Comment by designdesign | Hacker News Reader

Comment by designdesign | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

ISPs and telecoms are dangerous due to their level of control, but are significantly worse at using their data to influence the way you think. I strongly believe that the current political climate would be significantly more tepid if not for Facebook and YouTube alone... the scale is so hard to comprehend.

On the surface social media looks completely benign, but they have these far reaching insidious impacts. Our elected representatives don't even have a basic understanding of how these sites operate... yet you have the majority of the population being fed content by these algorithms that determine what you see when, and they're completely opaque. They've got scores of analysts and psychologists shaping this stuff full-time... no single entity in human history has had this level of data and reach into human behavior, and it's all proprietary.

Small intentional changes over time to such wide-reaching algorithms can literally shape humanity in ways that may be entirely impossible for an outsider to detect.

But you're aware of this, so the algorithm is obsolete for influencing you.

You have adapted. With time, most of us will.

That's not true at all! We have little idea how or why it influences us outside of the basics (sell ads, make money).

People are looking at these feeds, often daily, for a significant amount of time. We don't know if it's intentionally showing us more of our racist uncle's posts because we buy things when we're angry, for example... and that's just one small example in a vast sea.

We can't adapt because there are far too many unseen factors to be aware of. And I'll say it again... most people do not understand that every post on these networks is being fed through a biased algorithm. I've seen large numbers of developers on this site agree that Facebook should remain neutral when it comes to certain ads/posts, without acknowledging that neutrality has been gone from every post on Facebook for years and years at this point.

They know who you are, where you are, who you're with, and what you do. Data that spans billions of people. For people with Facebook on their phones they can essentially track your behavior 24/7 and have been doing so for years. This type of unseen influence could be dangerous even in benevolent hands.

I have not adapted because I don't know what to adapt to. I've just removed myself from the environment as completely as I can.

To assuage your concerns, here's a start:

* delete FB and Insta accounts

* delete FB and Insta from your devices

* use Google search for stuff your ok with Google knowing; all else, use duckduckgo

* worry more about yourself, less about others

This is what I did.

Agree 100%, I've done the same things.

Add some ad blockers to the mix too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com