We value authenticity because it has a deep connection to the way humans use social connections to manage our vulnerability and to protect ourselves from things that threaten us. When we form connections, it is like all our respective vulnerabilities get entangled and tied together.

Thus, when designers of social media systems make decisions about how data will be saved and what constraints will be put on the data, they are making decisions about who will get a better experience. Based on these decisions, some people will fit naturally into the data system, while others will have to put in extra work to make themselves fit, and others will have to modify themselves or misrepresent themselves to fit into the system.

So, there was a simplification here. In this example, I decided that each of these would count as “1 apple.” This way of looking at things might not work well in some situations:

Though we might consider these to be run by “human computers” who are following the instructions given to them, such as in a click farm:

In 2016, Microsft launched a Twitter bot that was intended to learn to speak from other Twitter users and have conversations. Twitter users quickly started tweeting racist comments at Tay, which Tay learned from and started tweeting out within one day.

There is no clear single definition for what counts as social media. John Hartley points out that you could consider almost all of culture as “social media.”