
The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence - mark_l_watson
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts
======
md224
I have made this case before, but I will make it again.

The Internet is the largest information system in the world, and Google is the
primary portal into that information system. Google's "organic" results are
accompanied by AdWords results, which are based on a mixture of bid price and
relevance. These ads are marked with a small "Ad" label that many people miss,
and even those who know they're ads can't really "unsee" those results.

So, searching the world's largest information system provides results which
have been biased by money. How does anyone consider this ethical? Why are we
letting money influence the salience of information?

What if your local library (you know, those old things) had a card catalog
with "sponsored" results? If this already exists, then maybe we're already
lost. But it seems to me that as a basic rule of information ethics, the
salience of information in a given information system should not be biased by
monetary influence. Full stop, the end, no exceptions. If anyone has a
counterargument, I would honestly love to hear it, because this has nagged at
me for a long time. I simply can't understand how AdWords is ethical.

~~~
pcmaffey
The library is a catalog of books produced by publishers for the sake of
making money. Your example doesn't hold weight, as there is no "purity of
information". Even your own insights are filtered through the perspective of
your personal influence, your wants, your desires, your history, etc.

Google is no different. The organic search results are largely from
commercial, or at a minimum, self-interested sources.

That doesn't make it wrong. There's huge value there. Just the same, money is
not evil. It's a mechanism for storing value. It's imperfect, and abused, and
certainly not the only measurement of value. Keeping those value systems in
balance is the key.

~~~
md224
I'm just saying I wish we could have only organic results. Why should people
with more money have more of a presence online? Money shouldn't be able to buy
speech.

The Internet should not be a place where those with more money get to cut the
line in front of those with less. Let PageRank sort it out.

Also, what's this about my example not holding weight because "information
purity" doesn't exist? It's not about the information itself being pure, it's
about purity of ranking. Let's just spell this out:

money !== relevance, therefore any influence of money on search engine
rankings is, by definition, noise.

~~~
nickff
Money always buys speech; whether it is by allowing a columnist to write full
time, affording the puchase of a computer to post on the internet, or giving
someone the ability to travel to a public square.

Using money to purchase a magazine, newspaper, television, radio, or online
advertisement is just another way that money helps people express their views.

In any case, I wouldn't be too worried about money changing people's minds, as
it rarely does that.[1] Advertisements and the like usually serve to give
voice to the views people already hold, and inform them of things they were
not aware of. An advertisement will never convince people to buy things they
don't want and don't need; if you disagree, please go and try to sell a bad
product, and we will see how well your 'mind control' works.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind)

~~~
alanwatts
"We just had a misunderstanding, I thought I lived in the U.S.A, the United
States of America, and actually we live in the U.S.A, The United States of
Advertising -- freedom of speech is guaranteed, if you've got the money!"

-Bill Hicks on being censored by CBS

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Bill Hicks was both wonderful and a very talented troll.

------
jamesblonde
As a adjunct to this great read, you find out more about this field through
the historical documentary, "The century of the Self" by Adam Curtis and the
BBC. It is the 'red pill' for understanding consumerism.
[https://vimeo.com/10245146](https://vimeo.com/10245146)

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Beat me to it.

Also recommended to read Bernays' works themselves, particularly
"Crystallizing Public Opinion" and "Propaganda."

Its like reading an engineer's manual for social control.

~~~
jamesblonde
Yeah, Bernays is great. He called it 'propeganda' to begin with - but realized
that it needed a better name. So he called it 'public relations'. The best
thing about PR is that people who practice PR have PR practiced on them - they
don't even know the history of PR. Curtis' documentary is the best source I
have come across for the history of PR. But this article is quite something.
It helps explain the Trump effect - just get on the news/social-media and you
will get more votes. Those who can manipulate the media, there's is the
kingdom of power...

~~~
samsolomon
As someone with a degree in public relations, this simply not true. Edward
Bernays is the first person covered in Introduction to Public Relations
classes.

Do journalists, corporate communication professionals or others who end up in
PR know him? That is up for debate.

