No news is good news
The internet and social media might be the most insidious inventions of all time.
They are not inherently evil, as an inanimate object cannot be good or evil, but Artificial Intelligence has already reached into your life and has it’s tentacles deep inside your brain. And you asked for it. You begged for it. You paid for the privilege.
Have you ever noticed that if you do a Google search for something that interests you, let’s say Left Handed Widgets, that shortly after, an ad for those same widgets now shows up on your homepage? This is an example of Artificial Intelligence learning about you and your interests. Complicated algorithms that study what you search for, what you click on and what you read. It studies how long to look at anything in particular. If you look at the same type of things, it stores data to formulate a “picture” of who you are and what you like. The longer or often you look at something, the more it knows that you are interested. Every time you click on anything, the system learns more about you.
This was neither designed nor intended as a Big Brother kind of thing; the computers tracking you don’t care one way or the other about your politics, sexual proclivities, race, gender or lifestyle. It is simply a way to track you so that advertisers can target a specific audience. It’s all about the money. As the algorithms learn more and more about you, the system won’t bother to expose you to things it determines are not pleasing to you, but it will target you for those things that do.
In some ways, I really like this. When I’m researching a new motorcycle or information about my dog’s health, the internet and search engines learn and then respond by making adjustments so that this information is front and center, and I waste less time. I know exactly what I’m looking for, and so does my computer.
Here’s what’s so insidious about it. If you call a friend and ask him to go to MSN for example, what he sees on his screen is NOT the same thing you see on yours. Each of your computers has been tracking you and knows many things about you, so what we see has been custom built for each of us. And when our friends and families share something that interested them, instead of fact-checking it, they pass it along to you and me. There is no guarantee that the content to which you and I are exposed is in any way true, so lies and misinformation spread like wildfire.
The real problem is news and current events. If you are a Trump hater for instance, the system soon learns that, and the content on your screen will soon become heavily anti-Trump. If you dislike President Biden the same is true. Before long, you are being bombarded with similarly themed articles that only serve to strengthen your confirmation bias. News programs are seldom news anymore. They are opinion platforms, where one-sided hosts spread disinformation disguised as news. There was a time decades ago when one watched the news to get information and then formed an opinion. Now we are given opinions and it is up to us to find the information. Most people don’t understand this and simply take what is being force fed them as gospel.
The internet system is programming you by exposing you to more and more of the same type of content, because that’s what you wanted. You will be exposed to content and advertisers who have targeted you for your money. Again, it’s all about the money.
Social media platforms are giant money printing machines, reaping ungodly profits by mining their users’ data, and they are tearing our nation and world apart. Conspiracy theories, fake news, and malicious trolling have polarized populations across the globe.
Without realizing it, by joining social media platforms, you have just allowed a highly skilled propagandist into your home and mind. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Fox News, MSN, CNN or any other platform. The system will keep feeding you what you asked for and before long, without being exposed to both sides of any issue, your mind has been made up for you. It’s just like the story your mother told you about your goldfish. You couldn’t give it all the food it wanted, because it would eat itself to death.
All of us of a certain age remember the book entitled 1984. We were and are afraid of Big Brother and what we perceive as his scheming nefarious plot to control our lives. Forget Big Brother. Each of us has given away all of our secrets. We have willingly provided our smart phones and computers with every kind of permission and information about our personal lives.
For some time it was just advertisers that took advantage of our willingness to expose ourselves. And now it’s too late. We have given away the farm; exposed our hidden secrets and revealed everything about ourselves. There is no going back.
Bad actors have been using Social Media to sow the seeds of discontent. All Americans are aware of how polarized our society has become. Welcome to the new normal, where malcontents and evil doers manipulate social media to widen our society’s gaping fractures. Most, if not all of the articles and news feeds you follow were designed to control you.
The problems and societal discontent nurtured and fed by social media is out of control, and we’ve all seen it spill onto our streets in the form of violent protest and anarchical behavior. Social media is a cancer spreading like an octopus across the globe, and is much more dangerous than anything presently facing us. Just like cancer and it’s insidious spread, the only way to survive is to kill it before it kills you.
The social media platforms have no intention of changing. It’s just too profitable. If he government cannot control social media, each and every one us should do our part by disconnecting from every one of these platforms. Our computers have taken the place of normal human interaction. We no longer compromise or talk with each other.
Think of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others as huge mining corporations, motivated by profit and corporate greed who care nothing about the environment. The ore they are so busily extracting is our information and they will not quit until the land is barren, or they are forced by regulation to care.
It is time to put some restrictions on Social Media if they won’t control themselves.