First Article: http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/calgary/fake-facebook-accounts-calgary-alberta-politics-1.4128312
After reading this article, it makes me realize how many fake accounts I come across on social media on a day to day basis. The fact that the accounts in the news article talk to each other probably means that there is one or a group of people working together. I think that the idea of doing something like that is to get people to hop on a bandwagon. If there is a single person talking about something, not many people will notice. When you have multiple “people” effectively having a discussion with themselves, you can manipulate an entire chat thread with a few lines of text.
A version of this that I see commonly is bots and fake accounts on Instagram for advertising purposes. Another is when accounts will follow you with promises of sex or money by clicking on a link. The worst version of a fake account though is a catfish. Catfish are people who pretend to be someone they are not in order to lure someone out to meet in public or to send them illicit photos of themselves which they sell on the internet. This is why I keep my accounts private and let people who I know follow me.
Because of the structure of the internet, it is far too easy for anyone to create fake accounts in order to boost followers or turn hordes of people against others for personal gain. If you get enough attention, you can sway entire elections for instance by simply making 30 fake accounts talk with each other about a scandal or something. This could blow up with more people backing the bots ideas, all so their creator can profit in some way.
Article 2: http://globalnews.ca/news/3470831/manchester-arena-2-rules-to-sort-truth-from-fiction-in-an-attacks-confusing-aftermath/?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=EditorsPick&utm_campaign=2015
This article made me sad. It made sad that there are people in the world that are willing to take advantage of people’s good nature in the aftermath of a horrible tragedy. I have actually seen posts like this on multiple social media platforms, always unsure of what to do. You want to repost, retweet, do something! But you could just be fueling the fire of a massive hoax…
On the other hand, it is a brilliant plan to take advantage of people like this. People normally aren’t;t that predictable but put an image of a child and say they might be dead? Very few people can just ignore that. It is primal instinct to protect the younger part of the population. This kind of thing pulls at your heartstrings and begs for attention. It is the perfect ploy to send people into disarray, confused about who is dead and who is alive. It is monstrous yet genius at the same time.
Conclusion:
To finish, these are some of the biggest problems about social media. The ease at which one can deceive someone is scary. When you combine that with someone who has no morals, you create a very dangerous situation. Screening on websites needs to be improved or it will descend into chaos. These problems are annoying and confusing to a user like me and can have deadly consequences, such as people looking for the wrong kidnapped child. These problems not only affect me but every single user of a social media platform. Soon, a solution must be found, or else social media on a whole is doomed to bcome a wasteland of bots and ads.