EDIT: Clarity

------
justsaysmthng
I remember the '90s, when the Internet as we know it was just a baby... The
enthusiasm we all shared for it. Of a better future. Of true democracy in the
world. Of free people, free minds. The Internet will be the cure for all the
social ills that humanity has experienced in the past. People will trade and
talk with each other and that's how we can have peace on Earth!

We will be able to discuss, collaborate, create. We would be able to watch any
film, listen to any song.

Some people called us "geeks", we liked to call ourselves "hackers".

We are not just hacking code, we're hacking a new world.

\--

A quarter of a century later and most of those things are now reality. But
somehow these great things have brought with them some _hidden things_. Things
which we ignored or brushed off easily back in the day..

Like the fact that the Internet is now populated by the same demographic as
the real world, not just hackers and dreamers. Now everyone is online.

We thought it would free us from oppression, but it is becoming the ultimate
tool _for_ oppression.

We thought it would give us true democracy, but it is becoming the ultimate
moderation system for "foreign" though suppression and group think generator.

We though it will serve our needs, but it is becoming the thing that is
telling us what to need. We thought it will satisfy our tastes, but our tastes
are now being programed into us by it.

Of course we're still high from all the positive aspects and it's not in our
nature to be scared of things, but that will soon wear off .. And when we wake
up what will we find there ?

Either way, it is unstoppable and nobody can turn it off. So we only have to
wait and see what it will ultimately turn into.

What will it be 25 years from now ? Will we still be able to discuss about
this freely ?

~~~
api
The big error of the 90s digital utopians was over-estimating how much the
Internet would change society and under-estimating how much society would
change the Internet.

~~~
colordrops
The internet and society are intertwined in a fractal feedback loop, to the
point where they are almost one in the same now.

------
Gatsky
Here is the actual study:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.full.pdf](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.full.pdf)

I can't see how this is valid at all. We know that polls give biased results
unless you are very careful with the sampling. Here people are self-selecting
for a poll (eg via mechanical turk). Then you apply a highly contrived
scenario that they are googling about a candidate. Then you ask them a bunch
of questions, immediately, and proceed to draw wide ranging conclusions
designed to increase your self-importance as much as possible. I mean,
seriously, it's worse than useless.

This article is also written as if these findings are earth shattering. After
conducting a small, biased, invalid study (Asking people in San Diego about an
Australian election? How does that generalize to anything?) and finding a
large effect Epstein says 'We did not immediately uncork the Champagne
bottle'. Is that how psychology research is conducted? Researchers toasting
large implausible effects in small biased samples that have no external
validity?

Flagged.

~~~
bahjoite
I had to stop reading the article when it invited the reader to compare two
loosely-related percentages as if they were the same measure:-

"We predicted that the opinions and voting preferences of 2 or 3 per cent of
the people in the two bias groups ... would shift toward that candidate. What
we actually found was astonishing. The proportion of people favouring the
search engine’s top-ranked candidate increased by 48.4 per cent"

------
manachar
This read like anti-Google FUD.

The basic argument is search engine rank determines trustworthiness of a
source. This influences people's opinions on politics, what they buy, what
they think, etc.

This is absolutely true, and the core of their research (it seems).

But then it goes into FUD territory when talking about Google backing Hillary.
Hillary and Trump have received the lion's share of attention in media, social
media, and such. Google searches SHOULD show them prominently.

Worse, the article basically finishes up with a "be afraid, be very afraid"
approach that rankles me. "The new hidden persuaders are bigger, bolder and
badder than anything Vance Packard ever envisioned. If we choose to ignore
this, we do so at our peril."

No solutions or deeper analysis. No discussions on how a search engine should
rank relevancy to search terms.

I personally have no doubt that mass-media, marketing, and the internet are
shapers of opinions. Bias in the media, search engines, and such is a complex
topic. Not something that should boil down to "Google could make it so Hillary
wins" therefore you should be afraid.

~~~
smitherfield
(Disclaimer: I voted for Bernie Sanders in the Massachusetts primary).

