In Maria Popova’s article, “In a new world of informational abundance, content curation is a new kind of authorship”, she brought to light an interesting point about twitter, “The point is that new tools in general, and Twitter in particular, greatly challenge the binary dichotomy of attention as something that is either given or taken away, distracted. Instead, these tools allow us to direct attention to destinations where it can be sustained with more concentration and immersion”. I found this quote particularly interesting because it challenges the negative reputation social media has for distracting people and making them obsessed with their phones. Popova rather explains that social media, specifically twitter in this example, are used to feed people information and further connect them to more information. I recently wrote an argumentative essay that distraction doesn’t exist because it is difficult to determine what is a distraction and what is a valuable use of time, and anything can be categorized as a distraction. This quote by Popova furthers my claim because she argues that social media isn’t a distraction but rather a different facet which one concentrates upon. What makes social media great is the diverse ways in which it can be used as Popova implies, social media links people to new sources and feeds curiosity. There are accounts made for educational, promotional, personal, and commercial purposes which creates many possibility for what can be gained from concentrating on social media. Maria Popova states in this quote that attention is neither given or taken away meaning that any use of time is of value so no-matter how your time is used you gain something from the experience. Popova’s view is truly insightful because it opens up the possibilities and understandings that can be gained from social media.
DTC Homework #8
After reading “Your ‘Anonymous’ Browsing Data Isn’t Really Anonymous” by Daniel Oberhaus, I became aware of all the data advertising companies have access to. I don’t often post on social media, but I do frequently visit social media to remain updated on who I’m following. I’ve noticed ads pertaining specifically to me more recently on Instagram, I follow a lot of rappers and local rappers and recently I’ve gotten many rap related ads. On Facebook I often see ads related to things I’ve looked for on Amazon. Though Facebook and Amazon are two separate sites I’ve noticed they share user data since all my ads are directly specified to what I’m interested in on Amazon. An interesting flaw in this data is since I share an Amazon account with my family, the advertisements I receive on Facebook don’t always pertain to me, but instead are directed towards my brother but Facebook doesn’t know we share the account. Snapchat is different than Facebook or Instagram since I only use it to follow personal friends, not celebrities, and on Snapchat you don’t create a personal profile that others can see to learn about you. Interestingly I still receive personalized advertisements on Snapchat. Snapchat does track location, and I chose to keep my location on so I could use geographically related filters. Snapchat has used my location to direct me to ads for businesses in the Pullman and Moscow area. Even Facebook has done this same thing even though I didn’t update my profile to say I am living in Pullman. Advertisers have access to an abundance of personal data, in some ways I can change settings to avoid this but often this takes away options within apps that are useful.