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Summary - Social Media (LIX017B05)
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Summary of all lectures for the course Social Media
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Social mediaSummary lectures
G. Mills
Exam: 23-06-2022
Week 1: Introduction
Basic concepts:
- Centralization
- Platform vs. Publisher
Some revision: decentralized internet
- Centralized → e.g. broadcasting
Decentralized: network of networks (internet infrastructure)
Social media: (re-) centralizes control
E.g. Facebook re-centralization of control
(De)centralized control in social media
Centralized:
- E.g. email lists, message boards, reddit, facebook
- All communication passes through a central point of control
- Benevdent dictators = controller has a dictatorial control
Distributed:
- E.g. file-sharing torrents, some music-streaming and chat applications, diaspora (social
networking service), bitcoin, Ethereum and other blockchain technologies.
- Communication is peer-to-peer
- Lack of central node makes absolute control very difficult → almost
impossible to switch off/censor
Multiple reasons why control is necessary:
- Spam, flaming, fraud, sensitive topics, PR
Social media provide levels of control over their basic elements, e.g.
Restricting who can:
- Create
- Edit
- Read
- Invite
- Respond
- Subscribe
, - Share
Deciding the right kinds of barriers to entry is fundamentally important!
Closed systems:
- High levels of control
- Provide details before logging in (email, validated credit card)
- Limited access to content until verified
- Exclude “social deviants”
- Problem = reduces the community size and the number of contributions
Open systems:
- Less control, more anonymity
- Greater potential for spam and advertising
- But openness can attract high quality posts and self-regulation of spam
Control structures influence how social media sites are governed
Control: freedom of speech → is James Wright Foley
Facebook: policy change
- Permits pictures of violence, including executions and beheadings
- As long as the user does not express support
But,
- Facebook bans images of breasts
- Even of breastfeeding
Are social media publishers or platforms?
Platforms:
- Telephone
- Post
- SMS
- DHL
→ Very limited responsibility for what is transmitted
Publishers: Newspapers, books, films
- Make editorial decisions
- Strong legal responsibility
- Twitter/Facebook are increasingly positioning themselves as news sites
Question:
- How much control turns a platform into a publisher
- What are the criteria for Twitter taking control (banning, deleting)
- Who (or what) should control the flow of information
, Algorithmic curation of news (feed)
Before:
- All friend’s posts displayed in your feed
- Content ordered by time
Now: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
- You see less than <20% of what your friends post
- Content is curated by algorithms
→ Hidden
→ Reordered
→ Promoted
→ Content is placed around ads to increase clicks on ads
“We learn based on what you’ve done in the past and we quickly learn about the things that
you’re interested in”
Facebook: news feed visibility
NVF = Post x Interest x Creator x Type x Recency
(simplified equation, 100.000 other factors)
Facebook’s solution: trending topics
Publishers, platforms, algorithms
Social media companies are walking a fine line between a neutral platform to host news, and a
subjective media company that creates/curates it.
The algorithms are becoming increasingly “social” but still requiring (some) human oversight &
control
→ Boundary between social algorithm (AL) vs. human is becoming increasingly
blurred
“The value of a (decentralized) communication network is proportional to the square of the
number of its users
Value of network = (number of users) ^2 → Metcalfe’s law
Quantity has its own quality
- People use a (social media) technology because everyone else is using it
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