I agree; the Hillary portion of it seemed like a bit of a silly conspiracy
theory to me. They'd still need to provide evidence rather than innuendo, but
it'd be more believable (albeit attract fewer HN upvotes) if the article had
claimed Google has a pro-Bernie bias, since he's the candidate who likely has
the most support amongst Google employees and especially engineers.

I don't think the (potential) issue is so much Google actively putting its
thumb on the scale for one candidate, as the influence outside activists can
have on how they create their algorithm.

Suppose that the (Hillary-endorsing) _New York Times_ runs a front-page story
saying that a study found Google search results systematically are more
negative towards female candidates than they are to male candidates. The
subtext of such a story would be that the _NYT_ is pressuring Google to alter
its algorithm to be more favorable to Hillary. I think there'd be a pretty
decent chance Google would in fact alter its algorithm in response to such a
story. I doubt they would alter their algorithm in response to a similar
criticism from a conservative source.

Similarly, if one of the top results for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders
were a scatological reference, as with Rick Santorum, I think that Google
would very quickly remove that page from its results.

Now, there's nothing wrong with getting rid of bias in search results directed
at left-of-center politicians. But if Google (hypothetically, of course) is
much more aggressive with eliminating bias towards left-of-center politicians
than it is with eliminating bias towards right-of-center politicians, the net
effect will be a general left-of-center bias in Google search results.

None of this is any kind of pre-planned conspiracy, just brain chemistry.
We're wired to easily perceive bias, incivility and lying when directed at
those we agree with, but justify, rationalize or ignore it when directed at
those we disagree with.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's worth pointing out that the positions of a company's executives and
financial staff aren't necessarily the position of a company's line employees
or engineers. Sanders is much less supportive of big business in government.
And Google has put a LOT of money into government.

~~~
smitherfield
I think if Google execs had been directing Google engineers to make search
results less favorable to Bernie and/or more favorable to Hillary, we would
have heard about it.

The relevant engineers themselves would have more opportunity to change the
search algorithm without generating public complaints from their coworkers. I
really doubt they would, though, so conspiracy theorizing about it is still
silly.

Like I said, I think the potential for political bias doesn't come from Google
executive conspiracies or Google engineer conspiracies to alter the search
algorithm, but rather from how the execs and/or engineers might react
differently to outside demands that they change the algorithm, depending on
the degree to which they sympathize with the source of the demands.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I'm just saying, the fact that Google would push politically something
different than their lower level employees support wouldn't be surprising.
Also, bear in mind that search ranking code is among Google's most carefully-
guarded code. In fact, it's some of the only code not available company-wide.

The people who have access to Google's 'secret sauce' are likely the sort of
die-hard "I bleed Google" people who would do anything in Google's best
interests.

Of course, for that same reason, it's much less likely search tampering would
happen... the group that could do it is very small and likely very closely
monitored.

------
Dowwie
"We now have evidence suggesting that on virtually all issues where people are
initially undecided, search rankings are impacting almost every decision that
people make."

I dug into his CV and found the following related works:

\- recent publications: [http://aibrt.org/index.php/internet-
studies](http://aibrt.org/index.php/internet-studies)

\- The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the
outcomes of elections
[[http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2015-The_Sear...](http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2015-The_Search_Engine_Manipulation_Effect-
SEME-PNAS-w_SUPPLEMENTS.pdf)]

A talk that he gave at Stanford about SEME:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSN6LE06J54&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSN6LE06J54&feature=youtu.be)

\- Democracy At Risk Manipulating Search Rankings Can Shift Voters’
Preferences Substantially Without Their
Awareness:[[http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_and_Robertson_2013-Democr...](http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_and_Robertson_2013-Democracy_at_Risk-
APS-summary-5-13.pdf)]

CV:
[http://drrobertepstein.com/pdf/vita.pdf?lbisphpreq=1](http://drrobertepstein.com/pdf/vita.pdf?lbisphpreq=1)

------
erikpukinskis
Google could send people to places that are contrary to the user's interest,
but that's essentially deliberately decreasing the quality of one of their
products so I'm not that worried about it. If they do it's a (big) market
opportunity for someone else.

I would go even farther: I'm not particularly worried about individual
interests at all, on any subject. The Internet is very good at exposing them.

I am much more concerned with bad _classes_ of actors than bad actors. We see
many ways in which competition breaks down because entire classes of people
benefit from working in synchrony. The classic example is politicians: crooked
elections mean longer terms which benefits basically all of them.

The other classic example is the capital class. If everyone in the capital
class plays by he rules of property then they can exploit the labor class.
Once you're in the capital class there are few reasons to compete with private
property. Social pressure mostly neuters whatever capital class activists
might try to keep working.

It's these class barriers that we should be worried about. But new weapons
(like search engines) and new villains (like Islam) make much better news
stories.

