Disinformation at our fingertips
I have written and talked about the problems with social media platforms for the past two years. There currently is a bipartisan lawsuit by 33 states including Idaho that has brought these social media propaganda machines back into the spotlight. This is the first foray for parents to recognize that these platforms do have an influence on our children. Most Americans don’t understand that when you use social media it is not for free. The price you are paying allows these platforms to gather information on you that they later sell to third parties. From the information they gather on these platforms, they can deduce if you’re liberal or conservative, what colors you like, where you shop and so much more.
If you ask the average American if they understand this most will give you a blank stare. We must understand that these platforms don’t just gather your information. They are now alleged to be targeting children who are much more susceptible to suggestions made on these platforms. There is no reason why the information they gather couldn’t be used to groom our children or even used as a recruiting tool for certain nefarious organizations. This lawsuit alleges that Meta knew children used its platforms and the company knowingly collected data from them without parental consent. This investigation started in 2021 over concerns about social media platforms and the features that allegedly harm children and young adults. This investigation also includes TikTok for similar conduct.
Studies have been done that bring to light that these major social media platforms, especially search engines like Google are so powerful they have been actively using certain algorithms to influence users of their platforms to vote for certain candidates. You might want to do some homework on this subject and here is a good place to start with this study by Princeton University.
I personally no longer use any of these platforms as they not only steal our information but use it to influence our behavior. Nothing is for free and there is a definite cost to using these platforms. It is not necessarily a monetary cost but the intrinsic cost of allowing them access to promote certain ideologies that you may not believe in. These platforms have the potential to do untold damage to children who are so easily swayed by their content. We have recently seen how these platforms have been manipulated by various government agencies during the Covid pandemic to limit conservations in opposition to the Covid vaccine. Our own FBI which is supposed to protect us did an about-face and used these platforms to promote disinformation to sway public opinion.
Too many Americans don’t seem to understand the danger of allowing these platforms to continue to spread their propaganda, but you need only to read about Joseph Gobbles and the part he played in Hitler’s rise to power. It was Goebbels who created the Führer myth around the person of Hitler and instituted the ritual of party celebrations and demonstrations that played a decisive role in converting the masses to Nazism. Today, social media is the ultimate propaganda machine.
We have been witnessing a flood of disinformation from various social media platforms on the Israeli vs Hamas conflict. Social media is nothing more than propaganda at its highest level, and it is being used to change the minds of our children and young adults without the parents’ consent. This propagandizing, which I call the social media disinformation machine, is not necessarily being used just for children. Much of their content is geared towards adult users and, in particular, College students who are some of the heaviest users of these platforms. We have seen the revolt on many of our most prestigious college campuses this past week over the attack on Israel. Who is to say that these platforms weren’t responsible for the current rage on many of our college campuses over Israel’s retaliation on Hamas for the death of over 1,200 Israelis?
Could it even be possible since the advent of social media platforms we have seen the great divide that has taken place in our country? Don’t think for a minute that these platforms have not been promoting disinformation for years and could be ultimately responsible for this division. Social media platforms are the latest propaganda machines, and the majority of America has become addicted to them. The latest data we have tells us that the average person spends 2 hours and 27 minutes a day on social media. While this is just an average, we need to better understand how impactful social media is in the lives of people, especially here in our own country. Welcome to 1984.
The bigger question is how the advent of Artificial intelligence will affect the upcoming 2024 Presidential election. How much influence will the spin barons of the Silicon Valley Social Media cabal have on our next presidential election in 2024? Read this recent article in Epoch Times on artificial intelligence here to get a peek at how AI could be a game changer.
“We Get the Government We Deserve!”
