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

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-... > Writing in the New Republic in 2014, Jonathan Zittrain, professor of international law at Harvard University, pointed out that, given the massive amount of information it has collected about its users, Facebook could easily send such messages only to people who support one particular party or candidate, and that doing so could easily flip a close election – with no one knowing that this has occurred. And because advertisements, like search rankings, are ephemeral, manipulating an election in this way would leave no paper trail. > ...another Facebook experiment, published in 2014 in PNAS, prompted protests around the world. In this study, for a period of a week, 689,000 Facebook users were sent news feeds that contained either an excess of positive terms, an excess of negative terms, or neither. Those in the first group subsequently used slightly more positive terms in their communications, while those in the second group used slightly more negative terms in their communications. This was said to show that people’s ‘emotional states’ could be deliberately manipulated on a massive scale by a social media company, an idea that many people found disturbing. People were also upset that a large-scale experiment on emotion had been conducted without the explicit consent of any of the participants.

peteretep 9y ago
> could being the operative word. Also from your article: > The formation of The > Groundwork prompted Julian > Assange, founder of > Wikileaks, to dub Google > Clinton’s ‘secret weapon’ in > her quest for the US > presidency. No conspiracy no conspiracy you're the conspiracy!
- 5trokerac3 9y ago
  I think you're operating on some cognitive dissonance here, because you're not addressing the second quote, which shows that Facebook has engaged in such experiments. Also, you show cognitive bias by instantly scrapping a multi-thousand word essay because of one paragraph mentioning someone you already have a preconceived opinion on.
  - peteretep 9y ago
    The thousand word essay that turns up absolutely no evidence of foul play or conspiracy by owners of social media, and instead hits insinuation pretty hard? Yes, I selectively quoted the most important bit.
  - 5trokerac3 9y ago
    > The thousand word essay that turns up absolutely no evidence of foul play or conspiracy by owners of social media The multi-thousand word essay that not only speaks of verifiable evidence from the author's own research proving the order or omission of search engine results heavily shape opinion, without detection, and: 1. Gives evidence from multiple other sources that Google's results are biased to support their business interests. 2. Calls upon a 50+ year precedent of corporations using all forms of media to manipulate opinion. 3. Recites the fact that two C-level Googlers straight up worked for Hillary Clinton. 4. Recites the fact that Google's search algorithm is a black box. All this on the heels of a revelation that Eric Schmidt (one of those two that worked for Clinton) is willing to flex his muscle in nefarious ways when people are critical of Google, and you'd have to be unbelievably naive to think that he's above using his technology along with his money.
DashRattlesnake 9y ago
>> Facebook could easily send such messages only to people who support one particular party or candidate, and that doing so could easily flip a close election – with no one knowing that this has occurred. And because advertisements, like search rankings, are ephemeral, manipulating an election in this way would leave no paper trail. I would be interesting if someone setup some kind of monitoring that might detect if that happens. They'd probably need the cooperation of many legitimate and diverse Facebook users, though.

peteretep 9y ago

> could being the operative word. Also from your article: > The formation of The > Groundwork prompted Julian > Assange, founder of > Wikileaks, to dub Google > Clinton’s ‘secret weapon’ in > her quest for the US > presidency. No conspiracy no conspiracy you're the conspiracy!

5trokerac3 9y ago
I think you're operating on some cognitive dissonance here, because you're not addressing the second quote, which shows that Facebook has engaged in such experiments. Also, you show cognitive bias by instantly scrapping a multi-thousand word essay because of one paragraph mentioning someone you already have a preconceived opinion on.
- peteretep 9y ago
  The thousand word essay that turns up absolutely no evidence of foul play or conspiracy by owners of social media, and instead hits insinuation pretty hard? Yes, I selectively quoted the most important bit.
- 5trokerac3 9y ago
  > The thousand word essay that turns up absolutely no evidence of foul play or conspiracy by owners of social media The multi-thousand word essay that not only speaks of verifiable evidence from the author's own research proving the order or omission of search engine results heavily shape opinion, without detection, and: 1. Gives evidence from multiple other sources that Google's results are biased to support their business interests. 2. Calls upon a 50+ year precedent of corporations using all forms of media to manipulate opinion. 3. Recites the fact that two C-level Googlers straight up worked for Hillary Clinton. 4. Recites the fact that Google's search algorithm is a black box. All this on the heels of a revelation that Eric Schmidt (one of those two that worked for Clinton) is willing to flex his muscle in nefarious ways when people are critical of Google, and you'd have to be unbelievably naive to think that he's above using his technology along with his money.

DashRattlesnake 9y ago

>> Facebook could easily send such messages only to people who support one particular party or candidate, and that doing so could easily flip a close election – with no one knowing that this has occurred. And because advertisements, like search rankings, are ephemeral, manipulating an election in this way would leave no paper trail. I would be interesting if someone setup some kind of monitoring that might detect if that happens. They'd probably need the cooperation of many legitimate and diverse Facebook users, though.