~~~
tdaltonc
It's not trivial to ascertain what a users "interests" are. And I think that's
the debate here. Google optimization algorithms are an embodiment of a value
system, and maybe I don't agree with it.

McDonalds also gives people what they want, but only in a very narrow sense of
'want'.

~~~
erikpukinskis
It doesn't really matter if it's trivial. It's in Google's interest to do it
so it tends to happen.

McDonalds isn't really uniquely bad. Burger King, Jack in the Box, et al are
basically the same. They are a perfect example of what I described: a class of
actors to whom there is benefit to acting in concert against the best
interests of consumers.

------
puranjay
Most people find this a joke, but I don't kid when I say that 4Chan might be
the single most influential political force today.

4Chan's 'meme makers' have an uncanny ability to distill an idea to its
simplest form. Ideas that emerge on 4Chan end up on Reddit, from where they
are picked up by Buzzfeed and HuffPo. Before you know it, what was a dumb
little idea spawned by some anon on /b has become a part of 'internet culture'

I've seen firsthand how 4Chan has been able to influence Trump's presidential
run. If it weren't for /pol's constant shilling for him, I doubt Trump
would've had so much support. 4Chan's memes have changed perceptions of Trump,
whether you like it or not

~~~
andrepd
>Most people find this a joke, but I don't kid when I say that 4Chan might be
the single most influential political force today.

I do hope you are kidding, because to say that a fringe Internet forum holds
more sway on the masses than TV, newspapers, Super PACs, corporate lobbies,
etc, then I think you are seeing things very very wrong.

>I've seen firsthand how 4Chan has been able to influence Trump's presidential
run. If it weren't for /pol's constant shilling for him, I doubt Trump
would've had so much support. 4Chan's memes have changed perceptions of Trump,
whether you like it or not

Trump is winning states left right and center. Millions of Americans are
voting for him. After everything that can be said about Trump, I wonder what
makes you think this is attributed to, of all things, 4chan? Isn't this a
little too megalomaniac?

~~~
tunap
Digg it!

------
ashurbanipal
Hold on, so we call it "Mind Control" when Google shifts our preferences
toward one of two pre-selected choices? What do we call the state of the world
that leaves us with only 2 pre-selected choices who happen to agree on 90%+ of
all policies?

~~~
J_Darnley
Inevitable. Do you really think the power brokers let you have a real choice?

~~~
EGreg
Not power brokers. It's an emergent phenomenon predicted by public choice
theory.

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212)

~~~
nunyabuizness
Also, this CGP Grey video explains how a first-past-the-post voting system
all-but-guarantees a two party system to emerge over time:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo)

~~~
J_Darnley
Would you like to replace it with proportional representation? You thought a
few day government shutdown was bad? Try 500 days.

~~~
germanier
Then how do you explain the missing government shutdowns in all the countries
with proportional representation? Even in Belgium, where they had a long time
without a new government after an election, government services were provided
just fine.

------
Mindless2112
Google doesn't need to use search results to manipulate voting behavior --
they have Google Now.

