> People have plenty control over what content they see (via follows, blocks, hides, downvotes etc) Ehh… I'd argue those tools provide an illusory and superfic

> People have plenty control over what content they see (via follows, blocks, hides, downvotes etc) Ehh… I'd argue those tools provide an illusory and superficial level of control. Follows and similar… Don't really work these days from what I hear, and blocks, etc. are specific to individual pieces of content. The algorithmic feeds are still working away, and tilt the entire range of content that users are exposed to. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-po... E.G. Do most (2018) Youtube users even know that the platform is constantly and actively (if inadvertently) trying to radicalize them? Or do they just assume they see the same things as most other people, not think about it too much, let it fade into the background, and accept it as normal? Hard to have choice and agency when you're not even aware of the ways that the much larger and more powerful entity is trying to manipulate you. We evolved to generally think that what we see is a representative sample of what actually is. When instead what we see is a constantly shifting funhouse designed to maximize clicks and ads by profiling us individually, the information asymmetry between the platforms pushing the "content" and the users consuming it makes it hard for me to believe that users even meaningfully consented to the situation, much less "have plenty control over" it.