Responsibilities and Repercussions that Come's with Social Media

Looking at how social media has changed for someone who grew up being born in the middle of the 1990’s, it has taken a very drastic change. In the beginning with Myspace, it being a platform to have a simple profile online. Now having Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, there is so much more to it. The basic idea of the profile has stuck then the instant message comes, people liking, sharing, tweeting, sub tweeting, and best of all, Ads. All these huge mediums that have millions and millions of users giving tons of information based off of the specific information that people will like, retweet, share, and search. These social media platforms then sell it to other companies so they know what people have been searching the most and then advertise that product more so that the person is more inclined to buy it. Which is the responsibility of the platform owner to decide whether or not doing that and not properly informing users is an ethical way of making income. On this flip side there is still responsibilities for that a user must uphold in order for a good experience when it comes to using social media. Such as practicing the users right to freely type, but not misleading information that could potentially put human life in danger. An example of this would be, In June of 2019 in Bay County, Florida a 16-year-old was arrested after a social media post threatened violence at an event in downtown Panama City. According to the article his post read, "can't wait to shoot up the place." The FBI contacted the sheriff's office about the post. The teen claims he was not going to shoot up the place, he was only "trolling," or posting a message to get a rise out of other people. According to the article this teen posted a detailed message in a group chat on Snapchat describing a violent act involving guns and C4. They say the teen says he didn't plan on carrying out the threat. In this certain case social media was on the good side of things because of how quickly it was reported to the police and was easily able to track down where the posts had come from Luckily the teens were never able to pursue the act but the idea that it was just a “Troll” is scary. Users, such as these two, don’t completely realize the power and responsibilities that come along with posting information out not knowing how there are other interpretations of what the post might say or the severity it is taken with. The social media platforms always try and the new niche that will set it above all else and get it to trending. At the end of the day whatever doesn’t work will be dismissed and whatever works will be copied. Leaving only a couple of social media platforms that are substantially more popular but have the almost identical layout, style and flow of use.