Google Now currently displays cards to remind people to vote on voting day.
Maybe it _just happens_ to be more likely to show up for people that have been
profiled as likely to vote for Google's favored candidate.

~~~
incarnate
They may not even have to target their message. If a platform's users already
have a bias (and this seems to be the case[0]), then they can display the "go
vote" message globally and have the desired affect. All while waving the
public good PR flag.

This assumes the platform's wishes aligns with their users, but this may be
self-fulfilling.

[0] [http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/politics-fact-
sheet/](http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/politics-fact-sheet/)

------
kazinator
The internet, in fact, provides the best support ever for closing your mind to
anything that doesn't align with your world view. You just have to google for
pages that confirm your beliefs, finding sites and forums filled with people
who think like you do. Then you can deceive yourself into believing that your
views actually have a large support. ("Pretty much everyone I know online on
every site I go believes it!")

The upshot is that "subtle influence" is not going to work on those who are
_crudely_ entrenching themselves into some camp or other. For instance, you're
not going to "subtly influence" some denier into accepting human-caused global
warming. Not as long as he can find plenty of others and keep believing that
his social circle is an unbiased sample of the population.

------
nsxwolf
Something like this recently disturbed me. Mitt Romney published a tweet storm
a few days ago making his case against Donald Trump. They all showed up in my
feed - I don't follow Romney, and the tweets weren't marked as sponsored, but
somehow Twitter decided I should be seeing them anyway.

I'd hate to think Twitter decided it was for the public good that everyone
read what Romney had to say about Trump.

~~~
x5n1
How do you think the media mughals made their billions. They made them doing
exactly this.

~~~
tdaltonc
So you think some one paying twitter to get those tweets to show up? And not
through the "sponsored" system?

~~~
x5n1
Dunno. Hard to say. Could be, or could be their algo saying you would like it.
They will always claim the latter.

------
whatTheFuckEvr
Oh god. This article is so fucking disappointing.

What a quaint boogey man this "Search Engine Manipulation Effect" is. It even
has it's own obscure little acronym, SEME, to appear more relevant.

I learned about the subtle effects of advertising by the time I was in fourth
grade, and certainly understood how to ignore them by middle school.

Back when special holographic foil comic book covers and trading cards were
new, I had already figured out that all of these "collectibles" were mass-
produced, and would never wind up as valuable as, say Action Comics Issue#1,
despite so many claims otherwise. This was something you could kind of figure
out on your own. If your were easily amused by shiny objects though, you might
not arrive at the same conclusion.

Meanwhile anyone could figure out that the influence of single frame inserts
in movies was as potent and realistic as the subliminal messaging in John
Carpenter's Sci-fi movie, THEY LIVE.

So too, with Search Engines.

Figure if a fourth grader can figure out the shenanigans of opinion and belief
influence in advertising, and unravel the bullshit of religion before high
school ends, then this other newer form of bullshit is similarly debunked by
comparable intellects. If you're so stupid that you buy into bullshit, without
multiple channels of factual verification, you're your own worst enemy.

Okay, okay, maybe this is good reading material for an elementary school
classroom assignment, focused on current events. Sure, why not?

I was hoping this would be about technological manifestations of psychic
telepathy through malicious use of functional MRI systems.

Bah!

~~~
dwaltrip
It seems you are saying that there is nothing to worry about, because you
specifically have learned to magically rebuff any attempts at mental
manipulation.

Did I read that correctly? Assuming you have this ability, how does this tell
us anything about society at large?

------
labster
It's looking like our only hope left is the recently declassified WMF search
engine. I get that people didn't like Lila doing all of that grant in secret,
but I find myself not really opposed to to Wikimedia taking on Google. In the
long term, someone is going to have to do it.

------
guelo
This is a really interesting study but it's hard for me to believe in the
conspiracy theory that the hundreds of engineers that work on Google Search
would be OK implementing a complicated vote manipulation algorithm and keeping
it secret. But it's possible, criminal conspiracies involving many people seem
to happen regularly in the financial industry.

