Yeah. A lot of people have felt that using social media is a...




Yeah. A lot of people have felt that using social media is a way to
organize for mutual betterment, whether it’s a social justice movement
or other things. You’re absolutely correct: in the immediate sense their
experience of that is authentic. I think they’re reporting on real
events. The problem, however, is that behind the scenes there are these
manipulation, behavior modification, and addiction algorithms that are
running. And these addiction algorithms are blind. They’re just dumb
algorithms. What they want to do is take whatever input people put into
the system and find a way to turn it into the most engagement possible.
And the most engagement comes from the startle emotions, like fear and
anger and jealousy, because they tend to rise the fastest and then
subside the slowest in people, and the algorithms are measuring people
very rapidly, so they tend to pick up and amplify startle emotions over
slower emotions like the building of trust or affection.


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Published on October 12, 2018 01:49
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