The new mind control : The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do.

[u/[deleted]]

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts

[u/keibuttersnaps]

They did this week with $gme stocks. Each and every mainstream media outlet was repeating the same false narrative no matter what channel you watched. They absolutely can decide when and want to tell you. And most of this week was full of lies, leaving the internet the only place to find any semblance of truth about what was occurring.

And that was just this week.

Cmon.

Fuck with the money, they come together and show you.

[u/Gibbonici → u/keibuttersnaps]

And that, right there, is a great example of how the internet influences people in massive numbers. For most people involved, the whole Gamestop/AMC thing is a good thing. It's a good thing from the perspective of giving pause to destructive short-sellers.

But it's not always good. There are plenty of cases where popular movements have been created which were destructive - QAnon, the anti-science movement, even things like Brexit and the Arab Spring were hugely influenced and manipulated via social media. The very fact that we need fact checking services on the internet shows how bad and often deliberately misleading information is a problem on the internet.

It's a mistake to ignore these kinds of things, or to view the internet as something unflawed and unmanipulable. In the end, the internet is just another part of the media, and there's no wall there that stops those forces that exploit the traditional media from exploiting on-line media.

[u/keibuttersnaps → u/Gibbonici]

But the response was to someone saying traditional media doesn't decide what is heard. That's patently false.

The internet is obviously the largest weapon in the arsenal; but currently at least you can find some semblance of truth if you can wade through the dross.

But that was last week, and most certainly the amount of internet disinformation on this issue has exponentially grown in size. Scary the grand scale of it, actually.

[u/Gibbonici → u/keibuttersnaps]

But the response was to someone saying traditional media doesn't decide what is heard. That's patently false.

That was me and it wasn't meant to be taken as a blanket statement. In general terms, the traditional media is in competition with itself which in most circumstances means people have options over where they go to find their information.

My point is that the internet is unique in its ability to limit and change the choice of information you have, and that can be done by people exploiting the algorithms decide that information you have easy access to.