intense indoctrination
intense indoctrination
The same large numbers that makes A/B testing and "growth hacking" so effective for a marketing message can be learned and automatically applied here on a scale that dwarfs even Google.
All of the messages between people on Facebook in a country? In the US, I'm sure it's probably 80%+ of the American electorate at this point. Just subtle suppression of a few stories is enough. Even manipulating trending topics might be enough to have a statistical effect. Facebook was researching emotional effects as far back as 2012 and they never said that they stopped nor did they close that part of the company.
With Facebook it's not if, it's how much manipulation is going on. Not just in America but, around most of the Western world.
Exactly this.
A 4,900-word essay by Robert Epstein (formerly editor in chief of _Psychology Today_, take that however you may) entitled "How the Internet Flips Elections and Alters our Thoughts" discusses a number of studies that show merely listing search results has the effect of shaping the opinion of undecided people. [0] Furthermore, such suasion seems to increase rather than diminish when subjects are aware of such manipulation.
Epstein writes
>We have also learned something very disturbing – that search engines are influencing far more than what people buy and whom they vote for. We now have evidence suggesting that on virtually all issues where people are initially undecided, search rankings are impacting almost every decision that people make. They are having an impact on the opinions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of internet users worldwide – entirely without people’s knowledge that this is occurring. This is happening with or without deliberate intervention by company officials; even so-called ‘organic’ search processes regularly generate search results that favour one point of view, and that in turn has the potential to tip the opinions of millions of people who are undecided on an issue. In one of our recent experiments, biased search results shifted people’s opinions about the value of fracking by 33.9 per cent.
So, the point is not whether the indoctrination is intense or even intentional. Merely showing items in a list of search results has the effect of shaping the opinion of people who have not yet formed an opinion.
Given that Facebook curates what appears in each user's feed and the fact that many people receive much of their news only from social media [1], it would be prudent for democracies to carefully consider what kinds of disclosures, disclaimers, and/or disallowances social media companies should be subject to given that in the 21st century such private corporations occupy an unprecedented position in informing the public, regardless of intention.
[0] https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-...
[1] http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/07/new-pew-data-more-americans...
EDIT: Provide 2nd link; grammar
intense indoctrination requires that it be done through the internet, via an optional social media service.
Owning a car is 'optional' in the same sense. In that in many places in the U.S it isn't optional, unless you're self-employed. Otherwise, you're going to be unemployed. There is a large trade off for making the choice.
Any people who willingly opt out of social media (especially Facebook) risk alienating themselves from friends and family entirely. Seen as "weird" for opting out of having a FB/refusing to use it entirely. Even weirder if you cite "privacy concerns" as your reasoning for not having it.
There is far too much social pressure for most people to put up with not having one. Unless they already lead healthy social lives or are socially reclusive enough that social pressure is lost entirely on them.
Source: Living life without Facebook
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/10/16/survey-finds-teens-pr...
Either way, my broader point was "social media being 'optional' doesn't really mean it is 'optional'". You can opt out - but there is a tradeoff that not everyone is willing to make.
As for indoctrination - I'm far more concerned with 18-25 year olds who have the ability to vote being indoctrinated into a certain mindset than 13-17 year olds. (E: You know what, on a second visit to my post both are equally bad as the 13-17 will be able to vote "soon" too.)
ps: Twitter has a similar issue. They suppress and attempt to censor trending hashtags (preventing them from autocompleting) that go against their political standings.