Noam Chomsky once said (and I paraphrase) “the media can’t tell you what to think, but it can tell you what to think about”. Today most news, and information in general, is filtered by two major tech companies, Google and Facebook. This gives these firms unprecedented power. Today they appear to be more or less benignly run, but there are less scrupulous people trying to gain control of these entities, or at least of their algorithms. A recent (2021) paper gives a very good overview of the situation.
What to do? Dump social media! It’s the ultimate protest. And you might just end up happier, too.
From Harvard Law Today, Nov. 18, 2021.
Google and Facebook have more power over the information ecosystem than any institution since the pre-Reformation Catholic Church. Their algorithms and their content moderation policies are taking the form of law.
–Stanford Law School Professor Nate Persily, co-editor of “Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field, Prospects for Reform”
Steven A. Guccione 