Someone sent me a link to this article about how Google can influence an election and I found it to be a little frightening. We are all so connected to our devices these days, that I think we forget that the constant stream of information coming at us can affect the way we think about things without us even realizing it. I know for a fact that Facebook has done social experimentation on its members. They admitted as much in 2012 when they altered the feeds of 700,000 member to see their reactions to a variety or negative posts. (Facebook's Not-so-secret Mood Manipulation Experiment ).
I've also heard rumblings about the"gay marriage rainbow profile filter" app that was made available to Facebook users following the Supreme Court's decision to uphold gay marriage. Rumor has it those were a social experiment too. I've read various reports that never definitively corroborate or disprove that it was, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were true. Can you imagine what an immensely powerful tool that would be to have access to the thoughts and feelings of a wide and varied range of the population? Old, young, conservative, liberal, crunchy, hipster, religious, atheist, ethnic, white...they're all represented on Facebook.
To be fair, marketers and politicians have always tried to figure out which ways work best to sway us, so none of this is really new. There have always been polls and surveys and even controversial social experimentation, like the Obedience Experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram, but I think there's a fine line between trying to figure out what makes humans tick so you can learn about human nature either for purely academic reasons or to hopefully persuade them to choose something, and controlling people with manipulation. Some of this stuff just plays out to me a little bit too much like some of the dystopian literature I've read (Fahrenheit 451, A Handmaid's Tale, Nineteen Eighty-Four etc). What are your thoughts? Do you think the "powers that be" are using our Internet activity to manipulate and control us (or at least working hard to figure out how to do so)? If so, what can one do to counter it?
PS: I promise I was not wearing a foil-hat while writing this. :)
