Criticisms of social media

-


 Criticisms of social media


image credit: 123RF

There are a lot of criticisms of social media, some justified, others not. In this blog post I will highlight some of the justified including privacy and trustworthy concerns. 


Privacy Concerns

Some may say that social media is just a way for companies and individuals to steal your data and disregard your privacy. Now for most cases this isn't the truth, however there are some exceptions to this.

For example, The Cambridge Analytica Scandal of March 2018. This is where millions of personal data was collected illegally from Facebook users. This data was then used for political targeting through advertisement's especially in the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States.

Another example of this would be The Equifax Data Breach of September 2017. This is where Equifax's (One of the largest credit reporting agencies in the US) servers had been breached and over 148 million American Citizens personal data had been stolen. with over 209 Thousand credit card information stolen from citizens.

Trustworthy Concerns

Some may also argue that social media is untrustworthy and you have no idea who you would be interacting with. Once again this isn't true for the majority of cases, however there are some outliers.

For example, on Reddit's Music Communities fake concert tickets run rampant. Wherein scammers would pose as people selling tickets as they can no longer attend the concert. This has left many users to not trust people who offer tickets on the website and some not trust the website at all.

Another example of this is Fake Dr Martens adverts on Instagram. Many users reported seeing adverts for a huge sale on Dr Martens boots. Little did they know that this was a fake company posing as the brand and stealing the hard-earned money of individuals. This left many to not trust Instagram ever again or any of Meta's other social media platforms (Facebook, Threads, etc.)



So how can we solve this and make social media a safe place again? I will answer that in my next blog post where I will talk about the adverse effects of social media including regulation. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uses and Benefits of Social Media

-
Image
  Uses And Benefits of Social Media Credit: clip art panda There are many different uses and benefits for Social Media, all affecting different areas of life. Today I will talk about the benefits effecting individuals, businesses and communities. Being able to communicate with anyone, anywhere Being able to communicate with anyone, anywhere has many benefits for all groups these include: Individuals   Being able to communicate with people anywhere allows individuals to learn about different people's cultures and identities. Allowing them to understand the world better An example of this is the #DanceWithMe TikTok dance challenge which prompted users to share their cultural dances. The benefit of this was that promoted cultural diversity and made users aware of different cultures. Another example of this was the #EidCelebrations on Instagram, this prompted users to share photos of how they celebrated the Eiud-ul-Fitr Festival. The benefit of this is that more people became awa...
Read more

Reducing Adverse Effects Of Social Media

-
Image
 Reducing Adverse Effects Of Social Media Image Credit:  OfCom So, now that we've discussed the benefits, uses, and criticisms of social media. It's time to look at how we could reduce these adverse effects. Regulation And Government Intervention When discussing ways in which regulation can be used to reduce the adverse effects of social media;  Government Intervention could be used in the forms of Legislation or regulatory agencies in order to help regulate Social media.  An example of the government using legislation is the  Online Safety Act, 2023 . this was the governments way to help make social media safe for everyone, especially children. It requires social media sites to take action against certain aspects of their site including: Harm reduction, Child safety, Reporting mechanisms, etc. An example of a regulatory agency for social media is  OfCom . OfCom is the overall regulative body for online safety in the UK. They make sure that companies that t...
Read more