# Reading Responses Set 2

### 11/8 - Manipulated

Manipulated content can deter a social media feed from its normal look and feel — and often not in a good way.

Social media can generate manipulated content in a multitude of ways. One of the most common ways it manifests itself is through promoted content.


Promoted content can interrupt a normal social media feed by flashing a message from a company or product, typically an advertisement. Promoted content has benefits compared to typical web page ads. As Joseph Reagle detailed in *Reading the Comments* Chapter 3: "Manipulated: Which Ice Cube is the Best?", "One Web analytics company concluded that the [Sponsored Stories] ads cost roughly 20 percent less per click and per Facebook fan and were clicked on 46 percent more than standard Facebook ads."

The implementation of Sponsored Stories and their effectiveness shows why companies choose to use promoted content to their advantage. But promoted content is not the only way content can be manipulated.

Another way is through the social media sites changing their algorithms. When Instagram changed their algorithm, it led to a rise in "Instagram Pods" to help people supports others' content. As Caroline Forsey writes in "Everything You Need to Know About Instagram Pods, the New Way Influencers Are Gaming the Algorithm", "It's mutually beneficial for everyone in the group, since it operates on a like-for-like or comment-for-comment basis."

But what is the point of social media sites constantly changing algorithms? Is it to punish or reward manipulate content? In theory, a company could change their algorithm to essentially require content to be promoted in order for it to catch on, leading to potential profit. Or do companies manipulate content and change algorithms to prevent the site or app from becoming stale?

### 11/18 - Algorithmic Discrimination

The best way to make sure AI doesn't develop racial bias? To ensure that the staff programming it is diverse.

AI programmed entirely by white people is not going to recognize the implicit biases that they hold. Whereas if voices of color are included in the process of developing the AI algorithm, they can point out mistakes that were made and help correct them in the interest of creating a better AI software.

Rutherford and White's piece "Here's Why Some People Think Google's Results Are Racist" explains that a 2013 study found that ads were exposing racial bias in society. Ads are typically picked for a user based on an algorithm, so again, the best way to stop that is to have voices of color in the decision-making process.

Google claimed at the time Rutherford and White's piece was written that their internal diversity was strong, but being that this was over six years ago, how strong was it actually? It's likely that they did not have nearly enough voices of color in the room to actually implement change and remove errors to the software they were building.

### 11/29 - Collapsed Context

How do you keep your personal allegiances aside when trying to be nonpartial? It's a quandary many people who aim to work in sports reach — each person has their own fan ties to different teams, but if they are applying to jobs all across the league, they don't want to make those allegiances obvious. How often can you like or share tweets about those teams on your professional account? How much should you be paying attention to them when you have free time as opposed to the rest of the league? It's an incredibly tough balance to strike.

Alice E. Marwick and Danah Boyd discuss the idea of balance on social media feeds in "I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience". For some, that concept is not tweeting anything political to avoid upsetting their wide diversity of followers — or how often to share personal information from a professional account. In sports, balance is much different.

For example, a friend of mine who is hoping to break into the broadcasting industry is a huge Mets fan. I'm talking watches every game and has multiple different group chats where he discusses them. He is also very aware that he can't tweet about the Mets from his account all the time because if he got hired by, say, the Phillies, those fans would see those tweets and not like him.

In order to strike that balance, he has a separate account where he tweets about the Mets to his heart's content. He's very active on Mets Twitter, has a sizable amount of followers who are also Mets fans, and doesn't connect that account to his professional account. On his professional account, he tweets about his broadcasts and work that he does, and also about big games that most people are watching, but not about the Mets. Even though he's watching those games every day, he's aware of the balance that is necessary for him to break into the industry.

### 12/2 - Authenticity, Work, and Influence

The reality of social media influencers is that most of them stumbled into this fame and now have to deal with it without being prepared for it. Given just how many "influencers" there are across many different platforms, it's easy to see how so many of them end up making catastrophic blunders. Even with companies with massive PR teams and thorough training, the law of averages shows that every once in a while, they will make a mistake. The chance of that increases drastically without that training or without a huge team. Sometimes, it's an influencer left to fend for themself in a serious situation.

In Rachel Lerman's Washington Post piece "Social media influencers are balancing ‘authentic’ messaging during protests and the pandemic", those mistakes are shown to the reader. The piece explains that during 2020, influencers had to change their tone on social media. They had to address things that are happening in the real world, such as the pandemic or social justice movements, rather than existing in their own sphere and only posting about niche content within their own profession. When these influencers are unprepared to talk about and deal with serious topics, missteps are bound to happen.

These missteps even happen with general sponsored content. As Taylor Lorenz reported on for The Atlantic, some influencers fake sponsored content to seem more legitimate to future business partners. The problem here is that these influencers are acting outside the control of the company that they are pretending to be sponsored by. One mistake, and the company can take a big PR hit even without knowing where it came from.

### 12/6 - Pushback

How do you know when it's time to push back against technology? As constant consumers of technology, the average member of today's society is connected almost 24/7. Between smartphones, tablets, laptops, and all other forms of technology, there is always a way to reach someone. So in a time where that kind of connection is seemingly needed, how does one determine when they should ease off it?

Society almost demands constant connection. There's comfort in knowing that should you need to contact someone instantly, you can reach them in a matter of seconds. But with that said, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. The idea of pushback is one of resisting against that near-constant use.

As Ricardo Gomez and Stacy Morgan describe, there are five primary motivations for pushback: Emotional dissatisfaction, external values, taking back control, addiction, and privacy.

Each motivation has its reasons for why the person is pushing back, but they can offer a guide to knowing when to initiate that pushback. It can be difficult to start pushing back against technology use, particularly for those who have had technology as a part of their lives now since they were born — for many, it is the only way they know how to live. But by paying attention to usage and satisfaction from tech, users can see when they should ease up.