Social media access to user data (whether foreign or domestic) is bad, but it is a distraction from the real evil: behavioral management at scale. When you can target specific demographics and control what they see 8-10 hours of the day, you can change what they think, say, do, and most importantly, how they vote. People are literally being programmed (euphemistically, "conditioned") by the specific triggers and stim…
> When you can target specific demographics > control what they see > People are literally being programmed [...] by the specific triggers I hate marketing/PR as much as the next person, but have become part of daily life. How do we get rid of it? Outlaw the practice of trying to influence people by marketing? Edit: Rereading your comment I realize you're talking about something else, but I guess the same applies non…
Can you get rid of it? No. Doing so would result in the loss of many important rights and have unintended consequences. Not even China can get rid of this. BUT that doesn't mean you can't put regulations and limitations on them.
As one example, we may want to make laws that ensure that ads are easily recognizable as ads. I'm referencing Native Advertising. I want to use an example from the NYT[0] that is marked, to give an example of how nefarious this can actually be. The article itself only mentions the show once, in the middle, and mostly discusses women's lives in prison. It would not be surprising to believe that this is not an ad but actually a news story. It is both, but that's why it is nefarious. Is this ad easily recognizable? Even with the notice?
We can talk about dark patterns (native advertising might be one), and prevent many of them. Not allowing for bait and switches. Ensuring that options are easily conveyed. I don't think it matters which side of the political spectrum you're on or many of your philosophical ideals, but tricking people into buying things they don't want or need is not ethical. We live in a specialized world and one person can't be an expert in everything. If the game is supercomputers and teams of psychologists and lawyers against individuals then I think we all know this is an unfair game. We have to talk about how to level this playing field if we want to preserve individual freedoms and safety.
So I know this doesn't really answer your question, and the truth is that I don't have a good answer. I think the topic itself is surprisingly complicated and we need to think carefully about it. The path we're going down clearly isn't acceptable to most people. But overreacting will also be similarly bad. We need to have a tough social conversation and figure out what we want together. We have to learn, a lot, because this is nuanced. We have to be open to being wrong, with a focus on learning and improving rather than asserting our positions (because they are all wrong in some form or another). Which that might be the hardest thing of all, but if we can do this then we can solve a lot more problems. Maybe this is the great filter?
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/netflix/women-inmates-separ...