, scrolling through hundreds of television channels, or strolling through rows and rows of library books to find content to enjoy. Instead, algorithms have increased the convenience and ease with which we can access our news on topics that we are interested in. On another more positive note, websites like Facebook and Twitter are also effective in spreading awareness about social

Media is most powerful when the individual using the agent is young, and when it can educate, inform and change people’s opinions. The effectiveness can be very positive or very negative, for example, it can educate people of a social disaster and can bring people together. With things such as Facebook, where people can hide behind a computer screen and say nasty things to people, or pretend to be people they aren’t, it emits a negative vibe. However, Facebook can be used in an effective way, to