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the information that companies collect without your knowledge or approval is known as a passive digital footprint.
            Third-party cookies or tracking scripts that track users' activities online are often used for collecting digital footprints.
            Your digital footprints may be stored in databases specific to the search engines, apps, and social media platforms, as
 Unit IV: Societal Impacts
            well as public databases.

            8.2 Social Networks

            In this age of digitization, people have found many ways to communicate with each other online. Such interactions
            often lead to the formation of social, economic, and political networks, called social networks. Users of social networks
            exchange information, pictures, and videos with each other to stay connected with friends, search for job opportunities,
            or promote their businesses.
            8.2.1 Common Social Networking Platforms

            In the past few years, a number of social networking sites and apps have become popular. For example, X, LinkedIn,
            Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
            1.  Facebook: It is one of the most commonly used platforms that enable friends and like-minded
               people to network. Usage of Facebook is free of cost. After creating an account, the users can chat
               with each other, upload their pictures, post live stories of their life events, create their page, express
               their views, create a new group or join an existing group and follow people/pages of interest. Using
               the Like button, the users can express their appreciation. Recently Facerbook has allowed users to
               express more emotions such as wow, love it, and angry. Facebook also analyses the users' activity data to come up
               with recommendations for its users. For example, Facebook prompts the users to add more friends depending on
               their interactions on Facebook.

            2.  YouTube: YouTube is a common platform for sharing videos and audios. As millions of audio and videos are available
               on YouTube, free of charge, it has become a great source of entertainment and resource sharing.  Further, as a large
               number of academicians have posted several videos of their courses, it has become a great learning platform too.
               YouTube has a 4-point policy with four 'R's:
               •  Remove the content that violates its policies.

               •  Reduce the speed of harmful misinformation.
               •  Raise the authoritative sources for news.
               •  Reward trusted creators and artists.
               Users of YouTube can create their channels. A YouTube channel helps to know what's in the news and is trending
               globally. The free version of YouTube includes some advertisements while watching a video or listening to audio.
               However,  you  may  enjoy  an  ad-free  service  on  YouTube  by  paying  a  small  subscription.  Users  can  post  their
               comments on videos unless specifically prohibited by the creator of the video.


                   Tagging is done to get someone's attention on social media. It notifies the person who is tagged. When you tag a
                   person, you use the '@' symbol.
                   Hashtags on YouTube are words or phrases that are added to the titles and descriptions of videos to indicate the
                   subject matter or classification of the video. When you use a hashtag, you use the '#' symbol.  Hashtags can increase
                   a video's discoverability on the site. A hashtag links you to postings with the same hashtag when you click on it.


            3.  X (Formerly Twitter): X is a social networking platform where people communicate through short messages
               called tweets. Tweets are now called posts and retweets are now called reposts. The size of the post is limited to
               10000 characters. A post posted by a user not sure about this one as X now has 2 options 'For You' and 'Following'
               so in 'For You' any random tweet appears who have agreed to receive the sender's messages.



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