TED Talk

The Internet is a marvelous invention that helps us in many ways. Now, we could communicate to our friends and family from long distances faster than ever before and become social activists with a click of a button. However, there are some aspects that could negatively affect out lives. For example, it's very easy to harass and verbally attack people on the internet. Another thing is that hardly anything on the internet is private. Once something is there, there's no erasing it (AKA a digital footprint). Also, we have little to no privacy on the internet, since most of all of your personal information is out there for strangers to see.

There are five critical challenges facing today's media. One of them is the fact that rumors are hard to control. Rumors that are biased are believed by a wide range of people. The second challenge is that everyone who disagrees/has a different belief than others, people tend to block. People usually talk to people with similar beliefs to them. The third is that online discussions tend to turn into angry mobs. The fourth is that it's hard to change people's opinions. People jump to conclusions about important topics and don't want to change their views. The fifth challenge is that instead of having deep, meaningful conversations where people could discuss their different opinions and views, we are only doing the opposite through social media.

Wael Ghomin has some suggestions to "liberate the internet". One of them, as Ghomin states in his presentation, is "To make it socially acceptable and even reward people to change their minds/opinions. This will make it easier for people to change their perspective". this could liberate the internet because it could help people see things in a way they have never even considered before. Another is, as Ghomin states, "To focus more on quality in a post. Even though a biased post will get someone more views, quality posts would have ore of an impact." This is also good because it would encourage people to show both sides of a topic without being biased and spreading false information.

In conclusion, there are so many challenges we face in modern social media. There are also many ways we could combat these challenges. By being open minded and listening to other people's thoughts and opinions without being biased, we could possibly shape a better form of media for the future. There are so many things we could do to "liberate the internet". Be part of the solution, not the problem.