The future of social networking sites

   In the article, The Future of Reputation Gossip, Rumor, and Pricacy on the Internet, Solove talks about “strong ties” and “weak ties”. Strong ties refer to close connections, parents and close friends, for example. While weak ties refer the connections with others who we don’t contact and communicate with a lot. According to the author, “ the number of weak ties one can form and maintain may be able to increase substantially by spread of social network websites (33)”. In the case of Facebook, a person can be “friends” with others by one click and keep the relationships automatically after that. In other words, social networking sites enable people to connect with others easily. 

   On the other hand, the number of people who are tired of using social networking sites is increasing. According to Social media fatigue has New Yorkers cuttingthe cord,  Facebook has “1.06 billion monthly users around the globe, while 618 million signed on daily, as of Dec. 31. Paul Guyot, the founder of the analytics firm Semiocast, was quoted last year saying that an analysis his firm performed showed that while Twitter may have more than 500 million users, only a third are active”. In addition, in Facebook Fatigue: How Facebook Can Ruin YourFriendships, the author introduces some examples in which people are tired of seeing their friends’ posts and relationships on Facebook. As you continue to use social networking sites, it is natural that people become “friends” and do follow not only close people, but also people who they are not close with. However, as Solove mentions in the article, “few social network sites allow users to distinguish between close friends and mere acquaintances (27)”. That is why it has become more difficult for people to get their friends’ information they want, while at the same time, people have to see information does’t matter to them. Through such a situation, people get tired of weak ties.

   In this situation, there are movements to create new types of social networking services, which can be use in limited communities. Pair Link and Kazoc are examples. Pair Link is a social networking service for couples. By using it, a couple can share their events and make albums only for them. Kazoc is for a family. Through the site, a family can record the process of their child’s growth. They are tools to reinforce “strong ties”. That is why social networking sites are changing and not only for reinforcing “weak ties” now. In the future, new social networking sites will be created one after another to satisfy user’s demands, and they will influence and change our relationships. 

How journalism will change in the future?

   Today, the power of the Internet is very strong and it has influences on politics, economy, and culture. As Andrew argues in The Noble Amateur, the Internet has made a platform where everyone can send information to people who live all over the world making the difference between professionals and amateurs difficult to distinguish. In addition, the status of professionals has fallen due to this situation.

   However, amateurs are not the only existence that threatens the professionals’ status, but also an algorithm can replace their status. In short, the status of human beings itself can be threatened by computers in the near future. In Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?,  Levy talks about whether an algorithm will replace reporters through Narrative Science, which is an algorithm that can write news. In the article it was written that even though Hammond expects more than 90 percent of news would be written by computers in 15 years and “In 20 years, there will be no area in which Narrative Science doesn’t write stories”. However, he thinks the job of journalists will still have demand.

   Yet certainly, what people do will be replaced by computers and their jobs will decrease. By the spread of algorithm, people have become able to collect information effectively, and it makes our lives rich. On the other hand, people, especially professionals, will face the situation where they have to compete with not only amateur, but also computers. That is why professionals will have a difficult time to keeping their jobs in the near future. It is an ironic, because human beings struggle due to computer made by themselves.

Googlization and Google’s Privacy (revise)

   When you have something that you want to know, what do you do? One of the best ways you can know an answer quickly is “googling.” It means that people look up something using Google. For us who live in the digital era, Google is a convenient tool to search for something. In The Googlization of Everything, Vaidhyanathan talks about "Googlization." According to the author, “googlization affects three large areas of human concern and conduct: ‘us’(through Google's effects our personal information, habits, opinions, and judgments); 'the world'(through the globalization of a strange kind of surveillance and what I'll call infrastructural imperialism) ; and ‘knowledge’” (through its effects on the use of the great bodies of knowledge accumulated in the books, onlice datebases, and the Web) " (2). Google is the most popular search engine in the world. At the same time, they provide a lot of media services, not only a search engine, for example, Gmail, Google Maps, and Blogger. Therefore, Google manages a lot of users’ personal information all over the world through running these services. This is why Google has a strong influences on our life ; it is more than a company. On the other hand, as Vaidhyanathan mentions in the article, Google has some problems with privacy. For example, they often change their privacy policy and they provide customers’ information to their subsidiary companies, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses (84-85). In short, our information can flow out somewhere without us noticing.    

 

   In Google privacy issues in forefrontagain, Sherman shows a problem with Google's management of customers' privacy. In the article, the author points out the privacy problem with Google and compares Apple’s privacy policy. According to him, Apple keeps their customers’ information. On the other hand, “if people buy an Android app, Google sends personal information to the developer without explicitly telling you.” A person who downloads an Android app has a risk of their personal information being leaked and abused their personal information without noticing.

