Jackson Baumgartner Learning Journal

Chapter Reading This chapter reading talked about how paid advertising works in social media companies and how any digital information you have is worth a price. The scale of companies sharing information to help maximize targeted marketing was slightly surprising to me, but also something that I can see them needing to do. I have heard before that nothing in the world is ever truly free, and that is true in the case of social media. If companies like Facebook and Twitter did not advertise and sell information then they would not be making any money. I think that selling user information is not in itself cynical, but not being transparent about the information like Facebook is wrong on their part. TikTok has come under heavy fire for collecting information on its users, and since it is owned by a Chinese corporation the United States is even more concerned about it. Despite these claims, TikTok does have some transparency and allows users to request and download all the information Tik...

Time Diary      When it comes to social media apps I like using TikTok the most. Because TikTok has short videos that are personalized for me I get a lot of funny videos that I want to watch. I tracked my TikTok usage for the week of February 12-18th. I use TikTok exclusively on my iPhone; TikTok does have a web version that can be used on a computer, but it was made for vertical use so the web version is not aesthetically pleasing.      From what the chart shows I can see that I use TikTok mainly during the day. Of the almost 15 hours spent during the week 11.5 of them were during the day. Looking back this makes sense because I use the app in the morning and between finishing homework assignments. The timing of my classes seems to influence my usage of TikTok the most. On Mondays, I have classes spread out during the day, so I spend more time scrolling through videos. On Thursday through Saturday I do not have classes, so that can explain the increased us...