Liberating the Internet
In today's world, we are heavily dependent on the uses of technology such as computers or phones, but out of these main sources of technology I have stated, we mostly use the Internet today to perform activities such as communicating to others or to type your resume for your future boss, but there are some people who don't have access to this luxury like we do and there are problems and challenges about how we use social media as well, which I will be discussing in this article.
First of all, I would like to talk about five challenges social media users struggle in and how they can be resolved. The first challenge that these users face is that "People today don't know how to deal with rumors directly..." What I mean by this is that most people, including myself, would assume or agree on a certain fact or facts, posted up on a social media site or on any website in the Internet. A way we can solve this is that we need to actually find evidence to prove whether or not something is true or false instead of just assuming from the start that that certain fact is true or false. The next problem I would like to address with social media users is that "We create our own echo chambers." At first this quote may sound confusing at first glance, but once finding out what it means, it makes more sense. This quote means that people only discuss with others who agree with their facts or statements, for example you're only conversing with people who love dogs instead of talking to people who love cats. The next problem social media users have would be that "flame wars", or arguments could often happen. Usually, these arguments are created when one person or more have a disagreement with a specific topic, while the other person says that he or she hates that topic. The fourth challenge of social media users would be that people have a difficult time changing their opinions. I would say this is a challenge almost everyone has because they can get these opinions from unreliable resources, such as Wikipedia or websites with a .org domain, which can also start arguments on the Internet. And the last challenge social media users have is that people normally don't have long debates or deep conversations in general. Think about it, most social media users only see selfies, pictures of landscapes and short comments.
After discussing about the five main problems social media users have, I am going to be talking about how Ghonim suggests that we can be capable of liberating the Internet, or making the Internet accessible to everyone. The first suggestion he makes to make the Internet accessible is to create a new media platform for people to converse in. This would help us be able to share our own opinions about specific topics, especially for politics, and as well as not create echo chambers and to converse with one another peacefully. One more suggestion Ghonim makes is to create crowd sourcing mechanisms. These mechanisms would effectively search online information in order to prevent arguments online and as well as reward the people who take part of searching throughout the Internet for facts.
After discussing about the five main problems social media users have, I am going to be talking about how Ghonim suggests that we can be capable of liberating the Internet, or making the Internet accessible to everyone. The first suggestion he makes to make the Internet accessible is to create a new media platform for people to converse in. This would help us be able to share our own opinions about specific topics, especially for politics, and as well as not create echo chambers and to converse with one another peacefully. One more suggestion Ghonim makes is to create crowd sourcing mechanisms. These mechanisms would effectively search online information in order to prevent arguments online and as well as reward the people who take part of searching throughout the Internet for facts.