~~~
bloaf
I was actually surprised the article didn't mention the Ghost in the Shell
series. A big part of that universe was the idea that even _without_ concerted
manipulation, the simple fact that the information consumed by the public is
too homogeneous could cause problems.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Ghost_in_the_She...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Ghost_in_the_Shell#Stand_Alone_Complex)

~~~
yarou
Absolutely.

I think in any system, there will be emergent behavior exhibited by agents. We
see this in toy examples like Conway's game of life, but it could easily be
applied to societies and pop culture too.

Hence we have this concept of "memes".

------
EGreg
This article is speaking about something that has existed as long as mass
media has. Whether it's google or newspapers or TV, the companies running the
sources we turn to have control over what information we are exposed to, and
can influence our views. Our grandfathers read the newspaper, our parents
watched TV. What, google is a monopoly? Ok, so that's the big issue.

On the other hand, our susceptibility to having our political system be
disproportionately affected by a company or two with a top-down chain of
command is a reflection that our system of representative democracy has weak
links and can be easily subverted.

I wrote about the solution to this a while back: replace voting with polling!
Have people cast their voice for POLICIES not REPRESENTATIVES. It is much more
costly to fool all the people all the time, than to fool them at election
time, and then go on to lobby the representatives they chose.

Voting depends on turnout, which skews the results and is susceptible to sybil
attacks (remember facebook's vote about the newsfeed that got 3% turnout?)

Polling doesn't. It can be refined using better and better statisical
techniques. We can gradually replace costly and stupid elections where
candidates talk about their penis, with polling of the population on issues
like gun control etc. Replace the bickering lawmakers and filibusters with
polling and threshholds.

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212)

~~~
a_imho
>I wrote about the solution to this a while back: replace voting with polling!

That is an implementation detail which might lead to a more fair system.
Nevertheless it is not a solution to the real problem, which is creating the
incentive to move away from the current status quo.

(side: you may be interested in the link in my profile)

------
hellbanner
So on this note, I just want to point out that everytime the horrors of the
new technologies is talked about, something else _isn 't_ talked about.

I've seen a number of newer HN account flooding the site with articles...
presumably for eyeballs + ad revenue but hey, maybe they just want another
link to lose attention..

------
r0m4n0
The internet is just a new medium to persuade opinions just as the many before
it. Most people don't even know who represents them apart from what's talked
about in the news. This study required people to actually browse through this
fake search engine. I'm not convinced many people do any research whatsoever
(beyond the top of the ballot).

Does this "search engine manipulation effect" have an impact on top of the
ballot votes? We still don't know. Does it have an impact on everyone else on
your ballot? Nope.

Disclosure... I am the founder of a company that builds a tool for
organizations to blatantly tell people who to vote for...

------
knaik94
As much as I would love to imagine some powerful people intentionally
influencing search results on a big scale, Google and Facebook and Twitter
have no real way to make money from it. I would argue that it would only drive
people away. I am sure that it happens to a certain degree, look at the
marketing of Bernie Sanders on reddit, but a much bigger influence is your
social circle and your source of new information. Social media mirrors
people's attitude. If you see new tweets about an issue you don't particularly
care for, there's a good chance that people you follow do care. It's basic
psychology that you befriend people who share your views and interests. If all
of your friends tweet or like or show interest in something then twitter will
assume you do too. Twitter makes money from user engagement and so it's
logical to show you things that your friends agree with because chances are
you will too. I think a real issue is the lack of a source of unbiased
information. Relevant information and information you agree with are very
different things.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
What I find tragically interesting is that the maintainers of this website
(aeon.co) and likely most of the people reading this comment are contributing
to the massive dominance the mentioned companies have over the flow of
personal information about people online. If I didn't block trackers, it looks
like Facebook and Google would both know I read this article, along with
Twitter and New Relic.

------
ikeboy
>Keep in mind that we had had only one shot at our participants. What would be
the impact of favouring one candidate in searches people are conducting over a
period of weeks or months before an election? It would almost certainly be
much larger than what we were seeing in our experiments.

