I was a victim of propaganda.
My family still are.
It's easy to say, "You could have looked up the facts!" or that "You made a choice!"
But here is actually what happens.
You're an every day, kind, loving citizen who would do anything for your neighbors. You don't go out of your way to hate people, and you're mostly living your life, and not online often or connected a lot.
Then, one day a family member or close friend shares a story with you. 1/x
The story isn't something you would think outrageous. It tells you something a little unbelievable, so you just brush it off as something whacky.
Because you clicked on it, the algorithm has its foot in the door. It sends you another which reinforces the first. Again, it seems whacky, and you mostly ignore it. But you don't realize you've reinforced the algorithm. It goes from a scatter story and slowly becomes a barrage of "sources" from every direction, all saying the same thing. 2/x
"Use Google! Look up the facts!"
Okay, sure. But all these systems are connected, Google has you too. When you do a Google search it knows what you have been looking at and it just reinforces what you are beginning to believe.
You don't get the other story any more.
All of your information is derived from the algorithm telling you what the algorithm thinks you want to read, see, hear, etc.
It slow cooks your brain into a world of belief and you don't know it's happening.
3/x
By the time other people begin to confront you for what you've been conditioned to belief, you are shocked that they would be against all of this stuff that, in your world, is everything.
It makes you angry. It makes them angry.
You get pulled deeper into the brainwash. Sure, there's some bad things happening, but what's happening "on the other side" is far worse. So, it doesn't matter.
The algorithm makes your reality.
4/x
And by this time, it's okay to throw hatred at the other people.
Because the other people are doing horrible wretched things that everything around you, from every source, tells you is true.
It will split you from friends, from family, from everybody who doesn't think like you do.
And the scariest part of all this, it isn't even human controlled or directed. It's an algorithm doing what it does, given one task, to get more clicks and engage people. It doesn't care. It doesn't know.
5/x
@quinnsentialOne
This is also what happened to Dylan Roof. Google's algorithm led to racial violence: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/10/508363607/what-happened-when-dylann-roof-asked-google-for-information-about-race
@promibro Radicalization is powerful.
I learned as much as I could about it after my own experience.
Looking at my past self now, I find it hard to come to terms with "that was actually me".
There is a bit of cognitive dissonance there, and that too, is something for me to own and learn to deal with.
@quinnsentialOne
I appreciate that you can share your story. It helps me understand that real people can get caught up in lies - when they are repeated and reinforced. It's cultivation theory in action.
@promibro We definitely have to fight against the extremism, politically.
But at the same time, at least for me, I don't want to abandon the people who are just lost in the loop or out of touch and don't even know.
I've done so much "othering" when I was a hard right Republican, and especially MAGA, that I don't want to have gotten outside of that..... just to do it again in another direction for a different reason.
@quinnsentialOne
Thanks for sharing your experiences.
This is one reason I rarely use Google Search or have social media accounts, other than here.
@heyrhiannon Me too. And I will try to stay aware of what happens here too, and what content I'm seeing.
@quinnsentialOne
Nicely done.
It’s the propagandizing of social media and radicalizing through propaganda the people who can’t see through it.
And of course, it’s all for the profits.