Abigail Berman

Tag: social media

  • Trusting Our Online Communities

    The internet is full of misinformation, and as participants, we should learn to fact-check what we see online. However, it can be difficult when anyone can post anything online. How are we supposed to know if something is trustworthy or not? Do we have to fact-check all claims that we come across?

    Who should be responsible for dealing with misinformation? The platform or its users? Ideally, social media platforms would simply not post or take down misinformation. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, which is why we need to understand how misinformation works and how to spot it.

    That’s why it’s essential to know how different sites attempt to limit the spread of misinformation. By understanding how social media platforms combat misinformation, we, as users, can better identify any misinformation we may encounter. I decided to look into two very different sites: Facebook and Reddit.

    In 2016, Facebook introduced fact-checking to posts and partnered with five fact-checking organizations to “improve the quality of online media.” Facebook hired real people to go through identified articles individually, fact-check them, and explain why they are being flagged. However, the system wasn’t perfect; they didn’t address memes and paid content or see conspiracy theories or right-wing media sources. Yet this past January, Meta decided to end the program. In a video posted by Mark Zuckerberg, they ended the program because it was a complex system with many mistakes. On PBS News Hour, they identified the change in policy to be politically motivated, Zuckerburg noting the recent election in the announcement; even the President believes that it is caused by his “threats.”

    Putting this knowledge to work when using Facebook or any other Meta social media site is essential. There is nothing left to prevent the spread of misinformation except for the users, who now must trust thy neighbor. How much do you trust someone’s ability not to share false information? Their ability to fact-check? Their ability to identify misinformation? People are naturally biased, which makes them more likely to spread misinformation that aligns with their community, interests, and beliefs. Even if it’s shared by someone you trust and has all of the best intentions, you should always be on the lookout for misinformation.

    Very similarly, yet entirely different, is Reddit. The company does not provide fact-checking on claims and articles posted online. However, Reddit is home to a unique phenomenon where users actively fight against misinformation. Subreddits, or online communities, are known to collectively identify false information. Reddit employs a reputation score called karma that helps users identify whether or not someone may be reliable or trustworthy. Moderators volunteer their free time to make these online communities safe spaces for people to enjoy and connect. Furthermore, each subreddit is unique, with different members, ideals, and community guidelines that have a role in the spread of misinformation. A 2024 study showed that even communities such as r/conspiracy and r/skeptic take pride in not sharing misinformation, although it may not be on the same level as r/science. However, the level of community moderation reduces in quality as the theme of a subreddit becomes more vague, such as r/bestof or r/TooAfraidTooAsk.

    It’s interesting to look at how these two sites wrestle with misinformation. Although neither company removes or identifies false claims, the way users interact on the sites makes one more reliable than the other. However, everyone who uses the internet should always be careful of what claims they see online. Being able to trust your community does not mean you won’t come into contact with misinformation online, whether it’s intentional or not.

  • Fake It to Make It: Understanding the Spread of Misinformation

    News Literacy Project’s RumorGuard is a great tool to learn how to identify misinformation on social media. The site shows example social media posts and breaks down different aspects of the post that the user can identify as being falsified information. News Literacy Project identifies five key aspects to be aware of to protect yourself from misinformation: authenticity, source, evidence, context, and reasoning. They also go through different topics and themes of misinformation such as copypasta, doctored photos, and confirmation bias.

    News Literacy Project provides a lot of great tools and information for someone to protect themselves against misinformation. But sometimes, we learn best by doing things for ourselves. I tried my hand at the game Fake It to Make It, a simulation game where you create your own fake news company to spread misinformation! How fun!

    In the game, you “plant” articles in various social media groups to gain traction and create profits. There are different aspects of articles that can boost your reach, such as credibility, drama, and tagging based on the article’s themes and content. It gets more difficult once you have to write your own articles, adding different tags impact the articles credibility and drama. The game became very hard once it prompted me to create a “viral” article.

    To go viral, your article needs to be dramatic and credible. After carefully going through all of the different tags and sources to create the most drama credibility I could for my article, I was still unable to make the article go viral.

    It feels strange to play a game where the goal is the opposite of what your instinct want you to do. Getting a pop-up congratulating me on an article that increased hate crimes is not something I was particularly happy to see.

    However, I believe that’s the point of a game like this. People who deliberately spread misinformation that actively hurts others in order to create a profit or push a certain agenda is a heinous activity. Knowing how these people work makes it easier to spot misinformation in the wild. It was easy to add tags that were inflammatory and instigated negative responses. At some point the game prompted me to plant an article that triggers happiness. Obviously, I went with an article about cute kittens, but it only got 5.

