How Numbers on Facebook Change
Behavior
After reading this
article I installed the extension onto my computer to see how I would feel
while using it. Since the article was written, Facebook has changed their
“Liking” system so the plug-in works slightly differently but basically the
same. I find that I base my “liking” off what the numbers say. However, instead
of liking a post because so many others did, I find that I will like a post if
not many others have so I can boost the poster’s like count. I find that I will
also compare my posts, specifically on Instagram. If one photo got more likes
than another, I want to know why. Was it the hashtags I used? Was my caption
too long? Was it because I made the image black and white? Was it because I
made the image too saturated? Was it because the image was too dark? WHY DON’T
PEOPLE LIKE ME?!? Dramatic, I know. But that’s how social media works. If don’t
like your post, do they like you in real life. Facebook and Instagram can lead
to an existential crisis.
How Social Bias Creeps Into Web Technology
“Computers aren’t
magically less biased than people[…]” This is an interesting statement seeing
how people (for now) have to program computers. Even in the future, a person
will create the base program the computer will learn and probably teach itself
from. As long as people have a hand in computer programming the computer will
always have shadows of biases.
It’s also
interesting that these computer systems seem to make things easier but at a
closer look, they fall short in so many areas. It’s unfortunate that the
computer messes up tagging people by labeling them horribly incorrect. I
wouldn’t say that the tags mentioned in the article are “insensitive” but
rather ill-informed and highly unfortunate (under the assumption the programmer
was attempting to be as unbiased as possible). A computer (unlike people) doesn’t
use context clues or situational data to help make the deacon when labeling people
or things. It can only use past binary data. People can look at a photo of
several people at a party and know not to label one an “ape” because they
understand the image on a deeper level than the computer does.
I find what you wrote about Facebook and Instagram "likes" to be interesting. I notice this in friends of mine. They are always wondering why one post got likes and why the other did not. It is as if they are posting specifically for likes??
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