Personalizaton through Searches on Google and Facebook is Evolving

Sergey Brin noted, “Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines, unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.” Nicholas Carr’s essay challenges this assertion. Nicholas Carr believes even though there are multiple search engines, “the faster we surf across the Web-the more links we click and pages we view-the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements.” This topic elicits such strong responses because technology is a part of our everyday lives. Technology is only becoming more advanced and will continue to be a source of debate for all who use it.

Firms like Google and Facebook have created profound shifts in the way firms advertise and individuals and organizations communicate. New technologies have fueled globalization, redefined our concepts of software and computing, crushed costs, fueled data-driven decision making, and raised privacy and security concerns.

So many users of the internet blindly browse and post on these sites without any thought to the online identity they are creating for themselves. Shares, tweets, hashtags, likes, and comments all combine to make up an amalgamation of marketable information. In November of 2016, an average of six thousand tweets were made per second, and ninety-five million Instagram posts were made per day (Sayce; Parker). Facebook “has become the largest database of personal information ever collected,” says Richard, and Facebook takes advantage of this. With almost two billion users, Facebook has no shortage of information to gather (Sparks). They do this mainly for targeted advertising. There is no small profit to be made in this. In 2011 Lori Andrews wrote, “Facebook made $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, 85% of it's total revenue.” However, Facebook and other internet corporations also relay data gathered on users to the

As time goes on, social networking sites can influence millions of people without thinking about the consequences. Foer wanted the readers to understand the full impact of Facebook by mentioning that “No other company has so precisely boasted about its ability to shape democracy like this-and for good reason. It’s too much power to entrust to a corporation” (75). The author found it peculiar that Facebook wanted to boast about their success, and the amount of influence that they have. Foer meant by “the ability to shape democracy” is Mark Zuckerberg is allowing Facebook to change the Democratic Party and he does not deny this accusation. He is able to reshape democracy due to the excessive use of algorithms. The people controlling the algorithms are allowing it to pick videos or post pictures that could have social pressures which can influence a person to sway from their original stance. Algorithms should be posting videos at random and should pick related videos if the users asks for it; that way, the user knows what they want and it will be their chose if they want to continuing watching the same videos. Facebook could be sneaky and can be inhumane when it comes to human emotions. Resulting in another treacherous scenario because Facebook does not care, “Whether the information is true or concocted, authoritative reporting or conspiratorial opinion, doesn’t really seem to matter much to Facebook. The crowd gets what it wants and deserves” (Foer 76). Foer mentions something that can be tremendously petrifying to the world and it is that Facebook does not care whether or not a piece of news is genuine on their site. The word “concocted” means made up and Facebook does not filter or check out the sources that make up facts that millions of people read. By ignoring their obligation to check out news like a journalist does, they allow the crowd to get what they want, even if it is fabricated.

21st century man has pondered in thought on a very important question that unconsciously affects their lives at every moment: Is the Internet our master, or a simple tool that we control? To the optimist, this very question is a complete joke. In their eyes, how can such a sweet, innocent tool of exploring specific evidence, paying one’s bill, and social networking become our master when we, as humans, created its very existence? To the skeptics, this question HAS to be answered. To them, it’s essential that we as a collective unit decide if the internet is controlling us so we can abandon it and have our mental capacities cleared up from

What have you ‘Googled’ recently? According to Lori Andrews, the leading expert on bioethics and emerging technology, data aggregators can make their own rules when it comes to collecting your data. Three important essays have been written using rhetorical appeals in order to construct a convincing argument that make us consider what we do on the Web and how it could impact us. Content that we search for on the Web often leads advertising companies to making judgments about us that could affect many things in our day to day lives—wrongly so. A person’s search history could be the one thing that makes or breaks their chance of getting a bank loan or be unfairly categorized just because of their demographics.

Nicholas Carr’s 2008 article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, argues that the Internet and access to vast amounts of information is corroding the attention spans and thought complexity of the billions of Internet users around the world. As Carr himself puts it, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” (Carr) He proposes that having many different sources at once will cause readers to skip around sporadically rather than thoughtfully consume information, and that Google has an agenda to cause this behavior due to their economic interests. Overall, Carr paints a cynical outlook on the prevalence in Google and any societal changes stemming from its use. David Weir’s 2010

“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.

