This article describes importance of social networking sites ,their use and unethical use and how it can be prevented.It also describes how social networking applications work and why they are being unethically used like TikTok.
Background
To get better understanding of the subject we need to first understand few basics of social networking applications. Social networking applications were designed to interact with people of similar interest.
The second reason that social networking became popular those days is that evolution of mobile phones. Mobile phones became widely available to poor in last decade due to their low cost. These gave power to poor and common people, power of expressing their thoughts. Now, very common person can use twitter to get noticed on its platform. We can run various campaigns on social networking applications very easily. Social networking sites emerged in need of time where humanity needed the most.
Social networking applications also became source of valid or invalid, true or false news. Social networking applications are very easy to use. They also became symbol or status quo in our society in last decade.
Successful Applications
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tiktok are all examples of many of them. We are going to compare these for applications. Even though they are of similar kind, they have very different kind of uses, functionalities and algorithms.
It is imperative to affirm that Facebook is only and true social networking application.
Here are few reasons:-
Facebook is a kind of virtual world, where we have friends, groups, businesses (Pages), Individuals (Pages), Politicians (Pages and Users), Events and all the kind of stuff that we see in real world.
Facebook organic reach is works the same way it works in real world. Here is an example how Facebook algorithm works.
Page X shares a video of how to make sandwiches.
How will Facebook show or decides who will see these videos on wall of users? Facebook basically defines your virtual personality based on what users like, shares, clicks. This is not official but this is how it works. When people interact with videos related to something specific. Facebook will remember that you are food loving person, or you are interested in politics, or you are interested in regional politics, or your are interested in regional languages and so on. More users interact with content on Facebook, more Facebook will know about users. More or less they will make true virtual copy of your interests, likes and behaviours that you can ever have imagined.
More or less twitter is micro-blogging site, because it has limitations to number of words you can use in a single tweet. You can share videos too. Twitter basically works on simple mechanism of tags and followers and trends. Twitter might be doing same data mining as Facebook do but for sure it is not as complex as that of Facebook. It is hard to get attention or followers if you are not trustworthy. Basically Twitter is used by politicians and followers of politicians or people who are already famous in real world like actors, politicians etc. Like for example if someone is got engaged today, he will probably post it on Facebook or Instagram but he will not tweet about that event on Twitter. It is great tool but not for commons. It’s a one way communication between elites and commons. Where common people follow elite people.
YouTube
This is giant video sharing (Video Blogging) platform. I would call it great grandmother. As before going to slip when I was kid I would watch documentaries on YouTube. My grandmother died before I was born, so there was nobody to tell me stories at the night. This is funny but this is what I thought when I was kid. So for instance you want to get followers and subscribers on YouTube you must post quality content on YouTube. This content is must be created by you. You can’t just upload pirated movie you downloaded on torrent just like that. So to compete with other YouTube creators you must publish quality and unique content on YouTube. So Unlike Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even Tiktok you can’t make and upload quality content just from mobile phone or using mobile phone. You can upload personal videos shot on mobile phone but it will not get most likes as it not indented add value to time of other YouTube users. You must have computer, video editing software’s and all the knowledge of topic you are making videos of for your YouTube Channel. Well for this you can also earn decent money if your channel gets required followers and subscribers. This is not really true about Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok and Instagram. You can earn money on every platform but you must find your sponsor on your own or the sponsor must found you. This is not about YouTube; it does all the monetary and marketing jobs for you. Recently Facebook introduced program like YouTube has for monetisation. You just need to create unique and quality content. There are companies and individuals of YouTube Creators who make decent money by publishing quality content on YouTube.
TikTok
This became controversial application in last few days. If Facebook works like YouTube then Tiktok woks like Twitter.TikTok also has limit to length of video content. The people creating content on Tiktok are different from a YouTube creators. They do not use computers (basically) ,do not use video editing software’s since Tiktok has inbuilt feature for audio mixing ,and has inbuilt filters.TikTok organic reach may be as simple as Twitter.The profile with most followers get most reach and video with most likes get even more reach. This is how videos become viral on Tiktok. So due to not having any keyword related mechanism to maintain quality of videos becoming viral on platform Tiktok creators used to create and post videos like ,jumping ,getting injured ,harassing womens. They use this trick to get their video instantly viral and this works well.
This reminds me of saying “Great Powers Come with Great Responsibilities”. Tiktok creators have misused its power of expression to great extent that people are demanding to ban Tiktok.
Accept it or not people loved Tiktok. The people who could not afford to have computers used it, made videos and became famous. This is reality of TikTok.It has bad and good sides.
Owners of Tiktok should make good note of what happened in last few days, and should get it improved before getting themselves banned so that these types of mistakes do not happens again and the wrong person or wrong video do not get featured on Tiktok. Perhaps recently YouTube has announced that they are going to add Tiktok like short video feature on YouTube.
What is wrong is wrong, but in free society, applications like Tiktok should not be banned who give power of expression to common people; but those who glorified acid attack on women must be punished by law of the land.
What do you think? Share it if you like it.
Write your feedback in comment section below.
Register now to read articles like this in future.