   In short, we have to keep in mind that we shouldn’t trust and depend on Internet services too much, we have to manage our privacy by ourselves. Reading privacy policy well and paying attention to setting Google privacy are effective ways. In addition, Google is not the only company has a privacy problem and tries to use people’s personal information, but also other sites, like Facebook and LINE do as well. In the case of LINE, which is an instant messenger application run by NAVER and one of the most popular applications in Japan, the system stores users’ address books and registers them as “friends” automatically. That is why if a friend changes his/her phone number and another person who you don’t know use the phone number, that person can contact you. In short, it has a risk to leak your privacy without you noticing. However, the only way to protect privacy is acting ourselves. For people who live in the digital era, protecting and managing their privacy is very important and what we always have to do when we use the Internet. In order to keep up with the situation, people should learn about online privacy. At the same time, people have to be conscious that every act on the Internet will remain as a “digital footprint” forever.

The influence of 2-Channel (revise)

   In Misbehavior in Cyber Places, Sternberg says some troublesome online behaviors are flaming, spamming and virtual rape. With the rise of international computer-mediated communication (“CMC”), these behaviors are viewed as problems. These problems are caused due to the lack of familiarity with CMC environments (77). In addition, Sternbeg mentions that the Internet is besieged (85). In the article, although the author doesn’t express her position clearly, she shows some professional’s ideas about cyberspace (86). Cyberspace offers “both familiar territory and lawless frontiers”(86). I think that cyberspace can become the electronic frontier, but and some people believe we cannot allow cyberspace to become the Wild West have truth; keeping balance is important.

   2-Channel, the biggest bulletin board system in Japan, is a good example to explain why keeping balance is important. As you see in the article, 2-Channel Gives Japan’s Famously QuietPeople a Mighty Voice written by Lisa Katayama, 2-Channel has big influence in Japanese society and culture now and cannot be ignored easily. There are many bulletin boards dealing with society’s problems. These boards have a role as media, because anybody can become an originator and join arguments. At the same time, as you see in the article, some bulletin boards became the origins of occurrences. In short, 2-Channel has both good and bad influences on people.

   One of the characteristics of 2-Channel is that the speed of information is really fast. There are a lot of flaming occurrences in 2-Channel. These days, I often see flaming occurrences, because many people tend to post careless content on social networking sites and blog sites, for example, Twitter and Facebook. Once someone post them on 2-Channel, it is difficult to delete and stop the post even though a contributor deletes the post. Most occurrences are caused by people don’t have “netiquette”(78), moral and media literacy. When you use cyberspace, you should not forget that cyberspace includes danger and use it carefully. In addition, “behavior management and social control in online environment” is important for us who live in a digital era. This is because “misbehavior and rule-breaking in virtual communities (88)” can be an influence on our live. However, some people tend not to be conscious about it, because we don’t have the opportunity to learn unless we actually do online misbehavior. That is why everyone who lives in a digital era should be educated about how to use digital media. Speaking of Japan, lack of media education is one of the biggest causes of troublesome behavior. Even I, a native of the digital generation, had few opportunities to receive a lecture about media education. To improve people’s behavior on cyberspace, the Japanese government should advance media education. 

The Internet reinforces a surveillance society

   In The Future of Reputation Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, Solove talks about how the Internet changes our lives in the view of information. According to him, “The more freedom people have to spread information online, the more likely that people’s private secrets will be revealed in ways that can hinder their opportunities in the future (5).” In addition, Solove shows some actual occurrences in which online information changes people’s lives in his article. One of the examples is about a fifteen-years-old boy from Canada. Someone uploaded the video he filmed himself without his permit.　Due to it, people in all over the world watched it and he was made fun from them (44-46). In the end, “he dropped his high school and had to seek psychiatric care (47). ”  Most people have mobile equipment, for example a smart phone and laptop. It means that everyone has some tools to be able to send information through the Internet to the whole world. In other words, everyone can become an online reporter and commentator. At the same time, everyone can be watched by others, can be an object to be written about, and people can criticize others easily. In short, Solove points out the Internet seems to make our life rich because of the flow of information, but, on the other hand, it creates a surveillance society and threatens our privacy.

   People are watched are not only in the real world, but also in online world. When we see a site, the browsing history is stored and people who run the site and professional companies can see and use it. However, there are people trying to oppose this situation in which Internet users are watched by others. In TED 2012:New Browser Add-On Visualizes Who Is Tracking You Online, one of these people Kovacs invented a tool named “Collusion”, which can “depict［］ the number and different types of sites that are tracking your browsing as you surf the web”. If you use Collusion, Internet users can see who is watching their browsing histories. In other words, people who were watched one-sidedly will be able to become watchers by using it.

   This is a remarkable movement, because people’s position on Internet can be changed. Although a person has been an object being watched by others until now, a person might be able to watch others in near future. However, Collusion is not yet fully implemented. That is why people still have to pay attention about online privacy and how they use the Internet. In a digital society, caring about privacy is the only way people can protect themselves. At the same time, people have to think about the morality of uploading things about other people. People use social network sites to communicate with their friends and they don’t feel like sending information to the world. People have to distinguish between the digital world and real world, and should think about the risk and morals of the Internet.