Yes, for instance if a big tech company knows that a person is demoralized already (for example, out of work and isolated), and if a major life trauma event occurs for that person, create a satirical and insulting depiction of that trauma event for the person unannounced on their personalized feed. They will never know for sure whether it was intentional, which will add to the stress and demoralization effect. The big tech parter could conceivably then measure their response to help refine the psychological warfare weapon.
Another technique is to use past trauma events such a divorce or childhood abuse as part of customized content on one’s feed.
Without transparency, how could one know if this was being done intentionally or not? Big tech valuations are largely tied to information asymmetry and secrecy as such. What power could they enjoy over a user if the user was able to see all of the data they hoard and how it’s being used in full transparent detail?
I’ve been told to never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. I’ve never found that to be convincing, because there are a lot of malicious people in the world. Then I realized the more salient point that malicious actors generally do no more harm than the incompetent folks.
