With the election behind us, now is the time to take stock of how social media influences us as individuals and as a world. When we use social media platforms, we (the users) are the product. Facebook, Twitter, and the rest are selling to advertisers access to each of us.

To that end, social media platforms are programmed to keep us engaged for as long as possible, with as much scrolling and as many ad views as possible. One of the methods for doing this is to keep us at odds with each other--and the better the conflict, the more people will pay attention (i.e., more views, retweets, etc.).

Thankfully, there is a way to combat this: It's called Sentiment Analysis. Sentiment analysis is a software algorithm that gauges how happy or sad you are based on what you view, read, and post--and whether your social media posts will have a positive/happy or negative/sad impact on your connections and followers. These tools are already in place within the social media giants.

What if this information was made available to everyone? What if you were told the collective effect on the positivity of social media your post would have before you click the "Post" or "Tweet" button? What if you could compare the sentiment of your city, state, and country to how it was last week or last year, or to other places around the world? What if we could even save lives? Might we think twice before hitting "Post"? Might we even go out of our way to have a more positive impact on social media and the entire world?

I think we would! And, that is why I'm asking you to join me by signing this petition.

In no uncertain terms, by signing this petition, together we are asking the social media giants (especially Facebook and Twitter) to prominently post on our feeds the collective sentiment of our society as well as our immediate social network--and to be made able to privately view the sentiment results of our own posts/tweets.