Social media platforms sell your personal data to advertisers and political parties, who can use it to influence or even manipulate you. An ongoing exploration of how the relatively new technique of microtargeting is used to change people's behavior and opinions.
A great post! One thing to bear in mind is that just as Meta has a financial interest in inflating their ability to influence, Signal (as well as other privacy-selling companies like most VPN companies) has a financial interest in convincing us of the danger of data harvesting. Now, from what we can tell there *is* a lot of data harvesting, so they're not lying, or even misleading to any substantial extent (probably).
You see this in VPN advertising - so, so many are hyping up their privacy-protection as a primary selling point to 'defeat tracking' (when the actual facts are, so far as I can understand, a bit more mixed). So I wonder how much this is happening in other areas. Apple *definitely* rides this train, and while they are (probably) better than Samsung, they're not as good as they claim. What about Brave? They have a vested interest in me viewing things a certain way. And so on, and so forth.
Again, I'm not saying these companies are necessarily lying, and often we can test their claims empirically. But it's a lot easier to make a claim and perpetuate it than to debunk it, especially if it's not *false* as such, just a matter of emphasis and shading, or hard to empirically detect (like browser fingerprinting).
Interestingly, the recent ousting of the Harvard University president, Claudine Gay, was openly discussed by the people pushing for it - with a description of how to "squeeze" sentiment to get a desired outcome.
I found those three blue boxes very informative.
A great post! One thing to bear in mind is that just as Meta has a financial interest in inflating their ability to influence, Signal (as well as other privacy-selling companies like most VPN companies) has a financial interest in convincing us of the danger of data harvesting. Now, from what we can tell there *is* a lot of data harvesting, so they're not lying, or even misleading to any substantial extent (probably).
You see this in VPN advertising - so, so many are hyping up their privacy-protection as a primary selling point to 'defeat tracking' (when the actual facts are, so far as I can understand, a bit more mixed). So I wonder how much this is happening in other areas. Apple *definitely* rides this train, and while they are (probably) better than Samsung, they're not as good as they claim. What about Brave? They have a vested interest in me viewing things a certain way. And so on, and so forth.
Again, I'm not saying these companies are necessarily lying, and often we can test their claims empirically. But it's a lot easier to make a claim and perpetuate it than to debunk it, especially if it's not *false* as such, just a matter of emphasis and shading, or hard to empirically detect (like browser fingerprinting).
Interesting... I think I'm throwing the folks off at Meta sometimes with my mix of activism and cat lovers postings. LOL!!
Interestingly, the recent ousting of the Harvard University president, Claudine Gay, was openly discussed by the people pushing for it - with a description of how to "squeeze" sentiment to get a desired outcome.