Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?

I guess a more apt title would be “Why I don’t have a Facebook Account Part II,” but I think that this title fits the overall topic of this blog better.

While I am probably the only person who has a Twitter but not a Facebook account, I do not see or look for news whenever I log onto the social media. I also do not have friends or family willing to let me peek at their accounts, so I have never been directly exposed to this mysterious thing called “Fake News.”  Fake News has never and does not directly affect me, but after reading these articles, I think I have some understanding now of this wide-spread phenomenon.

Fake News are news articles, usually published online, that dish out false information for the purpose of “clickbait,” or for simply making money from people clicking and viewing the story. They are usually filled with false and sensationalized information about a specific political topic, and while they are occasionally written in hopes of persecuting other political parties, these articles are simply ploys to gain revenue from website advertisements. Fake News is also highly sensationalized but is written in such a way that readers may believe that is true if they do not fact-check this source.

Overall, I think that the concept of fake news is fascinating; I wonder who came up with this idea of writing such articles to generate views and revenue.  I’m not really offended by the existence of Fake News; I think that they can be very entertaining, like The Onion, as long as readers know beforehand that such news is fake.  This is, however, where the problem of Fake News arises, for these articles are written in such a way that it is almost impossible to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. If certain fake news is wildly spread and believed to be true, lies can influence readers’ opinions in a false manner, and that’s a pretty scary prospect in my opinion.

As scary as that possibility may seem, I don’t think that Fake News should be totally censored, however. I believe that not only do people have a right to publish what they wish on the internet to a certain extent, these articles seem to have some entertainment value as well. Also, free speech would allow for their publication.  In the case of displaying links to these articles in other websites’ news sections, private companies have the ability to choose whether they decide to promote such links or not.  Removing these articles from the internet entirely, however, would be wrong.

Trusting social media to pick the proper news to display on their website, fake or not, is a trickier situation. On this topic, I believe that Michael Munez captures my opinion quite well; he states that “imposing human editorial values onto the lists of topics an algorithm spits out is by no means a bad thing—but it is in stark contrast to the company’s claims that the trending module simply lists “topics that have recently become popular on Facebook.”  On principal, I do not have a problem with private companies deciding which news content to display, but if a company decides to include a nonbiased news section on their page, then it needs to be fact-checked and filtered for fake news. For example, I believe that the Facebook employees who chose articles for the website’s trending news section based on bias were acting immorally and against the idea of nonbiased, reliable news.  I also believe, however, that it would be acceptable for a website to prefer “biased” news if that is what the corporation or organization believes and expressly states that fact alongside such articles.

While I believe that deciding what type of news content should be displayed is up to the individual company, I’m leery of the idea of Facebook and Twitter deciding the accuracy and truth of an article.  Because of the aforementioned case of personal bias, I believe that such social media should enlist the help of third party resources to ensure the article’s accuracy and save the time and energy of creating a separate team to complete this task.  However, I do believe that is it imperative that companies mark the nature of the news source they are promoting in order to properly inform their users.

Leaving this clarification out of websites is the most dangerous aspect of Fake News; Max Read states in his article that “many of those stories were lies, or “parodies,” but their appearance and placement in a news feed were no different from those of any publisher with a commitment to, you know, not lying.” Luckily, Timothy B. Lee has the perfect solution to this terrifying prospect: “one way to help address these concerns is by being transparent. Facebook could provide users with a lot more information about why the news feed algorithm chose the particular stories it did.”
I believe that transparency in this situation is key. While companies have a right to promote whatever articles they wish, both they and their users need to be acutely aware of the article’s nature before reading.  Companies have an innate responsibility to provide accurate news depending on their goals and beliefs, and social media and aggregators of information have this same responsibility of truthfully reporting the type of news before users read it.

The type of news specifically reported to me was all the same until I left Nebraska; everyone around me had the same views on religion, politics, the weather, anything. It wasn’t until I came to Notre Dame and started having intense conversations about these topics that I realized that people held such different viewpoints on every debatable subject. Therefore, being in a bubble and breaking out of it has allowed me to experience and understand various viewpoints on different subjects.  I think this bubble bursting could occur through the internet as well, if users decided to receive information from multiple sources and be open to the existence of varying opinions.

Even though the threat of a “post-fact” world looms if people did not exhibit this behavior regarding other’s opinions, I think that people always have naturally gravitated toward more sensationalized news that triggers emotions, and there were then always truth seekers, willing to look past the emotions to find accuracy within articles. Facebook is currently pushing this search for truth as well, dispelling the “post-fact” news by eliminating fake news from their trending section.

Fake news will now always exist in today’s society it will always exist, and that’s not a bad thing. However, as people become more aware of its dangers as I have, I think that the truth will prevail despite the threat of a “post-fact” world.

