One of the things that most grabbed my attention from Derek Thompson’s presentation was the idea surrounding ethics; he argued that while the use of media has been critical for leaders in our nation, individuals who utilize media platforms without ethics often deliver fake news. Thompson connected this specifically to politics, by pointing out how different politicians use social media to persuade their audiences that they can achieve unattainable goals.
Following up on that idea, Thompson explained how attention based platforms tend to incentivize extremism. To do so, he used Youtube as an example; he went as far as saying that Youtube is the platform that helped convince parents that vaccinating their children is not necessary (this comment made a lot of people in the room laugh). Thompson argued that Youtube is a petri-dish for extremism because it is a danger of our virtual environment. He mentioned Youtube’s feature of suggesting videos through a recommendation column, providing viewers with a list of videos related to what they are currently watching. For instance, a person might originally search for videos to learn about an electoral campaign, and end up being persuaded by a completely different video that supports Trump’s ideas of keeping immigrants away from the United States.
Lastly, I would like to touch upon Thompson’s belief that great freedom – relating to media – brings anxiety about whether or not we are properly maximizing life’s opportunities. Thompson mentioned new studies that prove that suicide rates are skyrocketing in universities in modern America. He argued that this is “due to extreme expectations that universities put over students while providing them with a machine (cell phone) for surveilling the perfect lives of everybody else.” I thought that this was very interesting because I know for a fact that many of my college students, including myself, tend to compare themselves to one another through what they see on each other’s social media posts.
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