In this society, there are rumors that spread over the internet and those rumors are really hard to take down. Wael Ghonim says ¨First, we don´t know how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people´s biases are now believed and spread among millions of people.¨ It is not as easy to make people believe a rumor is not true than telling people the rumor is true. Another negative about social media is that in the internet, we have the freedom to agree with people and disagree with people and we usually go to the people we agree with. In a Ted Talk, Wael Ghonim states ¨Second, we create our own echo chambers. We tend to only communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media, we can mute, un-follow and block everybody else.¨ In social media, if you don´t agree with someone or do not like someone you have the option to unfollow, block, or mute people and people tend to do this when they are disagreeing with someone or if they are in an argument. Also, people tend to not look at the facts and only their opinions. While we are arguing with someone, we can really hurt their feelings and not know we are doing that. ¨Third, online discussion quickly descend into angry mobs... It´s as if we forget that the people behind screens are actually real people and not just avatars.¨ We tend to forget the people you talk to over the internet have feelings and they can get very hurt by the words we say to them. Everything we put on the internet always stays one the internet and if we make one mistake on social media, it stays there forever. ¨And fourth, it became really hard to change our opinions...we jump to conclusions and write sharp opinions in 140 characters about complex world affairs...it lives forever on the Internet, and we are less motivated to change these views, even when new evidence arises.¨ Since things are said really briefly on the internet, people can misunderstand what you are trying to say and they might get hurt. The last challenge I am going to talk about is that people are used to just commenting or talking at each other. ¨Fifth,... our social media experiences are designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussion, shallow comments over deep conversations. It´s as if we agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with each other.¨ This is something a lot of people do, they do not communicate over the internet but they just put small comments.
There are some ways we can overcome these challenges. One way to overcome the challenges is to write more truthfully and thoughtfully over the weekend. Wael Ghonim says ¨If I could track how many people are changing their minds, I´d probably write more thoughtfully, trying to do that, rather than appealing to the people who already agree with me and ´liking´ because I just confirmed their biases.¨ This shows that we should not put things up on the internet that you don´t even believe in. Just because you want likes and attention does not mean you should put up things to get the attention. Another way is to start putting up facts in the internet. ¨We also need to think about effective crowdsourcing mechanisms, to fact-check widely spread online information, and reward people who take part in that.¨ Instead of putting what you think and your opinions on the internet, we should put of facts so people would be looking at reliable sources and not just false information. The last way to overcome the challenge is to make a group on the social media to help people talk about their feelings and opinions. ¨As a believer in the internet, I teamed up with a few friends, started a new project, trying to find answers and explore possibilities. Our first project is a new media platform for conversations. We´re hosting conversations that promote mutual understanding and hopefully change minds.¨ Hopefully after talking about their opinions and feelings, we can try to convince them that they are right or wrong by using facts and that might create less chaos over the internet.
In conclusion, we know that we should try to use facts on the internet instead of just using you opinions and we can use the solutions to solve the challenges most people face on social media.
There are some ways we can overcome these challenges. One way to overcome the challenges is to write more truthfully and thoughtfully over the weekend. Wael Ghonim says ¨If I could track how many people are changing their minds, I´d probably write more thoughtfully, trying to do that, rather than appealing to the people who already agree with me and ´liking´ because I just confirmed their biases.¨ This shows that we should not put things up on the internet that you don´t even believe in. Just because you want likes and attention does not mean you should put up things to get the attention. Another way is to start putting up facts in the internet. ¨We also need to think about effective crowdsourcing mechanisms, to fact-check widely spread online information, and reward people who take part in that.¨ Instead of putting what you think and your opinions on the internet, we should put of facts so people would be looking at reliable sources and not just false information. The last way to overcome the challenge is to make a group on the social media to help people talk about their feelings and opinions. ¨As a believer in the internet, I teamed up with a few friends, started a new project, trying to find answers and explore possibilities. Our first project is a new media platform for conversations. We´re hosting conversations that promote mutual understanding and hopefully change minds.¨ Hopefully after talking about their opinions and feelings, we can try to convince them that they are right or wrong by using facts and that might create less chaos over the internet.
In conclusion, we know that we should try to use facts on the internet instead of just using you opinions and we can use the solutions to solve the challenges most people face on social media.
