Facebook’s Hyperpartisan Political-Media Machine (2016)
we need to realize that social media experts have basically discovered a new form of addictive drug that is based on ideas instead of on a physical substance. &quot;if it bleeds, it leads&quot;, but industrialized and backed by big data, in the way that cocaine was an industrial-revolution optimization of relatively benign coca leaves. there are people who literally cannot take their eyes of this stuff, constantly looking for the next &#x27;high&#x27; of outrage. righteous anger in meme form has some kind of addictive force beyond what we have seen before on a scale that can manipulate mass audiences in a way that propagandists of the old times would never have been able to dream of.<p>we should be worried the last three presidents were all elected by the team with the best data operation.<p>it has infiltrated the communication you have with your family members - never before in human history was your interaction with your own family and friends mediated through a for profit corporation whose interest it was to make you share memes.<p>i dont know if i am ahead of things but as someone who was on the internet since 1996... i deleted my facebook account years ago. i deleted my twitter this past year. i am close to deleting google.<p>i pay money to certain sites that i value, and patreon creators. my money goes to people who make stuff, and they make stuff i like without trying to manipulate me with some kind of weaponized big data political campaign.  the free internet is almost become an unusable pile of shit.<p>i feel like there is this nugget of people leaving behind the &#x27;standard internet&#x27; for these new little bubble enclaves where we cannot be assaulted with never ending streams of .... garbage. i dont know the name for it...<p>we need a name for it. its something like a drug, but crossed with a meme. it is a virus but one that you voluntarily re-infect yourself with every time you log on to some platform like facebook.<p>its like addiction but without the physical component. 
its a dysfunctional manipulative relationship but one side
is a data center and a bunch of algorithms.<p>its like a toxic person but that person is a platform that
you log in to every day to try to connect with people
who are not toxic. its like you cannot get away from the toxicity anymore<p>its like if there was ubiquitous angry talk radio that you could never escape. its there in your pocket all the time
waiting to get you angry about something or other.<p>its almost like the internet is turning people into psychotics... except they really do hear little voices in their heads all day long telling them how terrible the world is. because that is what is really actually happening.<p>its like renting your brain out to a corporation, for free, so that you can plug into some pseudo community that exists only to generate profit.<p>these things all come through some kind of &#x27;feed&#x27;, which is designed to trigger the release of brain chemicals that in a feedback loop cause you to consume more of the feed.<p>the feed is designed by an algorithm and big data. you are like the squirrel in the psychology experiment, except of pushing the lever to get more nuts, you push the lever to get another hit of the chemicals that are released when you have a nother righteous anger story in your feed.<p>they used to call blackberry &#x27;crackberry&#x27;.<p>maybe they are more like drug dealers. anger dealers.<p>or virus spreaders. they spread the viruses and re-infect people even as they try to get away.<p>maybe they are the reservoirs of the virus....<p>their only purpose is to grow. 
using your brain. your mind that is.<p>maybe they are , essentially,<p>mind cancer.