Come On, Let's Play Monopoly

(What the title is referencing)

On the topic of corporate personhood, I believe that Kent Greenfield defined this topic very well. He stated in his article that “understand that “corporate personhood” simply expresses the idea that the corporation has a legal identity separate from its shareholders.”  However, I believe that corporate personhood is a step beyond this idea; it is, instead, granting businesses the ability to have similar rights to a person, including the ability to spend campaign money or practice a particular set of religious beliefs.

At least, that’s what I believe it to be, based off the readings.  This whole concept is extremely confusing, especially for someone who is trying to comprehend this while motion sick in an airplane.  Therefore, I would like to blame any misconceptions of this topic on the fact that this blog is being completed in an airplane. (Thanks a lot for scheduling a blog over break.  I really appreciate it.)

(That was sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell.)

The ramifications of the concept manifest themselves, in one way, in the debate as to where the line should be drawn regarding freedom of speech; because corporations singularly do not have a conscience, how can they decide on a whole which religion they decide to support? The views of the corporation may not always represent the views of everyone involved within the corporation; therefore, adapting a religion for an entire company can cause issues and divides between workers and administrators.

On the other hand, treating the corporate person as a separate entity allows people who caused an accident to avoid the blame and incrimination; the corporation will instead be blamed. But again, this easily becomes a double-edged sword. By claiming that the corporation is separate and by placing the blame all on one invisible person, corporations as a whole can more easily execute immoral acts. However, if one person causes an issue, then everyone in the company is punished in a way because there is not an actual person who can shoulder the blame.

After examining the Microsoft antitrust case, I don’t think that their practices could be considered unethical or immoral.  All that they did was install one of their products onto another one of their products; it’s their right, as owners of the OS, to install whatever software they produce onto a device of their own.  If Netscape had developed their own OS, then it would have totally been fine to pre-install Netscape on their own devices; making your own browser doesn’t immediately make a corporation a monopoly.

From my perspective, this whole situation is like calling McDonald’s or Burger King a monopoly for selling their own sides.  Both companies really specialize in burger-making (Operating Systems) but pair their products with French Fries or milkshakes (browsers) produced only by them.  If this was the case, then salesmen of those products should be outraged and claim that those places are monopolies; while I am not sure how many OS systems are out there, it would be ridiculous to limit a company to making a single product because they would be a monopoly otherwise.

If Microsoft did make it harder to install different browsers by putting up deliberate roadblocks in their software to slow their machines down, then I would consider the corporation a monopoly.  Also, if Microsoft had been forcing others to use a different version of Java, this behavior may have made them out to a monopoly as well, but if they had simply developed their own version of Java for their own use, I don’t think that this development would warrant the label of monopoly.  All of these ifs, however, are just ifs; if (again) they did not actually practice these deterrent action, hen how can you call Microsoft a monopoly?  Microsoft simply released their own version of a browser with another of their products, and in my opinion, there’s nothing monopolizing about that.

When discussing the line between a normal corporation and a monopoly, I think the main restriction should be placed based on the whether a corporation is actively working to hurt or prevent other companies from succeeding (the key word here being actively). As I stated previously, if corporations deliberately create scripts to slow down download times, prevent a user from purchasing and using another company’s software, or directly prevent a company from flourishing in any way, then that would be considered as ruthless behavior. However, competition does not equal monopoly. If two companies are making similar products and one is successful while the other is not, the struggling company cannot automatically claim its rival is a monopoly; clearly, if there is competition and a market for both companies, then one cannot be a monopoly.  While the business world can be ruthless, it is not necessarily oppressive.  It’s survival of the fittest, but tampering with success actively is not fair.

While I’m not totally sure of my stance on corporate personhood, I think, based on my opinion on ruthless practices, that corporations do have a moral obligation in general to treat other workers and companies with respect. They also have to respect the practices of other corporations and treat other corporations in the way that they would want to be treated.  I unfortunately don’t have much to say about this topic because I think that the whole situation is fairly straight forward. If you treat a company like a person, then they are automatically given the responsibilities that an individual would have, for the most part.

And this opinion would be true in regards to Microsoft, if you safely assume that they did not actively slow down the installation of Netscape. Microsoft treated their rivals with respect while still working to better improve their business. Even after being convicted of being a monopoly, Microsoft accepted defeat and completed their given responsibilities, even issuing a version of Windows without Windows Explorer to Europe.  I believe that these actions are sound evidence that Microsoft is a morally sound corporation, even if people did not accept their apology and subsequent actions.

On a larger scale, I think that this quote by Cato Shapiro says it all concerning corporations’ moral integrity. "Nobody is saying that corporations are living, breathing entities, or that they have souls or anything like that," he says. "This is about protecting the rights of the individuals that associate in this way." For a corporation to behave morally and ethically, they should protect the rights of the individuals within their company and treat rival corporations with the same respect that is needed for their employees. Through this system of respect and care, corporations can behave morally and ethically.

(Sorry for the length…there were a lot of questions, and I had a lot to say for some of them.  But I’m not going to try to cut it at this point.)