    Personally, I know I’m a hands on learner. Sometimes, I just need to try things out for myself in order to fully understand something. I think playing games like this is extremely beneficial to better understand how it happens. It’s also much easier to get others interested in a game where you purposefully spread misinformation rather than reading articles about the same topic.  

  • Reddit Blackout: Who owns our discussions?

    I am relatively new to using Reddit. Before I had an actual account, I still sought out Reddit threads because I thought that its users had valuable information that I couldn’t get at other places. As someone who does various fiber arts crafts, I found Reddit to be a wealth of information, with many users explaining different and new techniques. One of my biggest faults is that I’m incredibly impatient, therefore I’d much rather read a reddit comment about how to change colors while crocheting than watch a 3-minute-long video. However, you can only see so much without an actual account.

     So, I bit the bullet and created an account, just before the Reddit Blackout of 2023. I was barely getting used to the site before the subreddits I had become so attached to went dark. As a new user, I had no idea of all the different apps that people were using to be able to access their favorite forums. Reddit had announced that third-party apps would have to pay for their data.

    Why is this an issue?

    It’s an issue because third-party apps are essential for many users to be able to access Reddit. Many disabled users turn to other apps to access the site because they offer better accessibility than Reddit’s app. If third-party apps must pay for data, it would potentially end them or require users to pay for those additional apps, which would severely limit access to disable folk.

    Additionally, moderators use third-party apps to more easily monitor their subreddits. Moderators are volunteers, many of whom would not have the time or ability to moderate without the help of third-party apps. Without them, subreddits would not have the structure that we’ve grown accustomed to.

    And thus, we have the blackout.

    The blackout was an online form of protest, users opted out of posting online to prevent the company from generating income. Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely successful. Many third-party developers were forced to shut down. Although Reddit did commit to not charging third-party developers for their accessibility tools.

    However, this blackout asks the question: Who owns our conversation?

    I follow subreddits such as r/crochet and r/embroidery, I love seeing all the creativity of the users, sharing the most creative and interesting pieces of art. However, I also follow many subreddits about books. Although this blog is centered around digital media literacy, I’m an English major at ASU with a passion for literature.

    I frequently visit subreddits such as r/52book , r/suggestmeabook, and r/bookclub, but I also search through a many other literature based subreddits. I love discussing books and delving deep into hidden meanings and other things that could have been missed. I also visit them quite frequently when I’m reading a required text for a class. I frequently visit these sites to remind me things that happened in a book, or to find something that I may have missed. Being that my school is online, I find that these discussions simulate those I miss in the classroom.

    But do these discussions belong to the users or the hosting website?

    Theoretically, I don’t believe that anyone can “own” your discussions. Although they may be physical (in a sense that they are written down), they’re still our ideas and thoughts. Discussions are more than just written words, it’s a conversation you have with others. It’s an experience, and nobody can own your experience. Even if a website “owns” your discussions, they don’t own the experience you had and what you learned, nobody can take that away from us.

  • Three ways to protect yourself online

    As we’ve grown up alongside the internet, we’ve been repeatedly cautioned about the permanence of our online posts. However, the need for vigilance extends beyond this. It’s crucial to be mindful of our internet usage and the potential risks associated with it.

    Our internet usage is constantly being monitored, and our data is tracked. Who or what may not be interested in you as a person, but they are interested in ways they can benefit from your data. When we share our data with one site, we cannot control where they then share our data. Without knowing what these third-party companies are doing with our data, we must protect ourselves and our data from them. There are also people who are interested in obtaining your personal information to commit credit card or identity theft. These things can be detrimental to our individual lives or to the lives of others. Here are some ways we can better protect ourselves:

    1. VPN
    2. Multi-factor Identification
      • Using multi-factor identification when logging into personal accounts online adds an extra layer of protection from potential hackers. Multi-factor identification can range from sending codes to your phone or email to using separate programs. These extra steps may be annoying, but they can greatly reduce your risk of being hacked.
    3. Encryption
      • Encrypting your devices is another layer of protection, similar to multi-factor identification, that prevents your personal information on your devices from being accessed without first entering a password. This means that if you lose your phone or laptop, someone will not be able to access your personal files without entering whatever password you have set. You can encrypt your personal computers and smartphones.