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I’ve often thought about this too, I think the printing press is a similar time to examine as well [1]. I do think the internet provides an entirely new scale,

• hef19898 6y ago
  Yeah, scale and speed are maybe the worst part compared to other periods of the past. Ways to manipulate the masses have always made some extremely powerful. Religion and church in medieval Europe for example. Ultimately, we will figure it out. We found ways to cope, as societies, with mass media, radio, TV and so on. We will with social media as well. I'm just a tad worried about the way we have to pass to figure it out and what might go horribly wrong along that way. EDIT: They lost me a little bit on the AI scare part. Up to now, we talking about ultra-complex algorithms. The kind of algorithms that screwed up Wall Street. Hard to understand, sure. But still "stupid" algorithms. Difference between Wall Street and Social Media? Wall Street has a public, closely monitored, public real time KPI to measure, indirectly, what the algorithms do. Social Media has no such thing. Oh, and we should read up on Goebbels theories on propaganda. The principles still apply, just the scale is so much bigger. The algorithms have no intentions yet. People using these algorithms do. And we have to find a way, as societies, to cope with that.