Social Media Downfall

Brienna Weibel

bw977911@ohio.edu

The rise of social media has changed the perspective of all usage and views in today's businesses and organizations. Social media can be a great tool in many ways, but now that it is advancing to new levels, the rise may be falling downward. After reading all three articles revolving around social media, I am a bit worried about what is next to come on the Internet in our futures.

"The use of sophisticated software to drown out real people on web forums."

A new term known as "astroturfing" is when a supporter is sharing software from a hidden source in which we may not know who the real person/supporter is. The software creates a fake name, email, identity and social media pages in order to act as a reliable profile. These accounts can link to other social media and automatically update from other sources on the web. This is becoming a serious issue in a journalist’s perspective today because many articles, blog posts and tweets are being displayed even though they may be false. Something about this issue needs to be done; the Internet will begin to decline if these astroturfers continue to multiply.

Another downfall with social media is the idea of sponsored tweets. Almost every celebrity today has their own Twitter handle; some are verified and some are not. The meaning of being “verified” on Twitter means that the handle is actually that person. Many celebrities today are being endorsed to promote specific products so that they will become sponsored; therefore many of them do this through Twitter. Personally, I do not follow that many celebrities because I notice that they are solely promoting advertisements through their Twitter handles. I follow Twitter accounts to read about their daily routines, thoughts and common words of wisdom.

Going along with social media, Twitter is a word we hear everyday; Twitter is an app that almost every person has on their smartphone. Almost every news article is now connected to all forms of social media. There are millions of accounts on Twitter today; the number of Twitter accounts is different from the number of Twitter users. Many people that use Twitter often create fake accounts and parody accounts, which is where the number multiplies. It is sometimes scary when realizing that we do not know who is behind these somewhat "fake" or "parody" accounts. For example, many students at Ohio University follow accounts such as @OU_Confessions and @OUCrushes, but we do not know who runs these accounts. 

It is almost scary to see where the Internet is headed today. For once, it seems like it is not the technology that is getting smarter, it may be the people using the websites and apps. It will be interesting to see where all of this leads to in the future.