"Sock Puppets on Steroids: The Internet's Fake Personalities"

First reaction--83 million accounts are phony?! And bacon specialists? What?! 

I will say--I have a Facebook, but I often contemplate getting rid of it. I feel that many people try to friend others just because they want to have a certain amount of Facebook friends. Some people have thousands--my question is, do you really keep in touch with all these "friends" on a regular basis?

I say all that to point out that social media has our society under its thumb. People are so easily influenced by how many friends you have or how many people liked your photo, or how many people follow you on Twitter. It's getting ridiculous. I'm sorry if I sound so negative! Again, disclaimer, I do have a Facebook! I just feel that these kinds of social media accounts have too much of an impact on our lives. Yes, they can be extremely useful and wonderful and a great way to keep in touch with people, but they can be deceiving as evidenced in this article.

I really like this quote from the author:

"Whether it's on FaceBook, Twitter, and dating site, or elsewhere, there are machine personalities--fake, computer-controlled quasi humans--that are attempting to influence your behavior. And they're succeeding."

"Web of Doubt"

This was a great discussion to listen to. Some of the the questions raised included:

How do you know what's real (on the internet)?

How can you tell if internet people are real or fake? Can you rely on Wikipedia? (I've noticed that we haven't covered Wikipedia in class yet--will that site be covered soon? .....just kidding). 

I think that these readings and audio interview have made me more aware that what you see isn't always what you get. You can't always trust what's posted on the internet, although people treat it like it has all the answers. It is certainly an invaluable tool out there, but think about all of the other sources of information we have. Consider how many people pass by reference indexes in the library and don't know what they are or how to use them (pretty much me until last week). Primary sources and information are essential to studying our past. That kind of significant and valuable information can't always be found on the internet. In fact, sometimes information AND people are simply made up on the internet and you wouldn't even know it. Scary. 

Very interesting stuff to consider. 

"IMSLP"

I have used IMSLP before to look up scores, and I never made the connection that this site is actually a Wiki. I like how the author of this review presents the positives and negatives associated with IMSLP. It can be limited in what it can do (search-wise), but what a wonderful resource. And it's quite amazing that it's kept up by people like you and me. Users play a vital role in keeping this resource alive.