A rapid surge of innovation within the past several years has allowed us to synthesize the renowned global communication network known as the Internet. This immense network is comprised of billions of webpages, several search engines, and of course, malicious content and scams. Although the Internet was inaccessible to majority of the people in the past, it is estimated that there are over 3 billion internet users in the world. This accounts for over 40% of the world population! However, with such frequent usage and advancements in technology, hindrances are inevitable and bound to occur. In his critical essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Carr asserts that common users are blinded from the detrimental effects of search engines such as Google.

The filter bubble can help those who share a comparable passon relate with each other, and the filter bubble can help make navagation of the web

Although many see the internet as an avenue by which a large amount of information can be learned, this information is packaged in such a way as to prevent deep though. In Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, Philip Davis, a “doctoral student in communications” is “astonished” and “even irritated” with a woman who read the websites that she encountered (7). The internet is not meant to be “read”, but rather skimmed. Internet companies want users to consume as much information as possible in a short amount of time. This maximizes the revenue gained by internet companies internet traffic, as they receive money from websites and advertisement companies based on how many users view the site. Thus, a higher level of internet traffic is

In the film "Beware Online 'filter bubbles'" by Eli Pariser and the article "Mind Control & the Internet" by Sue Halpern discuss the "algorithmic editing of the web". Both the film and the article focus on how search engines filter the search for its users. Eli Pariser and Sue Halpern mentions about the different result of the same search. For example, Eli Pariser asked two of his friends to google "Egypt", and both of them have two different search results. In the article, Sue Halpern mentions that the result we get was that "Google's algorithm suggests is best for [us] in particular--and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google anymore." Both authors argue that search engines filter

Theorists contend that representative government is headed for direct democracy by way of the Internet. Essentially what will happen is that representatives will no longer be needed because citizens will be able to use the Internet to make decisions. Grossman contends that “the more power [citizens] have to control their government and to involve themselves in making its decisions, the better” (41). Over the years citizens have been obtaining information through the media, newspapers, and other forms of mass media. The issues that arise with obtaining information through these sources are that the government can easily censor them. With the Internet comes “vastly expanded capacities for data collection, for computation, and for automation” (Kamark & Nye 22).

Though Google seemed to promote free-thinking and free speech on one hand, they were censoring and filtering with the other. Google lost credibility with the public, thus tarnishing its public image and “loosing 1% of the U.S. market in one month,” as reported in The Business. (2006, Aug) “Image credibility is based on the constituency’s perception of the organization” (Argenti, 2009, p.39). When the public image of a company has been compromised it “can make a huge difference in determining the success or failure of the organization” (Argenti, 2009, p. 40). When the public looses confidence in a company and what they stand for, they no longer wish to use its product. In response, executives at Google attempted to convince the public that they could handle the balancing act between censorship and providing information, and gain back public trust and confidence.

Facebook, a social networking website, has changed the way people communicate with each other. A social networking website is an online platform that allows users to create a public profile and interact with other users on the website. Facebook has even changed our most personal and private conversations and how they are conducted around the world. Since the internet’s birth in 1983, this trend of online communication has been growing. Created in 2004, now registered with more than one billion participants, Facebook’s user numbers surpass even the top four social networking websites combined. According to Wikipedia statistics, Instagram has 300 million registered users, LinkedIn has 200 million users, Classmates.com has 50 million users, and Flickr has 32 million registered users. To be further convinced of the claim that Facebook indeed changes the way we communicate, you would only need to create your own Facebook account and start participating in their social networking experience. Technology and internet usage is fused into every aspect of our society including the style of communication. The launch of Facebook in 2006 also enabled other devices such as touch phones, interactive tablets, and even advanced cars with their own networking capabilities starting in 2007. Facebook is a multibillion-dollar company and is highly recognized for connecting more people than other networks. Facebook’s long-term success can be attributed to providing entertainment, world news, and