2024届高考英语外刊阅读天天练：综合训练二十五

高考英语外刊阅读天天练 综合训练二十五 I．阅读理解 The end of the social network 【The Economist (February 3, 2024)】 Facebook may be turning 20 on February 4th, but it is just as much of a magnet for controversy and cash today as when it was a bash, break-everything teenager. Yet even as social media reliably draw vast amounts of attention from addicts and critics alike, they are undergoing a profound but little-noticed transformation. The striking feature of the new social media is that they are no longer very social. Inspired by TikTok, apps like Facebook increasingly serve a diet of clips selected by artificial intelligence according to a user's viewing behavior, not their social connections. Meanwhile, people are posting less. The share of Americans who say they enjoy documenting their life online has fallen from 40% to 28% since 2020. Debate is moving to closed platforms, such as WhatsApp and Telegram. In the hyperactive half of social media, behavior-based algorithms will bring you posts from beyond your community. Social networks can still act as "echo chambers" of self-reinforcing material. But a feed that takes content from anywhere at least has the potential to spread the best ideas farthest. Yet this new world of social-media brings its own problems. Messaging apps are largely unmoderated. For small groups, that is good: platforms should no more police direct messages than phone companies should monitor calls. In dictatorships encrypted chats save lives. But Telegram's groups of 200,000 are more like unregulated broadcasts than conversations. Politicians in India have used WhatsApp to spread lies that would surely have been removed from an open network like Facebook. What's more, the open-network algorithms driven by users' behavior seem primed to spread the spiciest videos. For something to go viral on a social network, people had to choose to share it. Now they endorse it simply by watching, as the algorithm rewards content that attracts the most engagement. Deliberate cura