The tenth week of Social Media & Society has introduced us to The Social Network, Beware Online “Filter Bubbles” and Essena O’Neill’s perspective on Instagram. The film covers the journey of Mark Zuckerberg and his rise to fame. Essena O’Neill explains why she deactivated her Instagram account while the TED Talk discussed how filter bubbles are neglecting our ability to be exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.
The Social Network was released in 2010, written by Aaron Sorkin and direct by David Fincher. The film stars Jessie Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake. The film won three Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Film Editing. I found the film fascinating and thrilling. From Zuckerberg’s small beginnings to his billions, he impacted the nation and the globe. His creation or theft (depending on our perspective) was insurmountable and became what we know today as Facebook.
A young Mark Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg) was attending Harvard University when his heart was ripped apart by his previous girlfriend, Erica Albright. Returning to his dorm, Zuckerberg writes an insulting entry about Albright on his Live Journal blog. He creates a campus website called Face-mash by hacking into college databases to steal photos of female students, then allowing site visitors to rate their attractiveness. After traffic to the site overloads parts of Harvard’s computer system, Zuckerberg is sentenced six months of academic probation. However, Face-mash’s popularity attracts the attention of two individuals. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their business partner Divya Narendra. The 4 individuals started collaborating together and debating about an idea of social networking, exclusively for Harvard students. The networking was aimed at establishing relationships and dating amongst college students. Zuckerberg approaches his friend Eduardo Saverin with an idea; a social networking website that would be exclusive to Ivy League students. Saverin provides a one-thousand dollar in funding, allowing Zuckerberg to build the website. The Winklevoss twins and Narendra are enraged, believing that Zuckerberg stole their idea while keeping them in the dark by stalling on developing their Harvard website. The three individuals raised their complaint to the President Harvard. However, there was no disciplinary action taken against Zuckerberg. Saverin becomes infuriated when he discovers that the new investment deal allows his share of Facebook to be diluted from 34% to 0.03% while maintaining the ownership percentage of all other parties. He confronts Zuckerberg and Parker, and Saverin vows to sue Zuckerberg before being ejected from the building. At end of the film, the Winklevoss brothers claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea, while Saverin claims his shares of Facebook was unfairly diluted when the company was incorporated.
Eli Pariser believed that the Internet exceeded our exceptions and had become everything that we all dreamed of. The internet as a whole has connected us all together, but we need it to introduce us to new ideas, new people and different perspectives. I believe that it is crucial for individuals to expand outside their norms and experience different forms of culture. No one wants to be know as the “arrogant American”, leave your comfort zone and expand your horizons. Pariser ended with the statement, “It’s (internet) not going to do that if it leaves us all isolated in a web of one.”
Essena O’Neill, an Australian teenager, has had enough of Instagram’s platform. She described the application as “contrived perfection made to get attention”. Her dramatic rejection of social media has won her praise amongst audiences and pushed her to create her own website. O’Neill stated, “The site will cover veganism, creative imagery with purpose, poems, writing, interviews with people that inspire me, and of course the finical reality behind deluding people off Instagram.”
Published by: Samuel Erickson
Weekly News Article: CBNC shares Mark Zuckerberg’s perspective and opinion about the upcoming election. Zuckerberg is worried about the increased risk of potential civil unrest associated with the November 3rd, United States presidential election.
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SOCIAL MEDIA & SOCIETY 
the only thing I didn’t like about marks actions was that he threw his best friend under the bus by making his worth less when other people joined the company. that could have easily been avoided by nit associating with Sean in the first place, him and his CFO should have stuck together
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Hey again Sam, great blog this week I enjoyed reading it and I think that Mark should have been kicked out of Harvard for what he was doing on the website he created. Maybe it was because of different periods of time in the world but I do believe if that would happen now, that student would be kicked out permanently. Although the website was awful, it was the first step in creating Facebook when you think about it, because that website led to an idea of a social networking platform for students to then evolved into the massive platform we have now in Facebook.
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