Ever since Facebook became public in 2006, billions of people around the world are now able to connect and share their lives with each other. The NYT article, How Facebook Warps Our Worlds talked about the general impact social media companies and specifically Facebook can have on their user’s experiences and browsing habits.

Presumed to be safe and harmless, the majority of these people continue to post and send private messages not knowing they are being tracked. Even people that are aware of this have no other place to turn to or fear of missing out on connecting with their friends and families. Every click and every post is being monitored by an algorithm and is machine learned in order to tailor ads to the user and generate money for the parties involved.

To add onto the constant monitoring, people’s opinions and facts have been being suppressed across social medias. As of this past week, thousands of Facebook and Twitter users were censored and prevented from sharing a factual NY Post article. There have also been hundreds of users on both platforms that are being unjustly locked out of their accounts and shadow banned as well simply for having a different opinion.

Do you think social media companies should be punished or prevented from doing this despite having their own freedom of speech?

Social media in its ideal form would be one of the most positive things we could experience on this Earth. It is too bad that it has succumbed to shady practices and the hidden key board warrior toxicity we see every day. The “spiral of silence” has become more widely used than ever these days because of social media. It is sad to see something so promising being manipulated.