Reminds me of [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/streetlight-
psychology/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/streetlight-psychology/)

>And in 2015, a team of researchers from the University of Maryland and
elsewhere showed that Google’s search results routinely favoured Democratic
candidates. Are Google’s search rankings really biased?

A greater portion of liberals use social media than conservatives (source:
[http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/12/main-
findings-10/](http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/12/main-findings-10/)) Maybe
they organically generate more links?

------
pcmaffey
>Power on this scale and with this level of invisibility is unprecedented in
human history.

I would argue that the influence of media has always been this powerful. And
media has always been biased.

Another angle to look at would be to apply the work of Stanley Milgram re:
obedience to authority figures. Our ability to think for ourselves has some
evolving to do...

------
_han
This topic is also addressed in the last season of House of Cards.

------
nunyabuizness
I once read an article about surveillance with a title along the lines of "A
Tale of Two Cities."

In it, the author explains that there are two types of surveillance cities
that will emerge in the future: one where every park bench is rigged with a
mic, every street corner has a camera aimed at it, and where all the data
collected is funneled to law enforcement agencies; if you were mugged on some
street corner, they'd be able to react to the crime swiftly and with high
accuracy.

The other city is exactly the same, but all the data is made available to all
citizens through an open API; so if you wanted to meet with someone on some
street corner, you could decide for yourself if it was safe enough to visit,
likely preventing the crime from happening at all.

Does anyone know what article I'm talking about?

~~~
butterfinger
Could be that one:
[http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety1.html](http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety1.html)

~~~
nunyabuizness
This is it, thank you!!

------
jbclements
I'm really astonished to find only a handful of references to DuckDuckGo in
this discussion. I've been using it exclusively for about 2 years now, and had
no problems at all. Perhaps I just don't know what I'm missing ... like mind
control!

~~~
majewsky
People using Google most likely "had no problems at all" either.

------
scottlocklin
Megacorporations are bad for the internet for certain, but I don't feel very
mind controlled by Google, as I almost always use Duckduckgo or Yandex. They
produce fairly similar results, and I have the satisfaction of not shoveling
the tiniest bit of money at a company I have likened to fat Vegas era Elvis.

I also doubt the results of their research. Nobody is going to vote for Donald
Trump because he happens to appear first in a google search; that's just
retarded. I think the fact that outsider candidates are locked out of legacy
media megaphones and party power structures seems more harmful to democracy,
and this has been accepted as "just how it is" for decades.

------
hotcool
I designed supraliminal posters[1] to counter the covert forms of persuasion
like Low Attention Processing marketing[2]. I definitely find them helpful,
especially for meditation.

[1] [http://zenpusher.com](http://zenpusher.com)

[2] [http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/low-
atten...](http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/low-attention-
branding.htm)

~~~
soared
Do you think [2] is a bad thing, and why?

------
zby
Another take on that subject:
[http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-
digital-d...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-
debate/shoshana-zuboff-secrets-of-surveillance-
capitalism-14103616-p2.html?printPagedArticle)

------
NoMoreNicksLeft
Mind control in the same way encyclopedias used to favor subjects that start
with the letter A?

I swear, sometimes I think the world is inhabited by p-zombies, who don't
actually think things through, but just mindlessly recombine previously
consumed memes into (slightly) novel variants.

Was this written by a second grader?

------
daveloyall
Related: [https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-
search-...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-
everyone.html) "Personalized Search for everyone " (2009)

------
joolze
Month old news on ZH: [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-27/hidden-
persuaders-h...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-27/hidden-persuaders-
how-internet-flips-election-alters-our-thoughts)

------
mtgx
Traditional media entities aren't without their flaws:

[http://fair.org/home/washington-post-ran-16-negative-
stories...](http://fair.org/home/washington-post-ran-16-negative-stories-on-
bernie-sanders-in-16-hours/)

[http://www.thenation.com/article/the-discourse-suffers-
when-...](http://www.thenation.com/article/the-discourse-suffers-when-trump-
gets-23-times-as-much-coverage-as-sanders/)

------
andrewclunn
tldr:

Use DuckDuckGo.

