CSE648-PSOSM-2021

Social media has become an integral part of our lives. We use social media to stay connected with family, friends and sometimes complete strangers. As of 2020, there are 3.96 billion people using some kind of social media platform in the world, which is 83.36% of the total world population, and this number increases each year.  Along with the many advantages that social media serves, it also comes with an additional set of problems. Privacy on social media is a big issue. With most of your life events being broadcasted on social media platforms, privacy is a rare thing to find these days. Most people know that they want to share certain things with certain people, not all of them know how exactly to achieve it. Most people are not even aware of the security threats that publicly available personal information can pose.  Right to privacy is a fundamental right in most parts of the world, but in the context of social media, the exercising of this right is difficult. The users ar...

Overview Problem Statement: If you’ve ever seen the Social Dilemma, you’d know that big-tech companies have and do use your data collected on social media against you. That unfortunately includes your personality. If you haven’t seen it, boy, are you in for a shock.  I’m sure you’re aware that we give up a huge amount of personal information and data about ourselves every time we open the internet. From seemingly harmless BuzzFeed quizzes to increasingly personal security questions (“First home or pet or teacher"), companies like Google and Facebook have all of it. And they don’t just store it on their fancy servers somewhere. They use it against us to generate more revenue.  For example, did you know that, according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, SJs (sensing-judging types) are inclined to resist change, and are inclined to make decisions too quickly? Thus people believing conspiracy theorists may be likely to be SJ types.  Why Should You Care? Okay, so they have it...

🍞 What is the problem? A Filter Bubble is a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches when a social media algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on their interaction history and other data which platform knows about them. It is difficult for a person to find opposing views on a topic on social media. One has to make a conscious effort to get diverse views on some topic, and break out from the filter bubble created by the social media algorithms. However, some choose to keep their filter bubble intact in order to prevent information overload which leads to misinformation, another problem prevalent in OSMs today. 🍞 What is bRead?  bRead is a new outlook on interacting with social media where people view multiple sides of a Debate, Question or News Topic and contribute to the conversation, hence delivering discourse in an organized, ethical and user-centric function. 🍞 How did we create bRead? Initial User Stud...