Diversity insufficiency on the web is a concern that cannot be overlooked in the growth of the Internet so far, and this deficiency is multifaceted. This essay will analyze numerous stances to assess what changes the lack of diversification has caused, as well as the negative impacts it has on individuals and society.
Internet History and Current Situation
If we look back on the Internet’s history, its successful metamorphosis implies that it has altered the world of computers and communications in unprecedented ways. This remarkable potential was made possible by the inventions of the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, and the computer (Leiner et al., 2009). The Internet has resulted in several advancements, and each new function produced and new website formed may imply that people will experience a fresh and more convenient way of living style. The availability of early accessible resources has resulted in these fast breakthroughs and improvements in the Internet. When the large volume of creative material was depleted, online innovation became more challenging to achieve, and users were less likely to discover unique ideas and inspiration. It is a process via which the Internet has moved away from creation and towards a lack of diversity. Personal websites used to have an easier time surviving since there were fewer talented people with the ability to construct individual web pages. However, what is occurring now is that influential sites are monopolizing that baby sites. For example, people will trust the more well-known Amazon platform rather than spend money on unknown shopping sites. The absence of variety makes the Internet even more uninteresting and no longer seems to inspire and excite. Its total incorporation into daily life indicates that the general public has lost curiosity in exploring it. Instead, it is employed as a labour, recreation, and payment tool.
Internet Economy
From an economic perspective, the Internet’s business model has resulted in a lack of diversity to some extent. To earn money, platforms like social media rely on recruiting advertising (Mansell& Steinmueller, 2020). The purpose of platforms and social media is to have massive active users and user browsing traffic. So, the adverts are being watched for promotional goals. Further, Internet platforms must do everything it takes to retain consumers and prolong their view time (Burgess et al., 2018). Almost every platform has its own set of computational methods to help it run well. Those algorithms are similar in design. They will automatically calculate each user’s preferences to produce tailored suggestions for them.
Consider Tiktok as an example. The “like” button on the screen will reveal the user’s preferences. When a user enjoys a singing video, the next series of videos will most likely be about music and song. In fact, this is one aspect of the Internet’s lack of multiplicity because this mechanism causes net citizens to get relatively restricted information. They are likely to grasp simply one vertical field, missing much diverse information from the outside world. Long-term societal progress will be sluggish, and the number of people who genuinely care about the country’s issues will be diminished as the information that individuals acquire becomes more limited.
Internet Culture and Copyright Issues
The Internet is a melting pot of civilizations, containing people from many cultural origins, nations, ethnicities, and communities of hobbies. However, when you focus on a particular subculture, you may discover a lack of diversity. Let us look at one popular subculture- fandom culture. The fan community is a large group, and one of its hazards is disregarding copyright. There appear to be a considerable number of immature teens who are unaware of copyright laws. Appear to be indiscriminately duplicating and replicating the popular original works. I would suggest that one of the causes of diversity loss is a lack of copyright knowledge. A concrete case can demonstrate this. At celebrity live shows or concerts, some fans specialize in shooting live images and videos. The primary intent of this sort of action is to capture their idol’s performance as memory and watch it online for fans absent from live performances. The unpredictable thing, though, is that live photographs and videos are frequently transmitted in enormous numbers without identifying the original authors. The producers’ creative enthusiasm will gradually wear off, resulting in less impressive and fascinating content (Suzor, 2019).
Internet Supervision
Under China’s severe online environment, diversity deficiency is an unavoidable phenomenon. In other words, the public is frequently only exposed to so-called “politically correct” information on online news media, with the government and platforms collaborating to direct and control public opinion. The government’s heavy-handed restriction of internet expression reflects the same inadequacy. For instance, the algorithm swiftly identifies and eliminates some speeches of users who criticise or complain about the current social environment. The online public conversation does not allow for different voices to develop. Minority groups and beatniks find it difficult to express themselves on the table; otherwise, their social media accounts risk being blocked or banned (de Kloet et al., 2019).
The result of government-controlled platforms is that the direction of public thought may all be slanted, like in the 2016 U.S. election, when Trump utilized the internet to distribute much fake news and earn support for the vote, indicating that information on the internet can be manipulated. The diversity of discourse on the internet would be diminished under these restrictions, resulting in a rise in the inequalities between various social status levels and a split between nations.
Conclusion
From the many views presented above, it is apparent that a lack of diversity hampers the growth of the Internet. Looking at the situation positively, we may see that society is more stable in this condition. Only converse with friends in their nearest vicinity or the same community circle, leading to each being in its own place without interfering with the other. However, it must be ignored that the social growth process will be prolonged, there will be less creativity, and government agencies will handle the channels of information reception. Groups that follow the mainstream media may be completely unaware of another niche group’s ideas, way of thinking, or even their existence. In plain English, the Internet’s lack of diversity has a negative effect on society and people.
Reference List
de Kloet, J., Poell, T., Guohua, Z., & Yiu Fai, C. (2019). The platformization of Chinese Society: infrastructure, governance, and practice. Chinese Journal Of Communication, 12(3), 249-256. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2019.1644008
Gillespie. (2018). Governance by and through Platforms. In Burgess & ProQuest (Firm) (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of social media (pp. 254–278). SAGE Publications.
Leiner, Cerf, V. G., Clark, D. D., Kahn, R. E., Kleinrock, L., Lynch, D. C., Postel, J., Roberts, L. G., & Wolff, S. (2009). A Brief History of the Internet. Computer Communication Review, 39(5), 22–31. https://doi.org/10.1145/1629607.1629613
Mansell, & Steinmueller, W. E. (2020). Economic Analysis of Platforms. In Mansell & W. E. Steinmueller, Advanced Introduction to Platform Economics (pp. 35–54).
Suzor, N. (2019). How Copyright Shaped the Internet. Lawless. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108666428.