I think the topic of laws and regulations is one of the most important things to be aware of when using social media. With social media, nothing is really private. There are people who spend their everyday day lives scamming and stealing information online. I am always so aware of this when sharing any of my personal information and I always think twice before sharing anything. Knowing this and how easy it is for hackers, I always make sure to have my phone updated. I hate viruses and online threats when they pop up because you never know what it really is. It's especially awful that some social network companies will use peoples information themselves. You cant really trust anyone. Reputation is also a big deal on social media and having a positive one can benefit in many ways so it's important to protect it.
After reading the topic on social media lies and propaganda, I think the worst thing is a high percentage of people believing something that is 100% false and this happens on a regular basis because it's so easy to twist and mislead information. "A growing body of work has focused on the link between susceptibility to various forms of misinformation and broad “cognition,” as measured by various concepts including analytical thinking, numeracy skills, or various thinking styles."(Stecular, 2021.)" Knowing this and the different types of cognitive thinking, I am definitely someone who is a reflective thinker and wont just believe something that doesn't add up or make sense. After reading Russias propaganda, It's crazy how they can manipulate people to believe something so completely false. I cant believe it isn't illegal for a massive company to share a deceiving campaign. ". They’ve remade the world to fit the narrative planted in their heads by Russian propaganda." (IIIing, 2020.) This goes to show how propaganda can keep you from seeing the real truth and thats what they feed into. They are playing with peoples heads because they can. Even though these are claims made by this author, I believe what he is saying because this information makes sense and is logical. Believing your own country is your enemy is not logical. The Washington Post shared a guide to manipulated videos. " The Fact Checker sets out to develop a universal language to label manipulated video and hold creators and sharers of this misinformation accountable." After reading about this, I learned about all of the subcategories and different ways information is deceived. I would say malicious transformation is majority of what I see just because everyone likes to make jokes of situations and relevant people because they can and it's easy to. The most important key I took out of this was to always pay attention to something and see what seems logical about the video. Its hard to constantly remind yourself this especially when you lots of people use social media for entertainment purposes and don't pay too much attention.
