Platform and its participants

Social media was never as popular as nowadays, billions of people are playing around on social media platforms, from Weibo, WeChat in China to Facebook, YouTube in Europe, the US and many other countries. People are publishing their own contents on these social media platforms and trying to make themselves famous (or even infamous) on social networks.

The individuals who have significant numbers of subscriptions, so-called influencers, are the main content contributors on YouTube that they get over 80% of a total 1.7bn views on YouTube; while the influencers also get over 50% of a total 966m views on Facebook. According to Google, the parent company of YouTube, the number of channels making more than $100000 a year has increased by 40% year on year. Meanwhile, because these "unauthoritative" contents could mislead the public opinion, some social media networks are forced to remove inappropriate contents and be more responsible for promoting correct information. Facebook, Apple and YouTube have removed Alex Jones' videos and podcasts, and YouTube plans to invest $25m to give more weight to "authoritative" news in order to curb fake news.

These social media platforms are making lots of money from these individual content providers, but meanwhile the credibility is being damaged by inappropriate contents that even Isis uses some social networks to publish its recruiting advertise. A balance needs to be drawn between popularity and appropriate contents.