Tre Spencer
ts582119@ohio.edu
In the rising age of social media, with platforms like Twitter and Instagram taking the world by storm, hidden dangers within different elements of transparency have made it more difficult for users to receive factual information.
Social media was created in the early 2000s and was used to connect with people from across the world. Facebook is the largest platform globally and has over a whopping 2.2 billion users, as of data from 2018. That is followed by YouTube, a video creation service, and WhatsApp, a text messaging service, with over 3 billion users combined in 2017.
With such a large number of world users, anything can be spread online and from any account, including purely anonymous ones. This fact can create dangers for uninformed users who use the app to gather all of their factual information and news.
Transparency with social media platforms is essential because large social media companies could be exposing users to dangerous data, harm, and fake news. Recently, Facebook has been in hot water with the 2020 election cycle by allowing robots and fake accounts to share false information about campaigns and candidates.
Having the ability to regulate and fact-check sources from social media accounts should focus on social media platforms that have consumers who have access to numerous forms of content.
Fake marketing campaigns have also been rising across numerous platforms, with many smaller companies using images of celebrities to sell their products with fake endorsements. For example, in 2018, Australian journalist, Jessica Rowe, was involved in a fraudulent marketing scheme to sell weight-loss medication spread through social media. A product she did not endorse or recommend to her followers to use.
Fake advertising campaigns have also been a problem, particularly on Facebook and Google software, with users purchasing products that don't exist from fake websites. These platforms continue to be harmful because they allow such spaces where false information can be easily viewed and believed by large audiences.
As journalists, we are the media's watchdogs; this encompasses social media. Our job is to call out false marketing, news, and other forms of information quickly spread on all channels to the general public. So we must make these distinctions and report as accurately as possible, whether it's public relations and market or news and information.
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