The problem is not so much targeting of adverts it’s a combination of:
Bots/ people paid to create a perception of what is commonly held view or stance. Creating a momentum that shifts real perceptions.
China/ Russia using it as tool to undermine countries
No standards or little standards, unlike traditional media you can overtly smear, lie and manipulate without consequences.
Little of no records. Be it the adverts themselves or the amount of money funneled into such advertising. Election fraud is something IMO has happened.
Level of profiling without consent. It’s not just leaning left or right or I like chocolate or beer. It’s physcogenic profiles, it’s matching your records to spending habits and location. It’s collecting data which could be used against you. Be it insurance companies, police, or government.
No adverts, no data processing, ability to view and delete all your information/content created. We are what we say on the tin. A bunch of blokes who set up this site for fellow fans.
Active decisions not to host in the US or China and instead host in country that protects privacy.
A community where different views are encouraged and debated. Rather than an echo chamber.
You may be a clever person and you might be more savvy than the rest of us but, if as i suspect, you have a human brain, you (we) are really no match for the power of the social media platforms (if you use them) that play you like a toy while all the while make you think that you are on the right side of everything.
I vividly remember reading car mags and camera mags years ago. They were always worded and reviewed so that you just knew you couldn’t be happy unless you had the GTI or the XS or whatever variant. On the next page was always an advert for that car / camera and numbers for suppliers. Same trick, same method, different platform. To think this hasn’t been going on for years is crackers.
It isn’t just the advertising. People have already told you this. Although I think a platform that can analyse your emotional state and tailor their ads to prey on your specific vulnerabilities, and then push ads at you that you don’t even know are ads, is a bit different.
The bigger problem with Facebook is that the AI algorithms it uses have the sole intention of keeping you on the site for as much time as possible, and if this means sending you off down fake news and conspiracy rabbitholes then so be it.
Social Media is the biggest reason why we’ve just had four years of President Trump, and the reason why America is in such a state with attempted coups, insurrections, and the like.
Too many people are using social media as their only news source, a state of affairs that social media is actively encouraging. People don’t become lunatics for no reason.
I always love the condescending “people have told you this” line. As if everything that somebody posts here in response to me is perfectly accurate.
If you goto social media for news, you’re a fool. If you go to the Times, your a tory. Guardian socialist. We have both argued about our opinions of the BBC. Possibly means it’s well balanced though (if ridiculously left biased )
The AI might be designed to keep you hooked. Why do magazines have lovely pictures? Why did red tops used to have tits? It’s not a new concept to keep the reader hooked into whatever you’re selling as ultimately, that’s what powers the internet. Different way of doing it but using similar methods. As I explained earlier to you, TV advertising is targeted on local demographics, always has been. Now it’s AI driven but the concept is still the same.
You’ll also note that the only news source I ever link on here is from the BBC in the transfer rumours thread (granted gathered from a variety of sources) so that’s my news outlet.
Even funnier, my youtube stream is now populated with social media doom videos
Regarding your last line, people have been lunatics since the birth of human kind. It’s not a recent event, nothing really ever is. Social media may have it’s problems but the worst human atrocities (hopefully) are behind us and were very well organised way before MSN messenger and that was 30 years ago. Nazi Germany was not established on Twitter. Pretty much the worst mass mind warp and lunatic thing in history I’m sure you’ll agree.
Anyway, should we concentrate on what actually Liverpools us (like what I did there?) today and get ready to celebrate Bruno missing both his penalties?
As I’ve said previously Social media is the natural extension of papers and magazines etc. And by extension it’s worse, more addictive (like computer games) and far more targeted. It’s also far more accessible.
Therefore it’s far more dangerous as shown by something like 70m Americans.
Seriously guys, is there not a social media thread? I know it’s relevant in a way, but it’s more of a global issue, isn’t it?
It’s hardly earth shattering to suggest that Trumpism has been aided and abetted by social media. The very algorithms that send you ads catering to your tastes also send you political links catering to your taste, so you end up reading stuff from one perspective. Yes, intelligent people try to vary their news sources, but the majority don’t take the trouble. We enjoy seeing stuff we agree with and therein lies the problem. Trumpists want to believe the election was a fraud, it makes them feel better, just like some of our fans want to believe that all refs are against us.
There we go, so easy to stray off topic.
Anyways, the US political landscape is in a world of bother.
I first met Ms. Gilbert in 2019, a few months after she had gotten seriously into QAnon. Friendly and soft-spoken, she explained that Hollywood elites conducted Illuminati blood rituals behind closed doors, that former Representative Anthony Weiner’s laptop contained a video of Hillary Clinton committing murder, and that photos from a recent meeting between Mr. Trump and Queen Elizabeth II proved that he had secretly dethroned her.
…
Ms. Gilbert’s path to QAnon began in 2016 when WikiLeaks posted a trove of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. Shortly after, she started seeing posts on social media about something called #Pizzagate. She had dabbled in conspiracy theories before, but Pizzagate — which falsely posited that powerful Democrats were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza parlor, and that all of this was detailed in code in the Clinton emails — blew her mind. If it was true, she thought, it would connect all of her suspicions about elites, and explain the horrible truths they had been covering up.
“The world opened up in Technicolor for me,” she said. “It was like the Matrix — everything just started to download.”
Pizzagate primed Ms. Gilbert for QAnon, which she discovered through the YouTube videos of a British psychic. It quickly took over her life, and yanked her politics sharply to the right. Seemingly overnight, her Facebook feed switched from Change.org petitions and cute animal photos to Gateway Pundit links and “Killary Clinton” memes.
Interesting point, this lunatic went to the Dalton School and Harvard (she was also on the far-left for a while). She literally had as good a chance as anybody on the planet of developing some critical thinking skills.
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